SUPERVISOR MULHEREN (facebook):
“I have always thought a Supervisor needs two or three terms to accomplish all of their goals, as I review what has happened in the last three years I’m so proud of the progress that Mendocino County has made but of course there is more work to do. As I complete questionnaires for local organizations and present my ideas and accomplishments to small groups I’m reminded that not only have I been a Supervisor for three years, I was also on the City Council for six years. I can’t believe I’ve spent ten years in local office. While that wasn’t necessarily my plan for life I am excited about the opportunity to continue. I’ll be sharing a little bit more about the work I’ve done on this page because it’s so easy to forget. I’ll also go back and review old questions to see if we’ve accomplished specific goals or if we have more work to do and what we can do to get there.”
JIM SHIELDS RESPONDS:
Mulheren’s Retro-Progress?
I find Supervisor Mulheren’s self-congratulatory-high-fiving assessment of her “progress” serving on the Board interesting, to say the least. As you are probably aware, since late Spring of last year, I’ve repeatedly requested the Supes call in former officials responsible for fiscal matters (Treasurer-Tax Collector, Auditor-Controller, Assessor, CEO) and interview/question and, hopefully, learn from them how they did their jobs. This is critical information the BOS admits it is lacking. Since no one has explanations or answers to what caused the ongoing, untenable fiscal mess the county was/is in, you need to conduct an inquiry and start finding answers to all of the current unknowns prior to launching a substantially, momentous alteration to your organizational structure with this idea of a Department of Finance. By the way, if the Board does decide to hold an inquiry, it won’t be necessary for former officials to attend in-person. That’s the beauty of zoom meetings.”
Here’s a short list of former County finance-related officials who should be called into a public hearing to share their information and insights on how they did their jobs over the years:
Shari Schapmire, Treasurer-Tax Collector
Lloyd Weer, Auditor-Controller
Meredith Ford, Auditor-Controller
Dennis Huey, Auditor-Controller
Tim Knudsen, Treasurer-Tax Collector
Carmel Angelo, CEO
Jim Anderson, CAO
Anyway, after this topic was first raised, an agitated Mulheren advised her colleagues, “We should not take another elected official to task. That’s something for the Grand Jury!”
Fast forward a few months later, and we find Mulheren in mid-October joining with her colleagues in suspending “another elected official” from office. I believe that action qualifies — in spades — as taking “another elected official to task.”
What happened to her commandment of “That’s something for the Grand Jury!”
What caused her apparent set-in-stone dicta to be violated so quickly?
LIVING IN THE LAND with no generally shared history, and where every day the world seems to begin anew — “Say, wasn’t that the year the Love Boat re-runs began?” — we often see references to historical events that make no sense in the context in which they appear.
IN AN obituary for a Hopland woman named Mary Rita (Slavin) Brennan, this paragraph appeared: “Mrs. Brennan taught first grade at St. Anthony’s in Washington, D.C., and was involved in social work for Catholic charities. Along with General John J. ‘Blackjack’ Pershing, she was involved in getting children out of Lafayette Park for smallpox vaccinations and to attend school. She also was the only woman allowed into Preston Prison for a child adoption case.”
MRS. BRENNAN graduated from Trinity College in D.C. in 1932, right about the time General MacArthur, Patton and Ike led a cavalry charge on the World War One vets camped out near the White House where they’d come in the teeth of the Great Depression to cash in the bonds they’d been issued to get them to sign up to fight The Great War. The Bonus Marchers and their families, some 20,000 people in all, needed the money NOW. The government told them to go home and wait for the bonds to mature. When the Bonus Marchers refused to leave, MacArthur rooted them out as if they were an occupying army. But I don’t think ol’ Blackjack, slayer of Apaches, Moros and Huns, was involved in that one, and I doubt Mrs. Brennan was on horseback swinging a sword at defenseless women and children, but good things to her in the next life for seeing to it that the children of the Bonus Marchers got to school while MacArthur rode down their parents in the streets.
SO WHY bring it up? Because local obits frequently include cryptic allusions to important historical events significant in the life of the deceased who was either a witness or a participant without getting the facts straight. One should be able to expect an accurate and well-written final notice, but on the Northcoast not only do the corporate papers charge grieving families exorbitant fees for obituaries, those same papers carelessly assemble the obits.
ERRONEOUS and carelessly composed obituaries insult the memory of the departed, and the mercenary stupidity of the papers they appear in add to the grief of those left behind. I'm writing my own obit, not only because my many journalo-enemies will certainly take their revenge when I'm safely dead, but because I want to make sure the basic facts are accurately reported, and because I have zero faith they will be.
ON AN AVERAGE of once a month, versions of the following encounter happen to me. So, I’m minding my own business in the Mendocino Book Company the other day when a smiley-face walks up to me. Passive-Aggressives always smile as they serve up the insults. They seem to think if they smile while they’re being nasty they’re still nice people. They also may think it keeps them from getting smacked in the mouth which, given that the warm, wonderful human beings always do their thing where there are witnesses, it probably really does safeguard them.
“Still putting out your rag?” he asks — he’s a Westside lib who imagines himself ‘progressive’ as all get out. He wants me to know that a high-minded person like him of course doesn’t read the ava but he's also unable to keep himself from commenting on it. As a person wholly convinced of his own righteousness, when he does read the paper it annoys him no end because it’s often critical of him, and his smarm-dipped friends. But here he is, in my face, as the young people say,
“Yes,” I say, “I continue to publish the Anderson Valley Advertiser. I hope that fact doesn’t distress you too severely.”
“You know,” Mr. Lib says, his smile getting wider, “when I’m reading your paper I never know if I’m reading journalism or satire.”
“There’s night school for adults with reading disabilities,” I reply.
He doesn’t stop smiling and his missed my cool-o insults. “But how do your readers tell the difference?” he asks me, getting in what he undoubtedly thinks is a drop-fall zinger.
“Maybe they don’t, maybe they buy the paper for the pictures.”
“But you don’t have many pictures in your paper!” he exclaims.
I knew the guy was stupid, but I didn’t think he was this stupid.
“Your readers,” he says. “Do they know the difference between truth and fiction?”
“Beats me. I’ve never done a poll, and mandatory reading comprehension tests would be misunderstood, wouldn't they? I try not to condescend to the paper’s readers, though. I assume, perhaps erroneously, I’m publishing a weekly paper for adults.”
And then, just as I’m trying to decide whether or not to hook him one in his uncomprehending puss and take my chances with the DA, he startles me by saying like he means it, “Well, nice seeing you again, Bruce,” and he walks on out the door.
RANDY BURKE: ‘Ghost Forest,’ by King. Recommended reading weeks ago in the AVA, I purchased the book, and since opening the cover, I cannot put down this page turner. Halfway through, and I get the feeling that I have had some serious history lessons handed to me on a railroaded redwood platter. Highly recommend this historical detailed guide to the malevolent, greedy behavior that has shaped California to what the state has become.
BERNIE SANDERS is set to force a full Senate vote on a resolution that would force the U.S. to investigate Israeli war crimes and withhold aid if they are found to have merit. Just after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, U.S. lawmakers were in lockstep with support for the Jewish state's aggressive response in Gaza. But as the months wear on and the Palestinian civilian death toll launches upward, liberal Democrats have begun to sour on President Benjamin Netanyahu's military campaign, and the push for more U.S. money to fund the bloody offensive. The resolution is expected to fail during a Tuesday evening vote given that Republicans still widely support Israel without condition. But it will put the break among Democrats over the Middle Eastern conflict on full display. (Daily Mail)
THE NETFLIX ads for ‘American Nightmare’ made me wonder, Which one? Two genocidal wars funded by US? Biden? Trump? Adam Schiff? The Mendocino County Board of Supervisors? Nope, this nightmare was the unique one suffered by an innocent young couple from Vallejo falsely accused of staging their own kidnapping. The woman kidnapped was also raped, also disbelieved by the Vallejo police and even more egregiously by the FBI agent assigned to the case whose girlfriend was linked to the case.
IT ALL MAKES for riveting viewing, so riveting that me and the missus watched all three episodes in a single go. Although the Vallejo cops look like complete horseshit, as we used to say in baseball to describe falsity, it is a female officer from the Bay Area city of Dublin who solves the case and redeems, at least partially, the reputation of NorCal law enforcement. The perp, as many of us will recall, turned out to be a deranged ex-Marine and graduate of Harvard Law.
ODD as the circumstances were, the mere fact that the young couple's story was so detailed in its implausibility, should have alerted the cops that they should have at least considered the possibility that it was true before they insulted, demeaned and libeled the two victims.
DO THE DEMOCRATS have an issue besides Trump? Every time I see or hear some Democrat claiming that Trump will end “our democracy,” I think to myself that the people saying this have certainly done their share of damaging democratic practices, much more than the Orange Grifter has done so far. It's not Trump keeping candidates off the ballot, it's Democrats, as Ralph Nader, Bernie, RFK Jr. can attest.
TRUMP for sure is a lowdown character, but every disaster all the way back to Truman has been a bipartisan disaster, and here come the Democrats and their surrogates at CNN, MSNBC, Politico etc. pretending that all that stands between US and fascism is an incapacitated old man only tenuously in touch with reality. And so far, that old man is the Democrat’s candidate for a second term as president! (Only in America.)
I SUMMONED the Chron to my magic screen the other morning to read, “The Bay Area's best journalism to start your day,” beneath which appeared, “Warriors Assistant Coach Dies of a Heart Attack.”
THE GALLUP POLL claimed earlier this year that “96% of Americans say they believe in God.” Seems high to me even given the willingness of most people to say whatever they think will please the pollster. Myself, I loved the defiant remarks of Charlie Orr, 85, at the recent national convention of American Atheists Inc. at the San Francisco Airport Hotel in Millbrae: “I’ll show ‘em how a real atheist dies,” Orr said. “I’ll look the Grim Reaper in the eye and spit in his face. I’m not going to hell, because there is no hell.”
AMERICAN ATHEISTS INC. aren't against other people practicing whatever religion they like, the Atheists just don’t want to pay for it.
CHURCHES are already tax exempt, schools are beginning to teach the wildly implausible myths of creationism, the Ten Commandments are going up on the wall of schools all over the place, and the federal government is funneling public money to alleged church charities, portions of which are used to proselytize.
FAITH in the efficacy of the Ten Commandments is especially baffling, given the social and economic organization of this country. If killing were outlawed the Pentagon would be out of business, and if usury were banned business would be out of business.
THE REST of the biblical strictures are mostly practiced by most of us anyway because if we didn’t practice them we’d all have to do our grocery shopping in Humvees.
GENERALLY CONSIDERED, though, I think atheists lack imagination, too quick to dismiss the miracle of life. Cosmic accident? Maybe, but maybe not.
DID JANELLE RAU get the special Mendo perp walk? A commenter: “I just heard Janelle Rau, County General Services Director, got escorted out of her office this past Tuesday morning. True?” (Yes,)
DENIS ROUSE, A BOOK NOTE: Paul Theroux's accounts in “Dark Star Safari” of the French poet's years in Yemen (hello current events) and East Africa where he quit his art and became a trader hooked me to read Paul Schmidt's “Arthur Rimbaud Complete Works” which is a fascinating bio as well, painful too as his letters to his sister describe in horrific detail his last days dying (at 37) of cancer in a hospital in Marseille. I know you like bios; this one's a gut punch!
BEFORE RON DESANTIS ran an ad or ate a corndog in Iowa he was polling at 30%. He finished with 21%, which lends weight to my political theory that the less voters hear and see from you the better they feel about your campaign.
— Jeffrey St. Clair
THAT GUN POLL ABC and the Washington Post claimed responsibility for said one in every four Americans had been threatened and/or shot at. That statistic translates as 83 million of us. Really? Only a tiny percentage of cops have ever been under fire and/or threatened with a firearm, and among the rest of us the shot at percentage is a lot smaller. No one has to pad the stats to defeat the hysterical, unsupported claim of the NRA that sensible gun control policies are the first step to an ultimate policy of gun confiscation. Locked trigger guards, a ban on military assault rifles, a much more rigid licensing process, and other badly needed controls are obviously called for in our frazzled society, and I speak as a guy who owns five guns, which have kinda, sort of, somehow accumulated over the years.
WHY MY GUNS? The AVA, as every other remaining paper in the land — including the harmless ones — is often the object of hostile attention. We have received many unwelcome visits from persons who might well have required extra incentive to leave. There have also been interludes when I felt it was only prudent to carry a self-defense unit with me when I visited certain unfriendly venues, or hiked alone deep into the hills.
BUT I DON'T HAVE any illusions about the efficacy of armed self-defense; if someone’s really out to do you harm, they’re going to get the drop on you. Which, not to be too tedious on the subject, makes the Bari-Cherney allegations that they were the objects of an attempted murder by federal cops and/or Big Timber so ridiculous. If organizations that large and powerful are out for you, they don’t use a mickey mouse pipe bomb to send you off to the Big Hootenanny in the Sky.
THE LIFE-THREATENING EXPERIENCES I’ve had over the years didn’t involve guns — Green Party meetings, for example — although in two episodes threats to use guns on me were issued. Promises, promises. When you really think about violence and its causes in our devolving country, it really doesn’t have much to do with the availability of weapons; if all we had were tweezers we’d still lead the world in random mayhem, although guns make the mayhem a lot easier.
OUR BASIC FACT of life in 2024 is a growing chaos, likely to grow much more violently unpredictable because, propaganda to the contrary, America isn’t a very happy place, and capitalism, as an economic, social arrangement is not the path to civic serenity, hence the widespread desire for guns and the illusion of safety thus provided.
A READER WRITES: “I had intended to write you on another matter — the new format of the front page masthead. The change saddens me. Would you not consider reinstating the motto, “A newspaper should have no friends”? Surely such a reinstatement would run no risk of causing you to be associated with anyone you would not want to be compared to? It is a fine motto, of which you can be justifiably be proud.”
THE PROBLEM with the “no friends” slogan is that along about 2001 I made a friend, my first one, and I can't tell how heartwarming it was, past tense, because the friend up and ran off, probably because of something I said. Or wrote. But what kind of friend flees at the slightest provocation, assuming the provocation was slight, which it must have been because I can't think of what it could have been. Easy come, easy go, as Diamond Jim Brady always said.
I AGREE, though, about the masthead. I liked the old “Be as radical as reality,” although reality has defeated me — I can’t keep up. Who can? It gets weirder out there every day.
“WAR ON THE PALACES, peace to the cottages,” the old anarchist slogan, continues to inspire me but an acquaintance recently caught me gazing wistfully at a copy of Architectural Digest, loudly denouncing me as “a closet bourgeoisie.” Actually, I was looking at a garden layout for tips on how to bring some order to my mini-jungle of a garden.
NO MATTER which of these slogans is worn on the paper’s front page, I can’t live up. “The country weekly that tells it like it is.” It still does, I’d say, but then that’s me saying it. Frankly, I like the old-time look because I like the old-time better than the new time, and the “radicals” I meet these days, well, the less said the better.
BETSY CAWN WONDERS:
Re: Mendocino and Lake County Boards of Supervisors
I have spent more than a quarter of a century studying the County of Lake and, to a lesser extent the County of Mendocino, and cannot today answer this question: Are the elected officials truly stupid or are they “playing dumb”?
JIM SHIELDS: We [the Laytonville-based Mendocino Observer weekly newspaper] were hacked by some unknown jackass who succeeded in obtaining our email password and commandeered our email system and generally shut us down for several days. Fortunately, IT Guru Extraordinaire Joseph Feigon was able to de-fang the jerk and get us up and running again. The hacker also gained access to one of my financial accounts (it had the same password as the email account) but it appears it got locked down before anything calamitous occurred, I believe. I want to thank Joe for moving so quickly and getting this potential disaster sorted out. If you ever find yourself in similar straits, I cannot recommend anyone with higher capabilities and savvy super smarts than Joe. The Laytonville Water District and numerous other businesses and organizations utilize Joe's services. You can reach Joe at 707/984-4400 and help@mendocomputerguy.com.
MIKE WILLIAMS: I was more interested in Greg King’s history of the redwood region. The early consolidation of vast private redwood holdings was unknown to me as well as the previously hidden motives of the founders of the Save the Redwoods League. I know from having been at the Calpella, Samoa, and Fort Bragg protests that there were some shady characters involved in Redwood Summer, especially surrounding the Bari/Cherney faction. King does take Cherney to task for his arrogance in his media relations. He also does a pretty good job in connecting the players involved in the final outcome of Headwaters. As a general history of the exploitation of north coast redwoods and their role in industrial expansion I think King hits the nail squarely on the head.
ED NOTE: I was emcee at Samoa and Fort Bragg, and was among the mob at Calpella. You may recall that guy revving his chainsaw in King’s face, then hitting King as King delivered a nifty counterpunch that stopped the guy, (seemingly tweeked to the max) and off chainsaw man went to his truck and away. Samoa was the most perfect demo I’ve ever been a part of. Fort Bragg was tense but we drew as many people as the LP-sponsored counter-demo yellow ribboners did, and I remember Duane Potter, a well-known FB tough guy, shutting up the hecklers because they knew they might have to deal with him later. Duane’s speech from the flatbed truck platform telling the yellow ribbons that GP and LP had not only cashed in the forests but the jobs that went with them was the rhetorical highlight of the day. I also can’t forget being called a M-Fer by a kid I’d coached in Boonville Little League! Give Judi Bari major credit for setting Redwood Summer in motion. She was a genius organizer for sure.
CRIME & PATRIMONY, TWO SAD STORIES
WILLIAM ALTON “BILL” VARGAS pled guilty to first degree murder back in 2000. Vargas admitted he used a gun to murder Fort Bragg businessman Jim Cummings, but Vargas also pled not guilty by reason of insanity, which was found to be true, and Bill has been locked away at the state hospital in Napa ever since.
ABOUT MIDNIGHT one July evening in 1997, Vargas, now in his early seventies if he's still alive, was a familiar face in Fort Bragg when he tossed a cherry bomb up on the porch of Cummings' home in Noyo Harbor. Cummings, 77, and never one to shrink from the action, came running out his front door with a gun, and Vargas shot him in the head with a fancy .40 caliber pistol complete with scope. Vargas also lived in Noyo Harbor and had worked for Cummings as an odd job man.
THE SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT would describe Cummings’ killer, the hapless Bill Vargas, as “highly educated” because, in a stormy court case with his former wife, Vargas had deployed the word, “uxorious” to describe himself.
CUMMINGS was worth many millions at the time of his death. His trustees brought in a Brinks truck to haul all his booty out of his house as two accountants stood by keeping track of thousands in cash, antique guns and swords, gold coins, a veritable pirate's treasure.
A GRUFF, tough talking man with a soft spot for marginal persons, Cummings often hired marginals to perform simple tasks at one or another of his many Coast enterprises. While he could be charitable, Cummings was a ruthless businessman and repeat wife beater who enjoyed a convenient exemption from the laws applying to less well-connected citizens. His treatment of his former wife, Aura Johanson, was notoriously brutal. In one truly awful episode Cummings beat Aura with a flashlight, breaking her nose. Deputies responding to her call for help did not arrest Cummings. During the couple’s divorce, bailiffs were required to be present whenever Mr. and Mrs. Cummings met to negotiate an end to their marriage because Cummings constantly threatened his wife with violence even in the presence of law enforcement. Aura Johanson was much younger than her husband, having moved in with Cummings while she was still a student at Fort Bragg High School.
A GENTLE SOUL unable to protect herself against the bullying “King of Noyo,” and of course aware that her husband enjoyed an exemption from the law the wealthy have historically enjoyed in Fort Bragg and Mendocino County, Mrs. Aura Cummings, saw no alternative to her brutal husband, but finally screwed up her courage to leave him.
MS. JOHANSEN and her two children with Cummings made the national news a few years after Cummings’ death when the former Mrs. Cummings, a recovering drug addict, was arrested by the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Department and charged with possession of “black tar heroin.” The black tar heroin turned out to be a batch of scorched popcorn balls, prompting much merriment that police officers couldn't distinguish dope from dopes.
MOM had been videotaped by her son allegedly in the act of doing drugs. The son went to the police with the claim that his surveillance proved that his mother was supplying drugs to her young daughter and the wider community, all of which turned out to be untrue but provided much grist for the national talk show moralists.
WHEN VARGAS put the final period on Cummings’ life, Mrs. Cummings had already been excluded as a beneficiary of the bounty she’d helped her husband create. Not a penny from Cummings vast holdings went to the mother of his children. What a guy.
CUMMINGS' SON, Jim Jr., turned out a lot like his old man. At the time of his father's death, Jim Jr. was 17, and soon was alleging that his father's trust was being looted by its trustees. Junior spent several unhappy years in litigation with the managers of his late father’s bequest, finally settling with them.
THE CUMMINGS TRUST MANAGERS had indeed hired past and present girlfriends to perform nebulous to non-existent tasks, enjoyed expensive meals on the trust's tab and so on. Junior wasn't wrong that he and his sister were being robbed, and he took his big cash-out to Texas with his wife, the former Amber Brown, also of Fort Bragg. They subsequently moved to Bangor, Maine.
IN 2009, Cummings Jr., 29, was shot to death by Amber, then 31, in the couple's home in Bangor, Maine; the couple's 9-year-old home-schooled daughter was present. Police attributed the shooting to “domestic violence,” implying that Mrs. Cummings was defending herself when she shot her husband. She was described by neighbors and acquaintances as a “quiet” and “very pleasant lady.” Jim Jr. was described as “a fat loud mouth with a Napoleon complex.”
CUMMINGS JR., before his wife finished him off, had earlier come to national attention when he was arrested in Bangor for possessing bomb-making materials, and threatening to blow up President Obama's inauguration.
THE BANGOR DAILY NEWS, in an account by Walter Griffin, said that Cummings bullied Amber, that she “cowered” in his presence. “It didn’t shock me at all when I heard about it,” said Mike Robbins, who spent a month painting and roofing the Cummings home the previous summer. “He was a very angry person and was verbally abusive to his wife all the time.” Robbins described Cummings as a heavyset man who liked to walk around his house wearing a cowboy hat and an ankle-length black leather coat. He said Cummings would often sit outside on a lawn chair and watch him work and make disparaging comments. Robbins said Cummings also spoke about how he “really liked the Nazis” and claimed to have a large collection of Nazi memorabilia, including pieces of Hitler’s silverware and place settings. The overwhelming Bangor consensus was that Amber had done the community a large favor.
BACK TO VARGAS. Vargas used to write long, lucid letters to the Boonville weekly, so lucid that I wondered, “This guy doesn't write nuts. How crazy is he, really?” Most nuts, incarcerated or free range, write crazy.
AS IT HAPPENS, assuming both Bill Vargas and Joe Mannix, the latter from Boonville, are still alive, Mannix is also confined to the state hospital at Napa where he's been kept in a drug fog for years. Joe was the son of Homer Mannix, second owner of the AVA and the paper's long-time publisher in the 1960s and 1970s. He also functioned as judge of the Anderson Valley Justice Court, chairman of the CSD board, president of the school board, volunteer fire chief and emergency responder and, in his last years, manager of the Boonville transfer station where his nephew, Mike Mannix, now presides. Homer Mannix, a good man and a good parent was at a loss of what to do about his errant son Joe.
JOE MANNIX got into drugs early, which probably accounts for his mental illness. Prior to drugs, Joe was a solid student at the Boonville high school where he also learned to fly in the school's excellent, nationally unique flight program, which turned out to be Joe's downfall as a young adult when he stole small planes and flew them in spectacularly dangerous ways, once deliberately flying into San Bruno Mountain in an apparent suicide attempt. He often threatened to dive bomb the Boonville gym and, in a truly amazing aerial feat, landed a stolen Cessna on a precipitous outcropping on the side of the mountain directly overlooking Boonville. The stranded plane became a local landmark while the authorities pondered how to remove it.
AND that was it for Joe. He's been locked up ever since at Napa where, according to his fellow inmate, Vargas, Joe spends his dwindling days shuffling aimlessly around the grounds, permanently beyond the beyond, unvisited, forgotten by all except his old high school classmates.
ON-LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK
[1] Can anyone on this site provide data supporting the claims of excess deaths, blood clots, and spontaneous abortions? I’m not denying that it has happened but it certainly doesn’t seem to have been significant enough to get the world’s attention. Show me the money….why aren’t the ambulance chasers all over this. They should be suing the pharmaceutical companies for every penny they have. Yeah, I know about the waiver but that doesn’t stop lawyers from trying to get a settlement.
The scary part is the real danger of low birth rates. That is happening in real time and we will start seeing the effect in a short time….especially if we don’t go back to a merit-based system.
[2] IF, at the end of the world, that song, “We’ll Meet Again”, started playing out of the blue, for everyone, I don’t think anyone would question it…
[3] So, Joy Reid has now claimed, after the Iowa Caucus, that “White Christians are the enemy of America”.
As all branches of the US military fail to meet their recruiting goals, it might surprise Ms. Reid that maybe White Christians in flyover country – historically the strength of our military – are having second thoughts about endangering their lives to protect her right to continue spouting such bullshit.
And Ms. Reid, if keeping it real is your goal, blacks with bleached-blonde hair ain’t real. She should be first in line for some serious mental health care.
[4] DOPE, an on-line comment by Mendocino Mama:
Consumers with large amounts of money have been coming to the Emerald Triangle for decades upon decades. Oftentimes with stars and diamonds in their eyes. Oftentimes busted on the way out of town, ripped off once they got home, or did not take care of the product well and it disintegrated before they could sell it. The illicit market feeding of the media hype and frenzy of the “culture”. It is still pretty cultury although a few days back in one esteemed establishment the music was mildly offensive…”Bitch u bedda up your strips if the cops pull us over better bite your lip…” come on. Sub n dabs are a standard. A little regulation by the regulators might help to clean it up a bit.
[5] THE STATE OF THE NATION, an on-line comment: The wealth of the 5 richest men in America has DOUBLED in the last 4 years. The money they have accrued came out of YOUR POCKETS. Your rent increased. The price of fuel increased. The interest rate on your debt doubled. Your homeowners insurance vanished.
I could go on.
[6] SEEMS TO ME that if they continue to throttle the digital space then we will naturally decline to participate much. It happens (for a recent example look at the failure of Instagram Threads).
I remember a time when ‘zines, radical newspapers and newsletters were common. That’s how I used to get my “alternative” information.
While I don’t condone or like graffiti there is quite a large “slap sticker” movement here. Unlike the graffiti, which is often about the style, many stickers carry a message. Many are very subversive and are put in areas to be seen.
[7] GOD’S CREATIONS are beautiful. The most beautiful beach I ever visited was in northern Maine. There was no sand, only black, jagged rock. It was cold and foggy, and you could see the yellow glow of a light house in the distance. It was a misty 50 degree day and we hopped from rock to rock watching the sea spray off the rugged shore. I can do with that kind of ocean. What I don’t like is some sweltering mess of sand and direct sun, with ten million morons elbowing each other for the best spot. I once saw a picture of Hilton Head Island before it was “improved.” The jungle went right up to the shore line. That would be fine with me.
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