Mendocino County Today: Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2024

Rainy | Noyo Seals | Getting Data | Porcini Found | Down Home | Don't Destroy | Supe Candidates | Pudding Creek | Ed Notes | Russian River | Medical School | State Street | Yard Workers | Mendocino Headlands | Symphony Concerts | Yesterday's Catch | Social Security | Sacrifice Generation | Compost College | Steak Night | Heat Related | Short-Fingered Vulgarian | Trumpolini | Moral Failure | Ease/Convenience | RFKJr | Tea Party | Hollow Feeling | Marxism | Fried Rice | American Idiot | Fox Hunt

A FRONT is bringing the first round of rain to the area this morning with showers lingering behind it in the north this afternoon. Another system moves into tonight and Wednesday bringing more rain, wind, and mountain snow. A brief dry period is possible late this week, then a more powerful system possibly moves onshore early this weekend. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A rainy 52F on the coast this Tuesday morning with .30" of rainfall collected. The rain will end this morning giving way to breezy conditions. Rain returns tonight & so on with the off & on showers. A bigger system is brewing for Saturday they say.

PEN & PAPER NO LONGER WORK?

Dear Editor,

According to my public records request, submitted a month ago, the County cannot use the report they've used in previous years to give me a current report of the number of employees and a breakdown of salaries in the Executive Office and Clerk of the Board. Seriously, the Executive Office cannot run a report of their own staff? The amount of technology we, the taxpayers, pay for and the County cannot run this simple report? 

It appears to me that this is yet another tactic of delaying the release of information to the public, which I have gladly passed along to the readers of the AVA. 

In the past, I've waited FOUR MONTHS for one of my Public Record Requests to be fulfilled. I had weekly conversations (2021) with Asst. County Counsel Kiedrowski about this particular request, informing me that the date of release was being pushed back yet again. It became no surprise when I would receive his calls, what he was going to say.

This is a perfect example of why I am running for Supervisor. There are so many serious issues affecting our County and are we REALLY hearing about them or getting the full story? I doubt it. We're usually in crisis mode before the public knows about it or the Board of Supervisors is addressing it. The fact that they don't control their own agenda is of great concern. 

I have been complaining to the Board about the lack of professionalism by having Elected Officials/Department Heads speak and give updates during the public comment portion of the meeting (sometimes even being counted down their 3 minutes like the public) because when an item is not agendized, no extensive discussion can take place, therefore limiting the exchange of information. 

Recently though, on the December 19th agenda, there was an item “Discussion and Possible Action including Acceptance of an Informational Update from the Assessor/Clerk-Recorder; and Direction to Staff as Necessary,” where Ms. Bartolome gave an update and the Supervisors were able to ask questions and have an actual discussion with the Assessor/Clerk Recorder. At the break time of this meeting, Supervisor Haschak told me that this item was because of me. I then asked if it was going to be an ongoing agenda item so the updates would be continual and he stated it would. Wow! The Board actually took my advice and wants updates from the Assessor! I guess the famous saying of squeaky wheel gets the grease is applicable here. 

It seems that elected officials get complacent in their official capacities. As if the way it's been done is the way it should continue. We need to think outside the box. We're going to have to be creative to solve our budget crisis. Top priority should be getting the Assessor's computer system fully functioning and the department adequately staffed. Has the current Board made this a priority? The Assessor has been struggling with the new computer program for YEARS and it is still not functioning in its full capacity, therefore the potential revenue is not being assessed, invoiced or collected. 

This has gone on far too long. Change is hard and can be painful but is necessary to continue moving forward in positive directions.

Vote for Change!

Carrie Shattuck

Votecarrie2024.com

Ukiah

* * *

MARK SCARAMELLA REPLIES: The Assessor being on the agenda is a (small) step forward. But six months ago the Board directed that the CEO report contain a monthly (written) report from the Assessor. Being unwritten, the Assessor’s oral reports are informal, disorganized, inconsistent and there’s no easy way to track progress from month to month. The Assessor does not address the assessment backlog, only the supplemental assessments that have been sent to taxpayers for review. Further, there’s nothing from the Tax Collector’s office on the follow-up of the supplemental bills. Have they been accepted and acted on? How much are they worth to the General Fund? Who are the top ten delinquent taxpayers and what’s their status? What is the status of actual collections? How many are past due? How many are about to go past four years without collection, thus becoming uncollectable? What is the staffing in the Tax Collector’s office? Etc. Etc. Much as we’d like to applaud the Assessor’s agenda item, it’s very weak tea and falls far short of what the Board asked for, much less what the Board and the public need to know.

JEFFREY REYNOLDS: Got to Fort Bragg in the late afternoon and found this under the copse of pines in the front field. The porcinis are still producing. Must be the lucky amadou hat.

DOWN HOME FOODS NOW OPEN ON SATURDAYS!

Good news for all Fort Bragg folks that need healthy organic food - Down Home Foods will be open on Saturdays !!

Saturday is my shopping day, I used to come into town and drive by Down Home Foods hoping they would be open, going by with a heavy heart. They have been closed Saturdays since the passing of our dear Stan.

Roseanne is ready to give it a go on this Saturday. Come on down and make this Saturday a good day for Down Home Foods. Leave with healthy happy food. I will see ya down there.

Bob Young <bobyoung086@gmail.com>

VOTE FOR NORVELL

Mendocino County Voters: 

If you’re in the 4th District, consider voting for Bernie Norvell like me. 

I will vote for Bernie because he might not agree with me on everything, but he will listen and talk it through and make adjustments as needed. Bernie is using his experience with the city to build systems that will help our community. Supporting mental health and making sense off the Supes budget is so important for all of us.

If you’re in the 1st District, consider voting for Adam Gaska 1st District Supervisor. I recommended Adam because he’s accessible and willing to listen and learn. He is not working for anyone but us to help support the Board of Supes make positive and important changes.

Jessica Katherine

Fort Bragg

ED NOTES

WHATEVER happened to Annie Haught? Who is Annie Haught? I still don't know. When she was first pointed out to me, I heard it as “Annie Hot.” An odd name, I thought. Must be a retired porn star. Or active porn star, for all I know, not being a porn-oriented guy, but aware that the genre might well include films designed for persons with a taste for large, hostile middle-aged women. 

ANNIE HOT-HAUGHT certainly looked fervent the night I met her but not in a way that summoned eros. She sat a couple of psychotic lunges away from me among an audience of people who had turned out at Copperfield Books in Sebastopol to hear what I had to say about this and that. Back in the day I thought personal appearances might boost circulation. Wrong. All it did was bring on confrontations with random outpatients.

MIZ HAUGHT was togged out in a mumu-like purple. For you young-uns out there let me advise you that large women in purple are a sure sign of trouble. Run, don't walk. 

ANNIE HAUGHT sat beside another large-ish purple-clad woman who had begun hyperventilating even before I'd said anything, a new hostility record for one of my presentations. Ordinarily, the hostiles hold their tightly-wrapped emotions in check until I've launched a specific verbal provocation.

SO THIS Hot-Haught creature, and the hyper-ventilating purple psycho sitting next to her, seemed to be pumping themselves up for the goddess knows what as another shrew launched incoherent, high decibel insults from the rear of the room. 

SOON, Annie Hot-Haught's eyes were rolling like a wild mare in a lightning storm, her teeth bared in a feral snarl as she mumbled and growled inaudibly and jerked back and forth in her seat as if she were about to implode.

AS AN old school guy, I don't hit women. Never have, never will. It's unthinkable, but it wasn't that night and other nights like it when all an old school dude can do is sit there and take it. If it were men behaving this way, well, anchors away and pop goes the weasel in the offender's snout. 

I BRING it up to simply repeat what everyone knows but doesn't say, although George Orwell said it nicer years ago, that is anything even hinting at socialism, environmentalism, world peace, and so on through the grand causes, the Annie Haught types come running, hence the state of the world because idealistic but conventional people run in the opposite direction.

I WAS SURPRISED by a story about a Marine captain at Camp Lejeune who was convicted in a court martial of setting too fast a pace during an 8-mile night hike because one of the Marines among the 179 he was leading died of heat stroke. A number of Marines testified that they’d pleaded with the Captain to slow down, only to have him allegedly reply, “I don’t care who dies.” One Marine said the 179 were “marched so fast I was vomiting the majority of the hike.” Eight miles is a lot of vomit, private, but I remember doing 15 to 20 miles at night with no more than two brief halts, and I remember one from LaJolla to MCRD in San Diego where we first emptied our canteens and did whatever the distance was with no breaks. I don’t understand how young guys in Marine Corps-condition can’t do 8 miles without conking out. A 21-year-old ought to be able to do 8 miles in two hours easy. Eight fast miles in the heat, though, isn't as easy as eight miles in the hills of Pendleton with the Pacific breezes cooling you off as you go.

IT COULD HAPPEN HERE: According to a report in the Marin County Sheriff’s Log, a woman was cited for petty theft and malicious mischief after tearing down a “Men Working” sign posted by the North Marin Water District. She said the sign was “chauvinistic.”

WATER WARS lurch into a cease fire abeyance as soon as it rains. No talk of drought these days. Every week when I drive south marvelling at the massive new construction from Healdsburg through Petaluma, I think back to 2000, when the governor said no dice to any reduction of Eel River flow via the Potter Valley diversion down into the Russian River and on into Sonoma County where it waters the frightening expansion of ever-northward urbanization. Senator Feinstein said, essentially, that the Eel can remain fish-free forever so far as she and the great eco-patriots of the Democratic Party were concerned. The talk now is a restoration of a free-flowing Eel and a diversion, the vaunted two-basin solution. 

SONOMA COUNTY has always told Mendo County it has no intention of giving up so much as a drop of the water it owns backed up behind Coyote Dam just north of Ukiah, much of which comes from the diverted Eel. Mendo voted 80 years ago not to help fund very much of the dam that brought Lake Mendocino into being, thereby ensuring that Sonoma County, who paid for most of the dam and the lake behind it, that they own most of the diverted Eel and upper Russian River water in perpetuity. 

BECAUSE developers and the welfare grape growers who draw on the now scarce Eel-Russian flow decide these matters through the elected reps they fund, arguments about who gets how much of a finite resource will always be contested because the forces of greed want it both ways — more development, more grapes and more free or next-to-free cheap water for all of it.

MCHC ENCOURAGES LOCAL STUDENTS TO PURSUE A CAREER IN MEDICINE

Through a program called AvenueM, Mendocino College and the University of California at Davis are collaborating to create a pathway into medical school for local students. To support this effort, MCHC Health Centers has offered to host clinical rotations, and once students finish their program, potential job opportunities.

AvenueM partners with community colleges to increase the number of physicians, especially those from diverse backgrounds, to serve underserved communities in Northern California.

MCHC CEO Rod Grainger said, “Locally and nationally, the shortage of medical providers means people are often not getting the care they need in a timely manner. MCHC wants to encourage more local students to consider a career in medicine, including bilingual, bicultural students who are interested in improving the health and wellness of our whole community.

Many people shy away from a career in medicine because of the cost. However there are many opportunities for financial support, including loan repayment programs.

MCHC recruiter Laura Curtis said, “Don’t let large student loans be a deterrent from following your passion! After graduating, if you work at a federally qualified health center like MCHC, not only are you improving the health and wellbeing of our community, you are eligible to apply for loan repayment programs such as CalHealthCares, NHSC, SLRP, or CMSP among others. These programs provide significant financial support to help cover loans from licensed medical, dental, and behavioral health providers.”

The AvenueM program is recruiting mission-focused students who come from economically, socially, and/or educationally disadvantaged backgrounds; who speak English as a second language; and/or are first-generation Americans. It is also interested in military veterans and those with ties to Northern California, either because they grew up here or live here now. These criteria are considered as part of the selection process.

Program eligibility requires students to be enrolled at a participating California Community Colleges, which includes Mendocino College, have an overall GPA of 3.0, and have completed at least 12 units of transferable coursework. Students must also have completed a Student Education Plan outlining their plan for transfer and be a first-time bachelor degree seeking student.

For those making a career change and working toward pre-med requirements, additional programming options can be found through the UC Davis School of Medicine via https://health.ucdavis.edu/diversity/

If you are interested in pursuing a career in healthcare but are not ready to commit to medical school, the Mendocino County Office of Education (mcoe.us) offers entry programs into the medical and dental fields, and Mendocino College (mendocino.edu) has a well-regarded nursing program.

(MCHC Health Centers includes Hillside Health Center and Dora Street Health Center in Ukiah, Little Lake Health Center in Willits, and Lakeview Health Center in Lakeport. It is a community-based and patient-directed organization that provides comprehensive primary healthcare services as well as supportive services such as education and translation that promote access to healthcare.)

LOOKING SOUTH on N. State St (US 101) just north of the county Courthouse in Ukiah, 1930s and today. 

A sign advertising the Toggery, a clothing store which closed in 1940, is still visible on the brick wall of the building on the left. On the right, the Palace Hotel, seen in its prime in the top photograph, has been vacant since 1995. A city inspector recently recommended demolition, so the building probably will not survive 2024. A sad end for a once elegant hotel.

Dan Young

* * *

Ian MacNab: The Toggery did not close, but was sold to J.J. MacNab (my Grandfather) in 1940 and became MacNab’s Men’s Wear which moved to right across from the Courthouse on N. State Street in 1964.

HELP WITH YOUR PROJECTS

My associate and I are happy to come help with your yard. We mow, trim hedges, prune fruit trees, and weed gardens. We also have the skills create and install pathways and patios, install fences, to install new plantings and recreate your garden space. We plant trees. I have a truck for some things that need hauling including dump Runs. We work up and down the coast from Westport to Navarro, maybe further.

Call or text me with your projects at (860) 690-8513

Thanks.

Daniel/Dan <dan420250@gmail.com>

SYMPHONY OF THE REDWOODS PRESENTS

Musical Mavericks Concert

Saturday, January 27, 7:30 pm; Pre-concert lecture 6:30

Sunday, January 28, 2:00 pm; Pre-concert lecture 1:00 pm

Conductor: Maestro Bryan Nies; Featured pianist: Amy Zanrosso

Poulenc: Sinfonietta; Beethoven: Piano Concerto No.5 in E flat major, op. 73 “Emperor”

Two masterpieces are featured in this concert by maverick composers. First, Poulenc’s Sinfonietta is a delightful and brilliant work of contrasts and beauty, with a musical language at once accessible yet uniquely Poulenc.

Beethoven’s “Emperor” concerto pushed the boundaries of the Classical concerto and influenced the style and form for centuries. This piece goes beyond the traditional feature of a soloist with orchestra accompaniment and becomes a musical statement of heroic achievement. Be sure to hear our conductor’s pre-concert lecture as he shares insights on how these works are truly maverick masterpieces.

Joanie Packard, Executive Director

Symphony of the Redwoods

CATCH OF THE DAY, Monday, January 8, 2024

JORGE ACEVEDO-DURAN, Willits. Contact with intent to commit lewd act with minor, annoy/molest victim believed to be under 18, cruelty to child-infliction of injury, contributing to delinquency of minor.

MICHAEL BLAHUT, Ukiah. Parole violation.

CASEY CURNUTT, Clearlake Oaks/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

JEFFREY EMERY (Tattoo), Philo. Misdemeanor hit&run.

JESUS HERRERA, Willits. Disobeying court order.

STEPHAN HOOD, Willits. Domestic battery.

KENNETH LAACK, Willits. Domestic battery.

SHEILA OWENS, Ukiah. Failure to appear, resisting.

BRENDA POINDEXTER, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

RIGHT-O, STEVE

Editor: 

The discussions on how to save Social Security drive me crazy. The answer is simple. Just remove the annual cap on how much income is taxed for Social Security. Why should a person who makes $168,600 pay the same amount as a person who makes $500,000 or $1 million?

Stevie Lazo

Santa Rosa

COMMUNE COLLEGES

by Steve Heilig

Way back at the start of senior year at our coastal Southern California high school, one of my very best friends Tom said to me “My big brother is living at a small commune up by Taos, New Mexico. I visited there last summer and it’s really cool, wanna go?” I thought about it for about 10 seconds and said “Sure, why not?” I had a company car, a brown Ford/Mercury Capri, somewhat sporty, for one year courtesy of my dad. The small matter of school didn’t really intrude on our planning so once Fall semester was done we were off for great adventure: Tune in, turn on, and…drop out!

Things get a bit vague from there. It was a long drive to the gorgeous high country “land of enchantment”, snow-capped Sangre de Christo mountains, vast starry skies, and all, but unlike Tom’s previous summer initiation, it was colder than I’d ever experienced. Not far north of Taos itself was the tiny dirt-road village of Arroyo Hondo, the building that the group was constructing of hand-made adobe and wood was still in process, utilizing some actual architectural expertise. The dozen or so somewhat older communards seemed glad to have two strapping young newbies to chop frozen firewood, and we felt very welcome. Unlike many or most such institutions this one even had some local Native American members or at least connections, which might have kept us from getting our pale colonialist asses kicked - there was some tension between the indigenous folks at Taos Pueblo and elsewhere and the almost-all-white hippies.

The “back to the land” settler/commune movement had sparked in the late sixties and Northern New Mexico was one of its centers, so much so that a weird commune scene set there was featured in the landmark 1969 hippie film “Easy Rider.” By the time Tom and I arrived five years later there was already a downturn in the scene, but famed sites like New Buffalo and the Lama Foundation (a Ram Dass headquarters) were nearby, where one could drop in for spiritual talks by leading hip figures, meals, and sometimes live music.

So we had good adventures, mostly. I recall Laundry Day being an adventure, with the loading of many bags of muddy stinky clothes into a few decrepit (other than mine) vehicles, and the ritual ingestion of LSD or magic mushrooms or peyote upon departure so that when we‘d completed the half-hour drive south into Taos proper and loaded up the washing machines we were ready for fun, such as going to see “Fantasia” at the one little movie palace, or more mundane tasks like the market of pharmacy or hardware store. Braver hippies visited local taverns and usually emerged unscathed.

There was some trading of vegetables and such among communes, fun visits to soak in the famed hot springs not far away down on the Rio Grande, brisk hikes, heated debates over which single song we could hear on the record player powered only by valuable and limited auto battery juice (CSNY’s raging anti-Vietnam War polemic “Ohio” was one selection until somebody called it a “bummer song” and it was turned off), stirring of hippie brown veggie stew, debates about spirituality and philosophy, and gossip about who was doing what or who in other communes. It was all very exotic to an Orange County kid. But we were almost always cold too. After some months Tom and I irrationally headed north to even colder climes, almost being buried in snowstorms on our long slow drive to the then still-funky ski bum town of Ketchum, Idaho. We kinda wrecked that company car in the process.

Which is all a drawn-out personalized introduction to a book I’ve just found while helping to clean out some office archives. “Compost College: Life on A Counter-Culture Commune” (Devil Mountain Books, 1997) by Richard Seymour was self-published in the 1990s but author Rick never mentioned it in the years I worked with him at the extended Haight-Ashbury Free Clinics organization and the associated Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, which he edited. When I saw the hand-sketched map included in the book, indicating where his own early-70s commune had been located, I knew it was fodder for the mighty AVA’s pages.

In 1971 Richard Seymour was a 32-year old Air Force veteran with two young kids and two English literature degrees but no real career plans and, true to the times, a yearning for deeper meaning and adventure than the standard American Dream offered. So he and others decided to found an alternative college/commune in the wilds of Mendocino. This wasn’t such an outlandish idea at that point; there were counterculture settlements sprouting all over the north coast as “freaks” fled the failing urban hip neighborhoods. Seymour met an ex-dean of a small college with semi-grandiose plans for a rural “non-traditional” school and with a few other intrepid/lost souls they set off on a quest for the right plot of land.

“Compost College,” the book, is mostly Seymour’s diary from the ensuing year of seeking, planning, building, moving, wandering, tripping (the psychedelic kind), coupling, struggling, endless “consensus” meetings to figure things out, and constant self-questioning about what they’re all doing or should be doing. Seymour bravely published it in the late 1990s, a quarter century later. At a half-century later it reads as a time capsule. These bright and vaguely ambitious youth - Seymour seems a decade older than most of them - imbue their every experience and thought with cosmic meaning, consulting the Tarot, I Ching, astrology, and LSD for guidance and interpretation of even mundane tasks and choices. There's also that classic hip cheap rotgut Boones Farm and Red Mountain wine by the jug, this being the pre-“wine tasting“ era. There’s much talk of karma, while food, shelter, gas, and other essentials are procured. They take on new names - Seymour becomes Orbit, briefly has a girlfriend called Glory Hallelulia, and there’s Stumbling Buffalo, Bluejay, Cricket, and onward. Over the year chronicled here, the group ranges from a handful to about 100 people.

So where did these “new settlers” settle? After an “organizational” meeting in Philo, the small group began in the Pygmy Forest a few miles up and inland from Mendocino town, and after months there and searching for a new spot in VW vans and bugs, of course, wind up just off the Boonville-Manchester Road, “2500 feet up” on a big spread owned by a generous guy named Dino. He has Bear Wallow, an old lodge with a pool and cabins, and lets them homestead some spots up the mountain. It’s much hotter than their previous coastal locale, plus, “the nearest town, five miles down the road, was reputed to be the redneck center of the county, definitely hostile territory.” Welcome to Boonville!

Unsurprisingly, the commune/college doesn’t last too long. The real fun was mostly back up the coast, at Mendocino or Comptche or Albion parties where “tribes“ from multiple communes gathered to dance to Cat Mother. At the college there seemed to be no identifiable formal teaching going on, as the communal cohort was constantly in flux and just trying to survive both winter and summer. Down on the Navarro River, “a very heavy place, no wonder the Indians called it holy,” “a large colony of longhairs had developed, and Rolling Stone magazine had billed it as ‘the freak Riviera of the Summer of 1971, the place to be’.” Maybe so, but soon winter rains came on, rising the banks and driving up and out most of the freaks who had managed to stay on that long. Nature can be like that. The group members scatter far and wide. As of the date of this book, there’s no sign left of Compost College on the hillside.

After some travels, including delivering one of his kids to grandparents in Oregon, Seymour wound up back down in the city, where he takes a job as janitor at the five-year-old, already fabled but perpetually struggling Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic. He’s soon promoted to business manager and is then interviewed by a board member named Dianne Feinstein and hired as CEO. “That’s how things went in those days,” he reflects. The clinics’s founder Dr. David Smith calls him “the hippie Horatio Alger.” He spent the rest of his career doing good work there and elsewhere, happily married and living in Sausalito. Some of his communal experiences surely proved useful. He died last year, a good man gone.

Some smart historians hold that “the sixties” actually stretched from circa 1964-1974, from the expansion of the civil rights, environmental, anti-war, and other movements plus the British Invasion of rock music and advent of “the pill” and LSD to the demise of Nixon and the Vietnam War. The commune movement peaked in the middle of that “decade.” In 1970 “there were over forty communes within a twenty-mile radius of Mendocino,” Seymour notes. In his book’s introduction he speculates that the hippie communards were “looking for new group relationships to replace the lost lost extended family so important in pre-industrial America” - switching out Ozzie and Harriet for Orbit and Stumbling Buffalo, while in some ways attempting to revert to a somewhat pre-industrial way of life. But somebody had to grow or at least procure the food, and relying on “hunting and gathering at various county dumps and on the back deck of the market in Ukiah when they put out the leftovers that have passed their shelf dates” gets old fast, especially in searing heat or pouring rain.

It’s too easy to mock the communards dreams and efforts at this point. My friend Tom and I experienced just a slice of it, in New Mexico, our own little “commune college,” as it faded in 1974, returning to catch a fabled outdoor Santa Barbara concert by the Grateful Dead that, for us at least, devolved into a psychedelically-fueled end our own “sixties.” As for the more stalwart communards, failed or not, those who were not predators or leeches or just too damaged to contribute were idealists, entrepreneurs, traditionalists in some ways. At this later era of impending chaos some of their aspirations are looking wiser all the time.

JOHN REDDING

Still believe in the "science" as discussed by the "experts”? Then read this and reconsider. 

Dr. Lawrence Fine of the NIH, after completing a sciency study on heat related deaths, says with a straight face:

“The thing about heat-related deaths is that they’re concentrated to when it’s very hot, and they’re also concentrated in people who are at greater risk because of their health conditions or other conditions.” 

Bet you didn't know that, right?

AMERICA’S LEADERS had been peeing on every Amendment in the Bill of Rights for over a decade, even going back in time to disavow pre-American traditions like habeas corpus and grand jury secrecy. Just as the population was beginning to figure out how low we’d sunk, we were told the true outrage against “norms” came when the DNC’s own preferred candidate, Trump, got elected in the loudest record-scratch in history. 

It was absurd. Trump was a small-timer compared to his opponents. Through 2015 he was famous in media circles mainly as the kind of person the educated set liked to make fun of, a “short-fingered vulgarian” who liked gold leaf, fake tits, and online steaks. If Barack Obama was the avatar of upper class probity, a lean multiracial scholar fawned over by the Nobel Committee, Trump was the opposite, an artery-clogged casino boss with bankruptcies and a comb-over. His sales ideas were very hit and miss, but unfortunately for politicians, running for president was the biggest of his hits. 

— Matt Taibbi 

ON GAZA, MOST CONGRESS MEMBERS HAVE BEEN MORAL FAILURES. 

Don’t Grade Them on a Curve.

by Norman Solomon

The vast majority of Congress members have refused to call for a ceasefire in Gaza during three months of slaughter by Israel’s military. Capitol Hill remains a friendly place for the Israeli government as it keeps receiving massive arms shipments courtesy of U.S. taxpayers.

“Israel would not be able to conduct this war without the U.S., which over time has provided Israel with about 80 percent of the country’s weapons imports,” Vox reports. The distance between the Capitol and Gaza can be measured by the vast disconnect between the standard discourse of U.S. politics and the terroristic carnage Palestinian people.

The human toll includes upward of 22,000 dead, more than 85 percent of Gaza’s 2.2 million population displaced, and the emerging lethal combination of hunger and disease that could kill several hundred thousand more.

The impunity enjoyed by Israeli leaders is enabled by President Biden, who clearly does not want a ceasefire. The same can be said of the vast majority of Congress, with silences and equivocations if not outright zeal to voice support for the wholesale killing of civilians in the name of Israel’s “right to defend itself.”

Members of Congress, now providing such easy rhetoric in public statements to justify huge and ongoing military support to Israel, would not be so complacent if they had to dig their own dead children out of rubble.

Seventeen members of the House stepped forward in mid-October to sign on as cosponsors of the ceasefire resolution introduced by Congresswoman Cori Bush, “calling for an immediate de-escalation and ceasefire in Israel and occupied Palestine.” The number of those forthright representatives has not risen during the 11 weeks since then.

What we’ve gotten instead has been the molasses-pace drip of some other members of Congress calling for -- or *kind of* calling for -- a ceasefire.

Now in circulation from some antiwar organizations is what’s described as “a growing list of members of Congress who have publicly called for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.” But the basis for listing those names -- 56 House members and four senators -- ranges from solid to flimsy.

A case in point is my congressperson, Rep. Jared Huffman of California, whose name is on the list but doesn’t belong there. As ostensible documentation, the list provides a link to a Nov. 19 social-media post by Huffman stating that a ceasefire would require “Hamas releases all hostages, disarms & relinquishes control of Gaza” -- in other words, full surrender by Hamas as a prerequisite for an end to Israel’s mass killing of civilians there.

Several other listed House members, such as Judy Chu (Calif.), Diana DeGette (Colo.), Teresa Leger Fernandez (N.M.) and Jamie Raskin (Md.), have “publicly called for a ceasefire” only with caveats and preconditions -- without calling for the U.S.-backed Israeli government to immediately stop killing Palestinian civilians no matter what.

A lot of members of Congress have taken far worse positions. But we should not be grading on a curve. Constituents need accurate information -- so they won’t be under the false impression that they’re being represented by an actual firm supporter of a ceasefire.

Even including the most dubious names that have been put in the category of ceasefire supporters, the current list comprises just 13 percent of the House and 4 percent of the Senate. That’s a measure of just how far we have to go in order to end what amounts to congressional support for Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians in Gaza.

Outpourings of protests against U.S. support for that war have included large nonviolent actions at bridges, highways, train stations, airports, college campuses, legislatures and more. Some activists have also confronted members of Congress.

But mostly, congressional supporters of Israeli impunity have been spared the nonviolent confrontations that they deserve. Such confrontations can occur at their office on Capitol Hill, but traveling to Washington is not necessary.

Senators and House members have numerous offices back home that are conveniently located for most of their constituents to visit, picket and nonviolently disrupt -- insisting that support for the mass murder in Gaza is morally unacceptable.

(Norman Solomon is national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of many books including War Made Easy. His latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, was published in 2023 by The New Press.)

LET THE GAMES BEGIN

by James Kunstler

“To an authoritarian ruling elite insane narratives serve as both loyalty test and humiliation ritual.” —Kit Knightly

The ordeal of the holidays, and the void of action that attends it, is over. Now, history resumes its awesome out-spooling. Will it be tyranny, collapse, war, civil war, renewal? Probably some wicked combo of all that. The players are taking the field again. The great engine of the game comes back to life with a cough and a rumble.

Did you notice that “Joe Biden” ceremonially kicked off his “reelection campaign” with that speech at Valley Forge, blaring the “insurrection” klaxon? Is it not astounding that half the people in our country have no idea that the joke is on them? “Joe Biden” is marking time in the oval office until the moment he must use his unique legal prerogative to pardon himself and all the members of his family for their roles in the influence-peddling racket he fronted as veep. . . and then he’ll gallantly step aside.

The optimum play would be to hold off on that until just before the Democratic Party’s convention, where a claque of super-delegates can pick somebody else in a back room filled with estrogen vapors. It kind of depends on whether a faction of corruption-resistant Republicans will ante up for that impeachment inquiry we keep hearing about. Despite the obvious bullshit on CNN about “no evidence,” there is actually a garbage barge of evidence steaming up the Potomac to prove that “Joe Biden” sold out his country. It simply needs to be laid out with brutal decorum in the proper setting.

The catch is that a House committee can report out a bill of impeachment — as we’ve seen before — but a trial in a Democrat-majority Senate would probably fail to bring a conviction. The additional catch is that even so, the whole country will have watched the sordid spectacle and seen enough proof of malfeasance to foul the waters for the Party of Chaos in the November election, no matter who heads the ticket.

It must also be obvious that the party is running out of lawfare tricks for shackling Mr. Trump. Jack Smith’s J-6 case is a dog’s breakfast of erroneous supposition, misprision, and persecutorial misconduct, soon to be wrecked by the Supreme Court; the Mar-a-Lago raid case is a patent fraud; the Fulton County, GA, RICO case is a Fani Willis masturbation fantasy, and the two New York raps under DA Alvin Bragg and AG Letitia James will be laughed out of appeals courts. Anyway, Mr. Trump seems to thrive on the noxious vapors thrown off by these rancid actions. If all these genius moves fail, how else can they stop the Golden Golem of Greatness. . . and his promise of keen retribution for the serial hoaxes run on him and all the fiendish trips laid on the nation since 2016?

They can try to kill him. Can you put it past our “intel community”? It is exactly that nucleus of the DC blob that has the most to fear from a second Trump term. Dozens of them will be charged with sedition and even treason, a hanging crime. And if they succeed in whacking Mr. Trump, that would only leave a huge opening for Bobby Kennedy, who has an even bigger axe to grind against the agency that rubbed-out his father and his uncle.

We held a meet-up here this weekend in my little upstate New York town to make plans for the petition drive in April-May to get RFKJr on the New York ballot. I told the group that much as I would relish seeing Donald Trump mop up the floor with the people who perverted the rule of law and just about spatchcocked our country, I believe Bobby Kennedy would be a better choice to lead us through the dark defile of history that circumstance has jammed us in. He is just as determined to expunge the horrific blob corruption, but without Mr. Trump’s exasperating artifice and grandiosity. If anything, RFKJr appears unpretentiously authentic, respectful, resolute, and reverent about history’s tragic arc. You can imagine him persuading that deranged half of the country that the blob is not on their side, either.

So far, this scenario has left out several of the other dispiriting plays that could get our country into even deeper trouble than mere domestic politics offer. The “Joe Biden” regime, its NeoCon fellow travelers, and its mysterious globalist taskmasters, appear avid to start a big war, most likely by going after Iran — only to suck in Russia, Turkey, and a host of miscellaneous Islamic maniacs against us, and not in a way that radiates a great outcome.

The invasion of stateless mutts across the Mexican border looks like an accessory to that play, since it includes countless thousands of potential saboteurs who can wreak havoc in the homeland while our obsolete aircraft carrier groups get blown up in the Mediterranean. Even registered Democrats might finally notice that the open border is a problem.

And, black swans aside — because they are aside and unknowable by definition — there’s the excellent prospect of a financial fiasco in the works that would wipe the smiles off the smug faces of all the remaining elite Wokesters, blob handmaidens, and news media myrmidons who depend on Wall Street to pay their mortgages. The national debt is zooming at a trillion dollars every month or so now. You know that can’t go on, don’t you? If all else fails in this era of mass formation mind-fuckery, the disappearance of a whole lot of money might finally get people’s attention.

(kunstler.com)

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Most people are too busy working 3 jobs so they can pay their taxes, doing drugs, drinking alcohol, downloading porn, getting tattoos, coloring their hair blue or obsessing over the NFL playoffs to notice or care.

Or they woke up one morning and realized that they are nothing more than a slave to a system they had no say in instituting. A slave to a system foisted upon them by their unknowing patriotic parents. A system they would love to be rid of but don’t know what to do about it or how to get out of it. Yep, this second paragraph is an apt description of myself. I’ve known for 3 decades this Country is not what we were taught to believe it was and that I am a slave to a few elites who control everything. It’s a pretty hollow feeling when one finally figures it out.

ATTENTION MAGAS! When your Dear Leader invokes communists and Marxists he, dumbass that he is, has no idea what he's talking about, but here is Marxism boiled down: 

The Marxist approach to literature is based on the philosophy of Karl Marx, a German philosopher and economist. 

Marx’s major argument was that whoever controlled the system of the means of production (the factories the stores , the institutions and government ) in a society controlled the society. This is the Dictatorship of the Capitalist Class. 

Marx noted a disparity in the economic and political power enjoyed by the factory owners , merchants and landlords and that allowed to the workers. 

He believed that the means of production (i.e., the basis of power in society) should be placed in the hands the majority those who actually operated them.

Marx wrote that economic and political revolutions around the world would eventually place power in the hands of the working masses, the laborers. 

To read a work from a Marxist perspective, one must understand that Marxism asserts that literature is a reflection of of the ruling class ideology of that culture, and that culture can be influenced by literature. 

Marxists believe literature critically read from the position of the workers, can instigate revolution.

Four main areas of study:

1. economic power

2. materialism versus spirituality

3. class conflict

4. art, literature, and ideologies

1. Economic Power

• A society is shaped by its forces of production. Those who own the means of production dictate what type of society it is.

• The two main classes of society are the bourgeoisie (the capitalist class who control the means of production and wealth) and the proletariat (the working class who operate the means of production and are controlled by the bourgeoisie).

• Since the bourgeoisie own the means of production—and, therefore, control the money— they can manipulate politics, government, education, art, and media.

• Capitalism is flawed in that it creates commodification (a desire for possessions, not for their innate usefulness, but for their social value). 

• Display of material objects is the most common way of showing off one’s wealth.

• Commodification is one way the bourgeoisie keep the proletariat oppressed. Whenever the proletariat manages to acquire some sort of status symbol, the bourgeoisie concocts a new one; thus, the proletariat continues to struggle, never able to ―catch up.

2. Materialism versus Spirituality

• Regardless of what some might claim, social values reflect material goals, not abstract ideals.

• The material world is the only non-subjective element in a society. Money and material possessions are the same by every measure within a society, whereas spirituality is completely subjective.

• The quality of a person’s life is not destroyed by spiritual failure but by material failure.

3. Class Conflict

• A Capitalist society will inevitability experience conflict between its social classes.

• The owners and the workers will have different ideas about the division of the wealth generated, and the owners will ultimately make the decision.

• This constant conflict, or dialectical materialism, is what instigates change.

• The bourgeoisie present their political, economic, and social structures as the only reasonable ones.

• The proletariat, indoctrinated from birth to have pride in their station, are prevented from wanting to overthrow their oppressors (ironically, the smaller and actually lesspowerful group).

• The only real social division is class. 

Divisions of race, ethnicity, gender, and religion while important are weaponized or devised by the bourgeoisie to distract the proletariat from realizing their mass line unity and rebelling against their oppressors.

• Marx called on the proletariat to reject the social structure of the bourgeoisie, the rules that would keep them subservient forever, and form their own values. Such a course would be the only way to escape the oppression, for the proletariat could never defeat the bourgeoisie on its own terms. For the workers to win, they must establish a new 

Authority . The Dictatorship of the Workers 

4. Art, Literature, and Ideologies

• Art and literature are among the vehicles by which the bourgeoisie impose their value system on the proletariat. The arts can make the current system seem attractive and logical, thus lulling the workers into an acceptance of it.

• Works of art and literature are enjoyable, so the audience is unaware of being manipulated towards a pro capitalist agenda .

• The bourgeoisie control most artistic output because, whether through patronage or sponsorship, they are the entity that funds the arts and entertainment. Since the bourgeoisie materially support the writers and the painters— owning the means of production as well as serving as primary consumers—the artist must be careful not to offend bourgeois values. 

Anything offensive or challenging to the bourgeoisie will simply not be published or sold.

• Any artist who wishes to criticize the bourgeoisie must do so in a subtle way (satire, irony, etc.).

Essential questions for a Marxist reading:

• Who are the powerful people in the text? 

• Who are the powerless? 

• Who receives the most attention?

• Why do the powerful have the power? 

• Why are the powerless without power?

• Is there class conflict and struggle?

• Is there alienation and/or fragmentation evident in any of the characters? If so, in whom? The powerful? The powerless?

• Do the powerful in the text suppress the powerless? How? News? Media? Religion? Literature?

• What can you infer from the setting about the distribution of wealth?

• What does the society value? 

• Are possessions acquired for their usefulness or their social value?

• Is the text itself a product of the society in which it was created? 

• How do you know?

• Is the work consistent in its ideologies, or is there an inner conflict?

• After reading this text, do you notice any system of oppression that you have accepted? If so, what system, and how do you think you came to accept it?

• Examining “Cinderella” from a Marxist Perspective. Consider Cinderella as a representative of the proletariat:

• oppressed by her bourgeoisie stepmother and stepsisters, who have stolen her rightful inheritance and turned her into a servant in her own home;

• desiring to join the ranks of the bourgeoisie by marrying the prince.

Consider the ball gown, glass slippers, and golden coach as evidence of commodification; without these possessions, Cinderella cannot hope to rise out of the proletariat and join the bourgeoisie.

RECIPE SHOWS ABSURDITY OF CHINA’S SPEECH LIMITS

Blogger’s fried rice post yanked over link to Mao Zedong’s son

The United States is entangled in an emotional debate about antisemitism and free speech on college campuses. The latest speech debate in China is about a chef’s video on how to make egg fried rice. …

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/20/business/wang-gang-egg-fried-rice-video.html

(paywall)

https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/30/china/china-celebrity-chef-egg-fried-rice-backlash-intl-hnk/index.html

AMERICAN IDIOT

Don't wanna be an American idiot
Don't want a nation under the new mania
Hey can you hear the sound of hysteria?
The subliminal mind-fuck America

Welcome to a new kind of tension
All across the alien nation
Where everything isn't meant to be okay
Television dreams of tomorrow
We're not the ones who're meant to follow
For that's enough to argue

Well maybe I'm the faggot America
I'm not a part of a redneck agenda
Now everybody do the propaganda
And sing along to the age of paranoia

Welcome to a new kind of tension
All across the alien nation
Where everything isn't meant to be okay
Television dreams of tomorrow
We're not the ones who're meant to follow
For that's enough to argue

Don't wanna be an American idiot
One nation controlled by the media
Information Age of hysteria
It's calling out to idiot America

Welcome to a new kind of tension
All across the alien nation
Where everything isn't meant to be okay
Television dreams of tomorrow
We're not the ones who're meant to follow
For that's enough to argue

— Billie Joe Armstrong (2004)