CORRECT BALLOTS ARRIVING FOR MENDOCINO COUNTY VOTERS
by Mike Geniella
About 53,000 newly printed ballots for the March 2 primary are hitting Mendocino County voters’ mailboxes this week, as county election officials scramble to correct a snafu that is being blamed on simple human error at the last step of a ballot mailing process managed by an outside vendor.
The corrected ballots have been sent to every single registered voter in the county, and they include a bright yellow flyer titled “Please Read,” said County Clerk Recorder Assessor Katrina Bartolomei. If registered voters have not received the corrected ballot, they should call the Elections Office at 707-234-6819, Bartolomei said.
“Sure, there are questions that still need to be answered but we have the ballot problem corrected, and county voters can be assured the corrected ballots they are receiving are the ones to be used,” Bartolomei.
Bartolomei said in her 19 years working for the County she never experienced “something like this.”
The County Elections Office and the Secretary of State are investigating what happened, but Bartolomei said the first priority was getting corrected ballots to voters at a state-approved vendor’s expense.
Mendocino County used Integrated Voting Systems of Dinuba in Fresno County for 15 years without problems. Two years ago, the county switched to a different vendor for a short time and then returned to using Integrated Voting last Fall.
“We looked at other vendors and attempted to contact a few without success. We returned to Integrated Voting because we felt it was more responsive,” said Bartolomei.
The company in recent years has had ballot printing problems in Colorado and Utah, according to a research of online news organizations. Last October, the Board of Supervisors in Fresno County decided not to extend a contract with the Dinuba-based firm because of its “spotty record.”
Bartolomei said she was aware of the issues surrounding Integrated Voting, but she said Mendocino’s experience until now has always been positive. She noted every county in the state contracts out for the services, and that Integrated Voting is one of 12 vendors approved by the Secretary of State Office for ballot printing.
“There are strict regulations about which companies can perform these services and the Secretary of State must approve a company before a county uses it services,” said Bartolomei.
At this point Bartolomei said what is known is that the company used a third-party vendor to assist in the Mendocino ballot printing, and that vendor sent an incorrect data file for printing and mailing. Bartolomei said the third-party vendor was selected and hired without any county involvement.
“We don’t have any control over subcontractors,” said Bartolomei.
Integrated Voting executives said the correct ballots were reprinted and mailed at the company’s expense, and not the County.
Bartolomei provided a fact sheet outlining how the county will ensure that no one is able to vote more than once.
“When the Elections Office receives a ballot the privacy label is removed, the addressed scanned and the file is uploaded into the elections management system. If a challenge code comes up in the election management system, the ballot is put aside for the elections official to review.
Additionally, Elections Office staff check the signature on each ballot envelope by hand. If there is a discrepancy in the signature it is challenged in the elections management system and brought to the election official for signature verification. If the Elections Official verifies the signature, the challenge is removed, and the ballot is filed by precinct to be opened and counted. If the signature does not match, the Elections Office contacts the voter to re-sign and/or complete a new registration form (a person’s signature may change over time).
If a voter sends in one ballot and then sends in a second ballot, the system will recognize that the person has already voted and challenge the second ballot. Elections staff will research to verify the reasons for any subsequent ballot. If the reason is a result of the mailing of incorrect ballots, the incorrect ballot will be voided.”
EVEN THESE RATS are jumping Biden's ship. The New York Times opinion writers are squeaking about how worried they are that Biden may not be able to beat consensus bad guy Trump this year. Back-to-back opinion pieces knifing the 81-year-old president immediately followed the Justice Department confirmation that the old boy was unfit to stand trial for sequestering top secret documents in his hoarder-like home garage.
BETSY CAWN: Indeed, why do our insistent redneck recalcitrants insist that the name of the earliest 'European Settlers' — who raped, tortured, and murdered their ‘Indian’ slaves — should be preserved? Locally famous archaeologist Dr. John Parker explains in this lecture: ‘The Kelsey Brothers: A California Disaster’; ‘Learn about the two Native American Massacres in Lake County and what led up to them…’
IN A COUNTRY of historically disinterested people bombarded with disparate bits of mostly irrelevant information their every waking hour, not to mention keeping a roof over their harried heads, it doesn't seem reasonable for the people of Kelseyville to either know or care that their founding fathers were psychopaths, let alone do something about it in the way of a name change.
I THINK we should live with our history, and every bit of it should be taught in the schools. America wasn't the early work of liberals, so if we start sanitizing our history we'll be even more deracinated than we are. If Kelseyville celebrated the Kelsey bros, well, that would be celebrating murder and rapine, which I doubt even the 'necks would be up for.
MAYBE there's an older old timer out there who knows the history of ballots in Mendocino County. I remember when we all voted on paper ballots rounded up and brought to the County Courthouse where they were tallied by hand, and the results periodically updated on a big blackboard. Those nights were a lot of fun, with many of the County's politically interested citizens milling around chatting as the results were posted, all of us waiting for the Coast's vote to come in, which occasionally upset predictions. Where were those ballots printed? Outtahere, presumably. How about the 19th century ballots? Did a local printer get that work?
MARK SCARAMELLA ADDS: I don’t know about the ballot printing, but my Uncle, former Fifth District Supervisor Joe Scaramella, remembers the voting process, especially as it applied to the Fifth District in 1966:
“In 1962 why, hell, I beat Jim Ornbaun of Anderson Valley damn near two to one. But after that the district was enlarged and went damn near up to Fort Bragg up to Highway 20 and Ted Galletti had a lot of friends and relatives up there. I carried the town of Mendocino by only three or four votes, it turns out. When the votes were being counted, my wife and I were over there at the Palace in Ukiah and things were going badly. She said, ‘Let's go home. You've had it.’ I said, ‘Let's wait a minute…’ Pretty soon the lady came out and she said, ‘Well, you may find this hard to believe, but the south coast came in and you made it.’ The south coast never cared much for Ted Galletti ever since he was on the school board there. For some reason he offended somebody. Anyway, when that vote came in, instead of trailing by a few, I was leading by about 40, so that was the last time I defeated him — but narrowly. So when I went to the Supervisors convention they used to refer to me as Landslide Joe because I beat him by so few votes.”
TED WILLIAMS:
Why would people outside our Assembly District spend big bucks? To care for our wellbeing or in exchange for future favors? Are we being sold? Your thoughts?
”The same cannot be said of Hicks, a labor leader from Southern California and Chair of the California Democratic Party. Hicks, who moved to Arcata in 2021, has built up a huge war chest for this campaign, amassing $590,757 in contributions, primarily from out-of-district sources, mostly from Southern California and Sacramento. If you subtract the $11,000 donation from his wife, only 6.5% of his contributions have come from within District 2.”
THE LATE JOE HOFFMAN was the SEIU rep at the time, circa 2000, when he memorable summed a Mendo Green Party meeting: “The Willits Environment Center is the basement of the lowest rung in hell, where those who are unfortunate to find themselves condemned must listen to interminable bylaw debates between Ike Dullinger, Patricia Kovner and Rafa Borras chaired by Dan Hamburg with Bruce Hering stomping around going, ‘I don’t think we need any damn bylaws, anyway!’ Then Eleanor Lewallen who, after eight years of coming to Green Party meetings is still a registered Democrat, will hand out pieces of seaweed and recite an ocean sanctuary poem and talk about her brain operation. Liz Haapanen will then read her minutes of the October meeting in which my name is pronounced with a resentful sneer about 40 times. Robin Leler will talk about how she lost the Willits City Council race for never identifying herself as a candidate because she has principles that prevent her from seeking votes while in a public meeting. Bob Doyle will recite how he lost the Fort Bragg race for city council because he was moving his girlfriend from San Francisco. Then everyone will nod knowingly, give each other a hug and adjourn without setting the next meeting. I suggest you take your mediation skills, your check for $12 and head there immediately.”
I’VE DISCUSSED my experiences as a Green before, but Hoffman’s was a dead-on assessment. Johnson fancied himself as the one true Green. All other Greens were suspect. Any gathering involving The One True Green was meeting hell, as Hoffman described. Although I was registered Green at the time simply because I’d rather have been on the Megan’s Law list than be a registered Democrat, I quit after my second meeting when I found myself wrestling with the crackpot seated next to me for possession of an asparagus fern, without which one was not permitted to speak. I never got full possession of the fern, and every time I tried to “share” my opinion with the group, the little fascist who’d been appointed “vibes watcher” produced a flute and tootled me into silence. Those were the days…
RECOMMENDED READING: In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick. You think you've got a tough job? You think you work hard? For historical perspective on the wonderful world of labor, read this enthralling book, the true story of the whaling expedition upon which Melville based his classic ‘Moby Dick.’ Philbrick's account of the voyage of the Essex is also a history of the village of Nantucket, a history of whaling, a detailed look at how it was done and the amazing people who did it, and the chilling story of the mammoth real life fish that ferociously attacked the Essex with fatal consequences for most of its crew.
UNRECOMMENDED READING. Anything by Rick Moody, author of the aptly titled ‘Purple America’ which begins with our hero giving his mommy a five-page sponge bath. Proust probably could have pulled it off but not anybody else, and certainly not this guy. Needless to say, Moody's very big these days because there are literal armies of sobbing readers out there who confuse novels with prozac.
SO, THE OTHER DAY I was flipping through a copy of ‘Men's Journal’ — one of those same-same publications aimed at dudes of all ages, of which I am not one, but it was the only thing to read where I happened to be. Men's Journal is heavy on articles about how to attract the dudettes — advice that wouldn't work if you were the only male in a lock-up institution for a thousand real dumb females, and would get you arrested if you tried it in the real world.
MOSTLY THOUGH, there were illustrated articles on how to get your abs, your pecs, your lats, slats, flats, flips, and flabs in shape. Pan fry 'em in a light egg batter, I kept saying to myself, until I realized the subject was stomach muscles, not mollusks.
ANYWAY, in the peculiar world inhabited by the presumed readers of Men's Journal, Mr. Ab Dude eventually emerges from the gym for a night with the babes. But some babes, it seems, might actually prefer an Ab Dude who can talk, hence the mag's one-page book review section where none other than the arch-twit himself, Moody, gets a rave send-off. Apparently the purple prose eater finally got his mom out of the tub and into her bathrobe, freeing him up to assemble ‘Demonology,’ a collection of short stories.
THE REVIEWER advises Ab Dude to nudge the babe on the bar stool next door and drop a Moody riff or two on her, and next thing you know she'll be throwing her clothes off.
THE REVIEWER says Moody's “high-octane displays of edginess and verbal acrobatics” is real exciting stuff. As evidence of Moody's thrillingly energetic fictional handstands the reviewer gives Ab Dude this sentence: “We were in the business of paring away the calluses of woe and grief to reveal the bright light of commitment.”
BE CAREFUL, GIRLS. If some dude sidles up to you at a Dudes and Babes Cool Bar and recites that line, shoot him dead and do the time gladly, martyr to American lit.
MIKE GENIELLA:
The Palace’s pending sale is contingent upon buyers receiving
$6.6 million in taxpayer money to demolish the Palace under the guise of a study for possible ground contamination and clean-up. The core issue is whether the public should pay for the demolition of a structure listed on the National Register of Historic Places so private developers can proceed with their undisclosed plans, or the property owner who has not invested any money in protecting the building from further decline since 2019.
PETER GOOD:
I would think the federal funding source is governed by legislation that determines what is a legal fundable environmental project. You have identified an issue that the funding agency is likely aware of. As a subscriber of Mendo Voice I would look forward to a news piece by a respected, intelligent and skilled journalist such as yourself to report the facts on this issue. If you disagree with funding private projects environmental problems, that is a political issue to take up on the oped page.
GENIELLA:
The funding source is the state of California’s Department of Toxic Substance Control. The $6.6 million grant is sought from a special program for non-profits, tribes, and municipalities in poor areas. The grant money is not available to private investors in general. Whether there is actual contamination at the Palace Hotel site is in dispute. A 2017 study found no evidence. Guidiville Rancheria and its investors claim a 2023 study did but they have not publicly provided a copy to support their contentions. A state spokesman has said the agency also has not received a copy of that reported study, which is the basis for the grant application. You can read more about the program here: https://dtsc.ca.gov/ecrg/
LAURA CANNON:
Several people have contacted me about recommendations for tax preparation/bookkeepers. Dad had begun referring clients to Sandi Stolich at Balanced Figures Bookkeeping in Ukiah. I believe that she used to be with Liberty Taxes until starting her own business. Like James Dean, she is an Enrolled Agent and so is able to do both tax preparation and bookkeeping. I don’t know her rates or availability, but I figured I’d publish this for anyone who wanted to know who he was recommending. I wish you all very happy (tax) returns in honor of our first tax day without him, and what would be his 86th birthday day after tomorrow
A READER WRITES:
I know you are not happy with the direction that Healdsburg is going. However, a friend mentioned her connection to this org Corazon down there so I looked it up and this is what I found. Considering some of our other choices for Assemblymember, she might not be a bad choice. No endorsement per se, but…
Ariel has been a member of the Healdsburg City Council since 2020 and is the current mayor. In the aftermath of the 2017 Tubbs fire, Ariel founded the Healdsburg Free Store, providing much-needed items to individuals and families. In recognition of this work, Ariel and other community leaders were awarded a $1 million prize from the Ellen show, which they used to create the Kinder2College Fund. She previously served as a Sonoma County Planning Commissioner and Healdsburg Parks and Recreation Commissioner. An attorney by training, Ariel holds both a law degree and MBA. Ariel was the founding board chair of Corazon Healdsburg and previously served as the organization's interim CEO.
SAN FRANCISCO 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan announced Wednesday on an impromptu conference call that he has fired defensive coordinator Steve Wilks. Irony is that it was Shanahan's Super Bowl offense that lost the game. Wilks defense played well.
AMONG the many things I just don’t understand, count the large numbers of people taking photos of the most unimaginative, unimaginably boring, done-to-death, cliched tableaus whose pure conceptual tedium nearly causes one’s eyes to cross at even thinking about some poor trapped soul having to look at the finished product. The other day, on my way in to see a show at the wildly over-rated and almost always disappointing SF MOMA, and being a little early, I lingered in the plaza across the street. Darned if there weren’t at least ten shutterbugs going through all kinds of contortions and techno-prep to get artsy shots of seagulls perched on an oblong fountain. Seagulls. Fountains. Seagulls on fountains. Seagulls on anything! Are you stark, staring nuts!? The only picture more depressing would be a flock of pigeons, another surefire camera draw at places like Union Square where great flocks of these flying, plague-riven rats thrive well beyond the point of public health, pedestrian comfort and common sense. There oughta be laws.
THE FUNCTION of the Oslo accords is to cage Palestinians in a remnant of their own lands, like inmates in an asylum or prison. What is astonishing is not the popular revolt against this diktat, but that it could ever have been passed off as peace instead of the desolation that it has really been all along. A dithering Palestinian leadership, unable either to retire or to go forward, has been caught on the wrong foot. But the signs are that a new generation will not be content with the miserable, denigrated place accorded them in the Zionist scheme of things, and will go on rebelling until it is finally changed.
— Edward Said, January 2001
DAVID SVEHLA:
It just wouldn’t be the Big Game w/o David Yearsley's annual take! Justin Timberlake's “Banana Republic Chic”? Oh, SNAP! Janet Jackson “Dancing”? I’ve always likened her dance moves to more of an epileptic fit, or ingesting badly-cut cocaine. She’s an ACTRESS first and foremost, Wilona’s girl on “Good Times.” Janet’s not the WORST of what’s out there, even today. However, if an alien landed on earth and checked her performance out, at her peak, the alien might comment afterwards: “I don’t get it. Is there a gay brother in the family that got all the talent?”
WE STILL REMEMBER the outrageous story back in 2000 in the wake of the gift of public funds to corporate timber raider Charles Hurwitz and his sweetheart deal selling about 7,500 acres of Pacific Lumber timber to the feds and the state for almost half-a-billion dollars. Not long after the deal engineered by Diane Feinstein and a few high-profile Democrats along with some complicit enviro groups with backroom assistance from Feinstein’s husband Richard Blum, a friend of Hurwitz, a Republican majority congressional committee convened hearings to determine if Hurwitz was “coerced” into selling Headwaters! That bizarre allegation arose from the Republican-dominated House Resources Committee chaired by Don Young of Alaska, one of Congress's lead errand boys for resource-based corporations.
THE ALLEGED persecution of poor little Chuck, the billionaire, goes like this: Because the FDIC and the Treasury Department suggested that Hurwitz should at least consider swapping Headwaters for the $1.6 billion he already owed the taxpayers when he stripped his federally-guaranteed savings and loans businesses of at least that much in Texas back in 1988, Hurwitz may have been unfairly pressured to sell off the 7,500 aces of Headwaters he finally sold off for about double their true value. The set-aside 7,500-acre Headwaters represented less than 20% of what remained of greater Headwaters Forest's 40,000 acres, as determined by who knows who among professional Humboldt County tree savers.
HURWITZ owned some 200,000 acres of Humboldt County. He had previously split up Pacific Lumber into three entities so that he could saddle Headwater forest land with financial liabilities and separate them from the Pacific Lumber-owned city of Scotia and the company headquarters for stock market benefits. He snagged them originally through a junk bond-financed takeover of the family-owned Pacific Lumber Company, a hundred-year-old Humboldt County institution legendary for its benign and truly sustainable harvest and labor policies. Upon acquisition of PL's under-valued holdings, in 1988, Hurwitz appeared in Scotia, PL's cozy little company town, to laugh in the faces of PL workers declaring, “You know the Golden Rule, don't you? He who has the gold, rules.” Hurwitz twirled his moustache, helped himself to the workers' pension fund — since partially reinstated after a long legal battle — and commenced an alarming blitz on PL's heretofore sustained yield trees.
BIG CHUCK'S hurry-up logging, with its attendant environmental atrocities, was necessary to pay off his fellow buzzards who held the hurry-up high-interest junk bonds via which Hurwitz had raised the money in a hostile takeover to buy up Pacific Lumber. Hurwitz had arranged the junk bond purchase of PL with other legendary fiscal bunco artists, including the famous Wall Street crook, Michael Milken. Milken plead guilty to securities fraud in 1989 and eventually pardoned by fellow fraudster Donald Trump in February of 2020.
HURWITZ'S STARTLING RAPACITY mobilized the Northcoast's large cadre of resident tree-huggers. Hurwitz eventually socked his old friend, the American taxpayer, for $490 mil for the 7,500 acres of Headwaters Forest in 1998 in a deal that saw the Northcoast resident tree-huggers signed over negotiations for Hurwitz's Headwaters to Clinton Democrats Dianne Feinstein and John Garamendi. Mr. Dianne Feinstein, Richard Blum, and Hurwitz were old biz buds, a fact the Northcoast's star-struck environmentalists didn't let stand in the way of their capitulation to the Clintonoids.
UNHAPPY with what they had the bare-balled hypocrisy to subsequently denounce as the “sell-out of Headwaters” by the Democrats — the enviros said they wanted 40,000 acres, not a mere 7,500. And they said they didn't like getting so few acres in exchange for so much tax money to Hurwitz — almost a half-billion more dollars flew off to Texas, thanks to Feinstein, the Democrats, and a dozen or so self-important Northcoast enviros who always prefer a switch to a fight. Many of those same environmentalists who gave the Democrats responsibility for Headwaters and Hurwitz went on to derive their livelihoods from “saving” the rest of Headwaters, their original capitulation of a deal having resulted in a jobs program for the same dozen or so under-employed, up-from-hippie college grads who live in the Garberville-Redway area.
BUT WITH HURWITZ'S old S&L bills from 1988 still due and payable, it seems obvious that Congressman Young's inquiries alleging a government-enviro conspiracy against the poor little Houston rich boy were aimed at getting Hurwitz a no-cost pardon for his '88 S&L heists.
WE STILL SEE QUITE A FEW “false ID” bookings in the Sheriff’s log. The problem has been building up for decades. Our law enforcement sources tell us that there are so many people with phony ID's these days cops frequently disregard the names suspects give them, preferring instead to ID people via a federally-maintained fingerprint bank. Often a perp will offer the ID of a relative, in addition to the more familiar purchased fake. To this day, Mendoland has to figure out who's who the old-fashioned way — vehicle registration, in-the-act apprehensions, informed suspicion of known familiar subjects, on-site interrogatories, and luck. Former Anderson Valley resident Deputy Keith Squires once nabbed a guy in Boonville for a minor violation of some kind who turned out to be wanted for murder in Los Angeles. When Squires ran a warrant check on the man, dispatch reported back that the deputy was looking at a killer who was assumed to be “armed and dangerous.” Squires asked the man if he'd ever killed anybody in LA. “Yeah, that's me,” the man replied, as casually as if he was identifying himself in a photo of a birthday party. Went along like a lamb, the deputy said.
THE HISTORY of Mendocino County often ranges from vague to false to self-serving to non-existent, but every once in a while a reference to the very old days pops up to remind us how little we know about the people who came before us. From a recent Mendocino Beacon's Old Time Notes: “November 3, 1900. Capitola, known to everyone in the country round about as ‘Old Captain,’ the oldest Indian at the rancheria near Manchester, died on Thursday of last week and was buried on Saturday at the Indian burying ground. Death was caused by extreme old age. The deceased was well known to everyone in and about Point Arena, as he has been there as long as the oldest settler can remember. It is said he was 110 years of age at the time of his death, he himself stating that he had papers to show that he was baptized at the old Catholic Indian mission near San Jose 80 years ago, and was at that time thirty years of age.”
THE MOST ACCESSIBLE mini-history of Capitola's time I've read is Blaise Cendrar's recreated life of John Sutter of Sutter's Mill and the Gold Rush called, “Gold: Being the Marvelous History of General John Augustus Sutter.” The book is sadly (and unaccountably) out of print, but I've seen it in used book stores for less than $10, and worth a hundred times that because it's enthralling front to back with the truth ringing out from every page, not to get too carried away here by a riveting little history. How accurate as history it is is hard to say, but fiction is often more true to the facts than the facts are with the wrong hand on the pen. I also recommend Oakley Hall's wonderful (and still available for sale and in libraries) novel, “Ambrose Bierce and the Queen of Spades,” which is set in the San Francisco of the last part of the last century and the first part of this one. Hall's novel convincingly evokes both the town and the times, and contains some memorable true-to-life portraits of the Robber Barons and their robberies, too. While we're talking books, I've also recently enjoyed “The Nature of Generosity” by William Kittredge, a philosophical travelogue, I suppose it could be characterized without unfairly diminishing what is a unique attempt (in my admittedly limited experience) to tie the meaning of Kittredge's experience as an American to the ongoing assault on our topography. Lots of other people have tried to do what Kittredge does here, but this is the best try I've read. Kittredge is a very good writer, and this is a very good book, which hopefully won't get lost in the annual tonnage of pure prose dreck. Rebecca Solnit's and Susan Schwartzenberg's "Hollow City: The Siege of San Francisco and the Crisis of American Urbanism” tracks in Solnit's strong text and Schwartzenberg's vivid photographs the evisceration of San Francisco by people with lots more money than affection for what has been until not so long ago an affordable urban refuge for this country's talented oddballs. (“I wasn't born in SF but I got here as fast as I could,” is a t-shirt inscription which nicely sums up the prevailing sentiment among lots of Frisco refugees. Having arrived in The City from Honolulu in 1941 as a pint-sized oddball, I've seen it change wholesale now three times, and until now, always for the better.) Solnit intelligently laments what she and every other sentient person who thinks of The City as home or as a second home the destruction of the last great place in the country, but she does it systematically without a lot of romantic whining. There it goes, folks, as we meet here today, sailing out to sea beyond the Golden Gate and above the fog, the disproportionate personalities who were once snug in a proportionate city now half way disappeared from an increasingly soul-free City playground as sterile and as stupid as the mindless monied techies and hangers-on who are destroying it. I also liked Ms. Solnit's book called “Wanderlust: A History of Walking,” although I thought it got a little too unreadably highbrow in parts.
ON-LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK
[1] My town loves tattoo parlors… Dollar stores and weed shops… all the old school businesses are gone: the hardware store, the small book store, the little dairy. Small vendors just can’t compete. I can go however and get a $12 bottle of milk in organic glass by a cow that is raised listening to Bach in a low stress stall sleeping on a large yoga matt.
[2] Cheap drones and missiles mean even small organized militias can disrupt supply chains or army bases or cities or small countries in hostile territory. The military can no longer project force with naval assets far from home. It’s a new world.
[3] It’s only fair that in The Greatest Nation on Earth that is being kept alive by fake money conjuring and ongoing institutionalized corruption that we should have our political parties joining along in all the fun.
The Greatest Nation on Earth teaches its young that it is the best and greatest of all things. Well, as is abundantly clear to anyone who actually cares to look, ineptitude and corruption is on that list as well. Serving as a Great City on the Hill and Shining Example to the World of how being privileged with a great land mass and great natural resources and people who built great factories and railroads from empty prairie lands and sand dunes along lakes is no guarantee of survival or prosperity when internal rot fully takes over. We shouldn’t have worried so much about those nasty Sputnik launchers. We should have been paying much greater attention to the decay from within. A decay of institutions in many forms and in personal conduct and character. We may not be the Titanic but we might be like the poor souls who realize that the plane they’re on is going down, the pilot can’t gain back control and likely doesn’t know what he’s doing anyway, and the solid nasty ground is getting ever closer in our uncontrolled descent.
The Bidens are a mess. They – and many others – are poster children for our times and our era.
[4] I remember posting here in 2016 that Hillary was going to win (I wasn’t happy about that), so my track record in elections isn’t good. All I know is that no matter who wins, we will not be happy with the near- and intermediate- term results.
Justice is just a human construct. The universe doesn’t care about justice, IMO. Stars explode and annihilate entire species without warning; space rocks slam into the Earth and dinosaurs die; dark energy pervades the universe such that it eventually suffers a heat death. That’s not justice.
So whatever happens in and after the election happens. Apparently there’s no logic nor fairness to it. Let’s discuss it after November 3rd.
In the meantime, buy food and other necessities and hope for the best.
[5] It’s hard to believe that so many people are so delusional, especially racial minorities – the most stalwart Democrat voters – who really think the Democrats act in the interest of the downtrodden when the opposite is true. How long will it take before these people see what’s right under their noses?
I was just reading some of Orwell’s stuff on the nature of British society, and in certain passages he refers to monied interests and to permanent members of the governing bureaucracy and the military who he sez would rebel if real economic and democratic reforms were enacted, in other words the Deep State, such as it existed at the time. And what we’ve seen is that very same rebellion in the United States at the election of Donald Trump by that very same class of people that Orwell was talking about.
Why so? Not that Trump threatened to reform governing institutions, but rather he threatened existing economic and trade and investment arrangements, that is, he spoke in favor of the interests of the American working class, those formerly employed in that huge swathe of America that used to be home to vast industrial operations that have been moved to China and Mexico and other places to the great detriment of those millions of American workers.
[6] NOW, WHEN/IF BIDEN LOSES or has the election stolen, I would like to point out just a few of the reasons that it’s not my fault or Russia’s or Ralph Nader’s or the Green Party’s.
a) There is no evidence that Russia has had any influence over the 2020 (or 2016) U.S. election. (But please do send me hundreds of angry evidence-free denunciations of the supposed lunacy of saying so.) (I would much rather you blame me than Russia because I don’t have any nuclear weapons.)
b) The Green Party got a teeny tiny bit of the vote and probably gained Biden as many votes in Maine and places that have ranked choice voting as it cost him elsewhere, and is the most likely party to challenge any of Trump’s election-related crimes.
c) I supported Bernie.
d) I didn’t advise campaigning on a promise to keep fracking. I didn’t even pretend that campaign was a mistake driven by ignorance of polling rather than subservience to funders.
e) I didn’t declare “The Party c’est moi!” and run screaming from every popular position.
f) I live in a non-swing state.
g) The notion that I decided the election through my failure to push scheme #2 above aggressively enough is exposed by my utter inability to advance scheme #1.
h) I didn’t create the electoral college — I’m trying to abolish it.
i) I don’t run the corporate media outlets that bow before Trump — I’m trying to break them up and regulate them.
10) I didn’t tolerate Trump’s hateful instigation of violence and intimidation. I’ve been trying to get him impeached, removed, and prosecuted for it since before his first inauguration — but a certain political party preferred a bunch of dangerous lies about Russia and a Ukraine story that made their own guy look bad.
j) I didn’t lie about voting by mail, strip names off rolls, create long lines, or utilize unverifiable machines and scanners. That was your elected officials.
k) I didn’t kneel down and let Trump put a George W. Bush election thief on the Supreme Court. I proposed impeaching Trump for a legitimate offense from the long list of indisputable public outrages, and forcing the Senate to deal with it. Now, if you want to spend the next couple of weeks telling everyone for the 10 millionth time to vote for Biden, knock yourself out. I’ve had a job doing that for months.
– David Swanson
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