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LOCAL FIREFIGHTERS backed up by Calfire ground and air crews surrounded and then extinguished a grass/timber litter fire in sweltering conditions at the top of Deer Meadows Road (Quail Ridge Road, specifically) Thursday afternoon. The fire was reported just after 2pm and was declared contained by 4pm. According to AV Fire Chief Andres Avila the fire — cause as yet undetermined — started at the top of a knoll which meant it didn’t have an uphill path to spread into, despite the hot, breezy conditions. A Calfire chopper quickly and strategically dumped retardant on the perimeter of the fire as ground engines started to arrive. By 4 pm the fire was declared controlled and units began to be released. Avila had praise for all the responders, both local volunteers and Calfire, who jumped on the blaze and kept it out of nearby timber.
EARLIER THIS WEEK, another, smaller, grass fire was reported in a Jackson Family Wines vineyard outside Yorkville. By the time firefighters arrived just a few minutes after the reported start of the fire at about 3:30pm Monday, quick-thinking vineyard workers had already extinguished the fire with private fire extinguishers and their large drinking water bottles at less than a tenth of an acre. Chief Avila said the fire might have been electrical in origin, but that the cause remains undetermined officially.
THURSDAY’S FIRE is the seventh wildland fire this season in Anderson Valley. The first three on Mountain House Road in June were of suspicious origin and are still under investigation. The other four were relatively small and were contained and extinguished early thanks to quick responses. “But seven is more than we usually have this early in the season,” worried Avila. “There are still months of hazardous conditions to get through. We urge everyone to be extremely cautious and call 911 as early as possible if they see any signs of fires.”
(Mark Scaramella)
YESTERDAY'S HIGHS: Ukiah 110°, Yorkville 109°, Laytonville 108°, Covelo 106°, Boonville 104°, Fort Bragg 63°, Mendocino 61°, Point Arena 59°
VERY HOT weather continues through Saturday. An offshore low will bring a small chance of dry thunderstorms to the interior Saturday afternoon and Sunday. (NWS)
STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): That is a LOT of fog out there coast fans, 53F at 5am. More the same patchy fog clearing routine with some days sunnier & some days foggier.
YORKVILLE COOLING CENTER EXTENDED 2 More Days
With this week's continuing record high temperatures, the YCBA would like to offer you a cooling solution. From 12:00-5:00 July 12 and 13th the Community Room (next to the Post Office) will be open and the AC turned on. We have WiFi and water, tables and chairs, come play cards, work or just chill for a couple of hours. Let us know if you think this is a good idea for the YCBA to continue on with this summer: news@theYCBA.org
BURGLARIZING A THRIFT STORE?
On 07-09-2024 at around 10:00 A.M., Mendocino County Sheriff's Office Deputies were dispatched to the Mendocino Coast Humane Society “Ark Thrift Store” regarding a burglary that occurred earlier in the morning at 3:00 AM. Deputies arrived and contacted the person reporting the crime, who provided a statement. Deputies were also provided surveillance video, showing the suspect climbing through the window of the locked business.
While reviewing the video, Deputies immediately recognized the suspect as Peter Rose Jr., 30, of Point Arena, who has multiple prior law enforcement contacts for similar offenses.
At 12:06 PM, Sheriff's Office Deputies located and arrested Rose Jr. in the 18000 block of North Highway 1 near Fort Bragg. Rose Jr. was arrested for burglary, Deputies recovered the stolen property in his possession. The stolen property was quickly identified and returned to the Ark Thrift Store.
Rose Jr. was transported and booked into the Mendocino County Jail for Burglary, where he was to be held in lieu of $15,000 bail.
ROBERT GATES:
So what happened to the $22 million that pg and e paid to the county for the 2017 fire which burned up much of redwood valley? I can’t seem to get an answer from the BOS. I can tell you they didn’t ask redwood or potter valleys what they thought. The settlement works out to about 40 thousand dollars per structure. I lost my house and another building and yet can get no answer. Is it possible they used as a slush fund? If so they should be sued. The residents of the fire suffered hard and these funds were meant for us.
ADAM GASKA REPLIES:
The short answer is they have spent most of it.
Reports are here: mendocinocounty.gov/departments/executive-office/county-budget/pg-e-expenditure-reports
Initially, Carmel Angelo did keep mum about the money then selectively told department heads to get their Christmas lists in order. Once it became public that the funds were available, there was a public outcry which led to money being made available to fire departments. Redwood Valley made substantial investments in new equipment which was long overdue, as did other county fire departments.
The County, and all government agencies, have strict rules about what they can fund. Direct payments to individuals are considered gifts of public funds which is a no-no. Many individuals who had losses have filled claims against PG&E which set up a separate victim fund. Many, but not all, have received payments. But in most cases, the payments were nowhere near the losses sustained.
LOCAL EVENTS (this weekend)
AND a small town’s biggest yard sale of the year: Comptche Community Yard Sale, Saturday July 13, 11a.m. to 3 p.m., Comptche Community Hall, 30672 Comptche-Ukiah Rd., (no early birds please).
BODY FOUND IN MENDOCINO COUNTY HOUSE BURNED AMID 98-ACRE WILDFIRE BELIEVED TO BE MISSING WOMAN
The 66-year-old woman was last seen trying to defend the house using a fire hose
by Madison Smalstig
A body believed to be that of a missing 66-year-old woman was found Tuesday in a house burned by the 98-acre Mina Fire in Mendocino County.
The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office received a call about 2 a.m. reporting that a body was found burned beyond recognition in the home in the 94500 block of Mina Road, north of Covelo, the department said in a news release.
The previous day, deputies took a missing persons report about 2:17 p.m. for Dagmar Stankova, who was last seen earlier that day at the home spraying a fire hose at approaching flames.
The deputies, who were evacuating residents Monday, did not go to the home because the flames were too intense.
The Mendocino County Corner is investigating whether the body found is Stankova. The person’s cause and manner of death will be determined following an autopsy, which is being scheduled.
Cal Fire prevention officers are determining the cause of the Mina Fire, which started about 2:06 p.m. in the 97500 Block of Mina Road near Zenia Lake Mountain Road in Covelo.
The residence was one of two structures destroyed in the fire, which is 60% contained, according Cal Fire-Mendocino status updates. On Thursday, 28 engines, 10 hand crews, three dozers, two helicopters and six water tenders are assigned to mopping up the perimeter of the fire near the Mendocino and Trinity County border and mitigating many “hazard trees.”
The Sheriff’s Office asks that anyone with information on the fire or death contact dispatch center at 707-463-4086 or the non-emergency tip-line at 707-234-2100, which is anonymous.
(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)
END OF AN ERA; FORT BRAGG’S LAST BRANDED NEW CAR DEALER SHEDS CHRYSLER FRANCHISE
by Frank Hartzell
Mike Slaughter sports a favorite shirt in the Sport Auto Center showroom, in front of a 1927 Dodge Brothers sedan.
The sign will be coming down Friday, which Mike Slaughter says will allow Sport Auto Center to meet the needs of the local and modern car and parts buyers better.
Sport Auto Center is the only car dealership in Fort Bragg after the closure of Hare Creek Automotive sales lot earlier this year.
Mike Slaughter is glad he can now sell more lower priced cars and broker virtually any new car make that a customer asks for.
But the owner of Sport Auto Center is a bit sad to see the Dodge, Chrysler, Jeep and Ram names drop off his sign. He has ended his franchise with FCA (Fiat Chrysler Automobiles). This marks the end of the last branded auto dealership in Fort Bragg. Mike, who grew up working for car dealerships and came here after working for Ken Fowler in Ukiah, remembers with nostalgia the days when dealerships competed to provide the best service.
Fort Bragg once had GM, Ford and Chrysler dealers, and more. The only other car dealership in the Fort Bragg-Mendocino area, Hare Creek Automotive, closed earlier this year and now sits empty.
“There used to be even more than just the big three, there was Rambler and Studebaker and others,” he said.
The Chrysler-Jeep-Dodge-Ram sign will come down Friday and he doesn’t want his customers to think it will have any impact beyond the lack of a lot full of new Chrysler products. Mike says they can get service, buy used cars, and also buy any new car through the revamped Sport Auto Center.
Because Mike is an automotive broker as well as a dealer, he can sell new cars to customers who have a make and model in mind. Slaughter plans to expand the use of his “Mike’s Auto Hound” car-hunting service.
Mike said the demise of lumber, fishing, and finally cannabis cut into his truck sales, which were once their bread and butter. The pandemic brought first a downward surge, then an upward surge as supply went down and demand went up. Now new car sales are in a tough period, as supplies exceed demand, and prices remain high. In addition, high interest rates have slowed consumer spending. This Associated Press news story looks at the volatility of car prices and new car sales.
“Now I can do everything possible for my customers,” Mike said.
He emphasized he had made this change so he could best serve the local market.
“I ended my franchise, and I did it because it will make us better. But I’m still sad to see Dodge go after 24 years,” he said.
Mike suffered a stroke as a young man and was falling into depression from his doctor’s saying he was disabled and unable to work anymore for possibly the rest of his life. His best friend told him to contact Jack Smith Dodge in Fort Bragg, Mike had known Jack since 1975. Smith had owned the dealership since the early 1960s and had not wished to sell the dealership when previous efforts were made. But when Mike called and asked Jack Smith when he would be ready to sell, he recalls how the late Jack Smith deadpanned, “What time can you be here my boy?!”
Mike partnered with Walt Dooley and Dirk and Douna Dooley to complete the deal with Jack Smith. Together they created Sport Chrysler-Dodge-Ram and soon added Jeep. In the first year, the company sold more than ten times as many cars as Jack Smith had. Later Mike bought out Walt, and Dirk and Mike and Douna continued to expand the dealership. The “Great Recession” of 2008 saw 1200 Chrysler Dealerships close, Sport Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram survived. He said there was a time when Sport was selling 21 new cars a month at its peak, plus 30 used, but changing times means he simply has to change gears for a slower market. New car dealerships discourage the sales of lower-priced cars, but Mike says he plans to sell whatever cars he needs to meet the needs of customers. He has 14 employees, down from a high of 21.
“I don’t want customers to get the idea that there is going to be any change in how we take care of them.”
The dealership sports a 1927 Dodge Brothers sedan in the showroom, which won’t be leaving with the Dodge-Chrysler-Jeep name. Walter P. Chrysler bought the Dodge Brothers company in 1928.
Thurston Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram in Ukiah is now the closest dealership of that brand to the Coast. A call and email to the Chrysler Corporation’s media line made Wednesday afternoon was not immediately returned.
Slaughter issued this press release about the closing of the Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram branding:
Sport Auto Center: Your New One-Stop Shop for Cars in Fort Bragg
For 24 years, Sport Auto Center has been Fort Bragg's trusted Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, and Ram dealership. We've built strong relationships with our community and valued customers, and that commitment continues!
Here's the exciting news: The automotive industry is changing, and so are we! We're transitioning from a franchised dealership to an independent dealer and auto broker.
What this means for you:
Gone are the Old Days: Remember when Fort Bragg had three new car dealerships? We were the last one standing, and recently, even the other used car dealership closed. Our new approach gives you, the local shopper, the widest range of options in this ever-changing market.
Dream Car Finder: If there's a specific car you desire, we can probably find it using our auto-finding tool, Mike's Auto Hound!
Wider Selection: We're no longer limited to just Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, and Ram. We can find high-quality used cars and trucks from all manufacturers.
Local Focus & Budget-Friendly Options: Finding parts and managing repair costs can be tough in a smaller town. As an independent dealer, we'll source parts efficiently and find vehicles that fit your budget.
Exceptional Service Remains Our Priority
Our commitment to you remains unchanged. Whether you're searching for a specific car, need financing help, or require repairs, we'll continue to provide the friendly, reliable service you've come to expect from Sport Auto Center.
We're excited about this new chapter and the opportunity to serve you even better! Stop by or visit our website to learn more about our expanded selection and services. We can't wait to hear what you think of our new look!
Sincerely,
The Team at Sport Auto Center
JURY CONVICTS FORT BRAGG MAN IN ASSAULT AT PATTERSON’S PUB
A Mendocino County jury empaneled in the Ten Mile Courthouse in Fort Bragg returned from its deliberations Thursday to announce it has reached guilty verdicts against the trial defendant.
Defendant Brandon Lundy McClintic, age 46, of Fort Bragg, was convicted of one substantive count of felony Assault by Means of Force Likely to Cause Great Bodily Injury and a second substantive count of misdemeanor Battery.
Applicable to the felony conviction, the jury also found true a special allegation alleging that it wasn’t just likely that great bodily injury could be inflicted, but that is was true that the defendant actually and personally did inflict great bodily injury on the victim in May 2022 outside Patterson’s Pub in Mendocino.
Why this case went to trial is anybody’s guess, especially since the unprovoked attack by defendant McClintic was captured on and recovered by law enforcement from the security surveillance system guarding Patterson’s Pub.
The defendant’s two convictions and the true finding were referred to the Adult Probation Department for the preparation of a written background study and sentencing recommendation.
The defendant was ordered to return to the Ten Mile courtroom for his sentencing hearing on September 4, 2024 at 9 o’clock in the morning.
The infliction of GBI finding by the jury makes defendant McClintic ineligible by law for a grant of supervised probation unless the court makes express findings on the record that the circumstances of this case are unusual and the interests of justice are best served by a sentence granting probation versus a state prison commitment.
The infliction of GBI finding also legally characterizes this crime as a violent conviction for purposes of reduced presentence custody credits and reduced early release on parole credits if a state prison sentence is imposed.
This conviction constitutes a Strike conviction, within the meaning of the voter-modified Three Strike Law, meaning it will enhance any additional felony that the defendant may commit in the future.
The law enforcement agency that interviewed witnesses and gathered the evidence presented at this week’s trial was the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office.
The prosecutor who presented the People’s evidence to the jury was Deputy District Attorney David Moutrie.
Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Clayton Brennan presided over the jury trial and will be the bench officer responsible for sentencing on September 4th.
ED NOTES
BIDEN, LIKE TRUMP, throws out mounds of words, many of them only tangentially related, but tonight, by Biden's (and America's) diminished standards, he did pretty well, stumbling big time only twice when he confused Putin with Zelensky and Kamala with Trump. Here at Boonville's national media desk, we turned off the Biden press conference agreeing that the old boy probably is the Democrats best bet to beat the Orange Monster, which is a measure of how far the Democrats (and America) have fallen. Biden on life support is superior to anybody else the Democrats can put up for "leader of the free world." Next up the final absurdity, the November election.
A WALK DOWN MEMORY LANE
TIAJUANITA is located on the west side of Anderson Valley Way near Evergreen Cemetery, Its dreary premises once served as a motel before the Boonville stretch of Highway 128 between Boonville and Philo Highway 128 bypassed AV Way. The bypass was constructed in '67-68.
DURING the frenzied early years of wine grape planting in the Anderson Valley, which of course needed labor to do the hard work industry padrones required, there occurred an influx of single Mexican workers, and the old motel, abandoned in the middle 1950s, became a dormitory, and a cash cow for the owners, the Wasson family of Boonville.
THE NORTHCOAST wine industry is not required by either state or local authorities to erect housing proportionate to its labor requirements.
BETWEEN 20 and 40 farmworkers, depending on the season, have been jammed into 8 or so cabins on a site whose septic system failed long ago, and they've been jammed in there since the middle 1970s. Each resident pays a rent for a bunk in a cabin which bears no relation to the quality of his shelter.
A SECOND WASSON property to the north of the old motel is a single-family dwelling once inhabited by drug dealers, several of whom, togged out in the full “gangsta” look as mobile laundry bags, were often seen in the street in front of the place doing business on their cell phones. The front yard of this second Wasson rental presented a vista of wrecked cars, uncollected trash, burst garbage bags out of which ancient pampers and fast food leftovers spilled, the whole of it frequently accompanied by the cries of unattended infants. Lately, more respectable tenants have inhabited the rundown structure, such is the desperation for housing in the Anderson Valley.
DESPITE YEARS of complaints to the county to drag WassonLandia in the direction of First World health and safety standards, all complaints have been ignored by Mendocino County officialdom because, as we know, local elected people all the way up to Congressman Huffman, and before him, Congressman Thompson, are deep in the pocket of a deep pockets wine industry. (The wine mob just elected another supervisor, Ms. Cline a very young woman installed by an industry confident she'll “vote the right way” when it comes to them and theirs.
WITHOUT un-housing the 30-40 men who live there now, a re-do would not be possible even if the Wassons approved. And there's the rub. Without slum housing single farmworkers would have no housing in the Anderson Valley.
SOME OF US will remember the DEA raid on the big shed that used to rest at the junction of Mountain View Road and 128, a property unrecognizable these days beneath an array of shipping containers and attractive landscaping. Throw a palimpsest over the Anderson Valley and we only faintly make out the valley that existed a hundred years ago, or even fifty years ago. We seem to be hurtling at warp speeds to…
THE DOPE OP at that site in the early 2000s was beyond bold. Everyone in town knew it was there, squatting malignantly near the center of town. The raid recovered materials used for methamphetamine production. One arrestee had five guns with their serial numbers filed off. A perky young blonde was on site when the cops busted through the makeshift door of the barn. She said she'd just broken up with her boyfriend and, apparently not mourning the break-up, was spending the night with one of the men discovered in the shed. The young woman implied she was a “green card missionary” who was going to marry her new Mexican man “so he can get his green papers.” When a cop asked her what she was getting out of the deal, she said, “Nothing. I'm just doing it as a favor.”
THAT WAS RIGHT AROUND the time somebody, on New Year's Eve, drove by the high school and shot out several big windows with an AK-47, a weapon apparently converted to fully automatic, according to people who heard the shots. When Superintendent J.R. Collins reported the damage to Deputy Squires, the deputy soon discovered ten spent shells on Mountain View Road. Some of the bullets went through the front set of windows, through the windows at the rear of the room, and then through another window across the hall. “We were very fortunate that the shots hit nothing but windows and walls,” said Collins. “They didn't hit any equipment or computers or do any other damage. Whatever kind of gun it was,” Collins remarked, “it certainly was a powerful gun.”
THE DAMAGED WINDOWS were and are made of safety glass. Some were cracked by the fusillade, others sustained neat holes. A Ukiah glass outfit estimated the damage at $2100. The school district carried a deductible insurance policy that didn't quite cover the damage.
DEPUTY SQUIRES said he got quite a few reports of either fireworks or gunshots on New Year’s eve. “We’ve never found guns at the high-school as long as I’ve been here, and we’ve never been shot at before. It’s crazy. Fortunately, this one happened during vacation when nobody was around. When school is in session, we have people working evenings around the buildings and people cleaning. If it’d been a regular school night someone certainly could have been hit."
SQUIRES quickly figured out who did the shooting. Two young men, one of whom was fresh out of the Youth Authority, were the culprits although there was not enough evidence for an arrest. Squires speculated that the AK was stolen from the Navarro home of Kary Mullis, Anderson Valley's Nobel Prize winner. Mullis, who hosted legendary parties at his Gschwend Road home complete with imported professional female entertainers, amused his guests by shooting watermelons with his AK as friends and relatives rolled them down a nearby hill where Mullis could pot shot the melons on their way down. The guy was certainly one of the livelier Nobel laureates, and another chapter in the remarkable history of the Anderson Valley all by himself.
FRED GARDNER SENDS ALONG:
“Old Tools of the Trade.”
NAME CHANGE FORT BRAGG passes out nice hunks of cash to FB high school kids who hue to Name Change's flawed version of local history. Two on-line commenters neatly summed up Name Change's recent essay contest:
(1) As a matter of fact, poorly written, poorly organized, incorporating factual inaccuracies and false allegations but that’s largely a reflection of the collapse of educational standards in public schools.
Having failed to gain traction with local elected officials, community leaders and local residents, the “change our name” group has fallen back on a cynical effort to use school children to continue their divisive and manipulative campaign.
And not surprising that an essay supporting the name change won the contest sponsored by the “change our name” group.
But who knew we had a “Latino Outdoors North Coast Chapter Program Coordinator for California State Parks” on the State payroll?
(2) First, words have meaning and facts are important.
Neither the town nor the schools were named for a person – the schools were named for the town and the town was named for the fort.
The fort itself, named in 1857, was named for a person but it was not named to honor a Confederate general since the Confederacy did not exist.
Only by ignoring history can the writer conclude that names of the town or the schools “perpetuate racism and hate.”
The writer seems to believe the Civil War was fought to end slavery and while that was an outcome of the war it wasn’t the cause or the purpose.
Which invalidates claims that Bragg “fought against the U.S. and its ideals of liberty” or that he “fought to uphold white supremacy.”
The writer claims Bragg “participated and led the largest racially motivated wars in U.S. history against Native Americans, Mexican Americans and African Americans” – I’m not aware of a war fought against African Americans.
The writer also claims “[Bragg’s] goal in his lifetime was to get rid of Native Americans, Mexican Americans and African Americans” which adds the crime of genocide to Bragg’s many faults.
The only problem with that is there’s no evidence and no previous allegations of Bragg participating in or advocating for genocide against any group, including the enslaved persons on his plantation.
Opinions can differ on whether the town or schools were named after Bragg; whether or not the names honor Bragg; and other points of debate – but claims of genocide are pure fabrication.
No doubt the young writer got carried away with enthusiasm for his topic which led to a couple of excursions into hyperbole.
But Congrats to the young scholar – the $2,000 will spend the same!
HERE’S AN ENTERTAINING BIT OF SPAM EMAIL:
The Subject Line says: “YOUR $50 MILLION DOLLAR GRANT!”
And the sender is “Mrs. Jill Biden.”
“I'M, MRS.JILL BIDEN THE FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES AND THE CONTENT OF THE BELOW MESSAGE IS SIGNED AND APPROVED BY BANK OF AMERICA .”
After some instructions on how to get my own personal ATM Card with the pre-approved $50 million, the email concludes:
“you can contact my agent Mr Mark William on zangi for more detail Zangi only……10-6624-6309. Only. You can also add me on spike at (mrsjillbiden050@gmail.com) . you can also write me on google chat at (mrsjillbiden050@gmail.com). Thanks and always be bless. Mrs. Jill Biden, First Lady of the United States.”
I don’t recognize the sender’s actual email address, but I suspect it was misdirected. The sender must have meant to send it to Jim Mastin, the local Dems’ “Democrat of the Year for 2024.”
(Mark Scaramella)
SARAH SONGBIRD: Hey neighbors. I want to let you know that The Real Sarahs are playing a FREE show at Sundays In The Park (Todd Grove Park, Ukiah) this Sunday, July 14, 2024, from 6-9pm with Alex de Grassi and a full band. We hope you'll come boogie with us!
MEMO OF THE AIR RADIO RERUN THIS FRIDAY.
Marco here. Because of pain holding me flat on my back all this week (except for an ill-advised excruciating trip to town for food and drugs) I couldn't prep for this Friday night's Memo of the Air show on KNYO and KAKX, and even if by Friday night I could struggle to the shop and sit up in a chair I don't think I could stay there long, even to fake it and play recordings or something, so Bob will rerun last week's MOTA show, complete with announcements for events and yard sales and things that are mostly over already, but otherwise it's a pretty good show, that includes the climactic last two chapters of Kent Wallace's noirish book Death's Green Eyes, the last three stories in Revenge of the Lawn, by Richard Brautigan, a somewhat ominous chapter of Eleanor Cooney's new book ‘The Devil You Know,’ poetry, science, genocide, jokes, history, and so on for more than 7 hours.
This back pain inconvenience, let's call it, happened a few years ago to the degree that I missed a show, but only had to miss one. I think it'll be like that this time too. Go ahead and send me what you were going to send me, and I'll read it on the air next week, once I'm vertical again or at least S-shaped. Sorry, and thanks.
Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org, https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com
THE SUMMER OF 1852
by Mary B. Stinson
(Alice Earl Wilder was the granddaughter of Jerome Bursley Ford, one of the founders of Mendocino. Her letters to Dorothy Bear and Beth Stebbins in 1973 contain reminiscences of her summers spent in Mendocino as a child and later as an adult. The letter below was found in the Kelley House archives by Mary B. Stinson while researching a question regarding the Mendocino Lumber Company. This article first appeared in the Beacon on March 21, 2013.)
I have read grandfather’s diaries several times and heard lots of family and their friends talk. (I mean the diary of his trip from Bodega to Mendocino.) I have always been told that Kasten was wrecked at Mendocino in 1851 and had constructed for himself a log cabin in which he was living when grandfather went up the coast in 1851 searching for a shipwreck [The Frolic]. The shanty, as Uncle Chester called it, could not have been built before 1851. The cabin was behind the Company’s barn [located south of the end of Lansing Street] and we saw it when children. The barn [which was used for wintering work animals from the woods] was originally the town’s first skating rink.
Grandfather says he bought a cabin from the blacksmith [Kasten?] in 1852. It was in this shanty that grandfather stayed to wait for the Brig Ontario to arrive in the summer of 1852. Where the mill crew stayed I never heard, but assumed they camped out during 1852 summer and had time to rig up some kind of winter cover.
The Company had homes built. E. C. Williams may have built the ‘Freundt’ house [located 350 feet south of the Ford House, overlooking the ocean]. Evidently Williams had a lot to say about what building was done and how it was done. He was difficult to get along with and nobody wanted to cross him. He had his own lumber yard in San Francisco. He never wanted to spend a cent for needed improvements. He lived in Oakland all the time I was growing up and every Sunday I would see him and his family at the 1st Congregational Church.
From what I have heard, I thought the J. B. Fords lived at the ‘ranch’ house [a small cabin Ford had built, located southwest of today’s intersection of Little Lake Road and Clark Street] while the Main Street house was built. The Fords were married in Connecticut in May 1854 and sailed immediately via Panama for San Francisco. I always thought they were then in the Main Street house. Whether the Company had already built the Freundt house—down the incline from the Fords—or not, I can’t say. It may very likely have been built and used by E. C. Williams before the Meiggs collapse [see below]. After that, Freundt lived there and watched finances for his partners, Sillen and Goddefroy. He kept the Company books while there.
[Henry Meiggs was president of the California Lumber Manufacturing Company, which brought the first sawmill to Mendocino in the summer of 1852; Edwards C. Williams and Jerome B. Ford served as Directors. After Meiggs fled the country in 1854 to avoid prosecution for fraud in San Francisco, Williams and Ford, along with Arthur Godeffroy, William Sillem, and William Freundt, formed a new partnership, the Mendocino Mill Company, that assumed the former company’s large debt and continued to operate the Mendocino Mill.]
Cordially,
Alice Earl Wilder
CATCH OF THE DAY, Thursday, July 11, 2024
JASMINE BAILEY, Ukiah. Failure to appear.
JOEL COWAN, Willits. Paraphernalia, county parole violation, resisting.
JULIO DELVILLAR-ACEVEDO, Ukiah. Probation revocation.
JEREMY ELENNISS, Willits. Suspended license, ammo possession by prohibited person, probation revocation.
DILAN GREGORY, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-distributing intimate photos of another.
STEVE LEARD, Ukiah. Controlled substance for sale, paraphernalia, evasion, failure to appear.
SETH SMART, Ukiah. County parole violation, resisting.
JUSTIN TRUJILLO, Willits. Lewd-lascivious upon child under 14.
J. ALFRED HUFFMAN
To the Editor:
Rep. Jared Huffman’s own town hall meetings with constituents are highly controlled and scripted affairs. Why? He doesn’t want to take questions about his own appalling behavior in being an apologist of Israel’s war crimes against the people of Gaza. And he doesn’t want to take questions about being an enabler of those very same war crimes by voting to approve U.S. military aid for Israel, including weapons of mass destruction, like cluster bombs and white phosphorous bombs.
It’s ironic that Huffman now observes, in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle by Shira Stein, in which Huffman is quoted, that President Biden’s meetings with Democratic House members are not the spontaneous and open Q&A affairs that members were accustomed to having, but. instead. the meetings are now “scripted and controlled” and limited to a handful of members who had questions written on cue cards.
When will a credible Democrat challenge Huffman in the next primary? It’s time for Huffman to go.
Maybe Huffman and his friend “Bibi” Netanyahu can retire together. Maybe they can retire to one of the West Bank outposts that are controlled by extremist Israeli group Lehava. Huff and Bibi could be happy together there. Lots of sunshine. Lots of hate. Volleyball on weekends.
John Sakowicz
Ukiah
ESTHER MOBLEY, CHRONICLE WINE WRITER
Here’s what’s come across my desk recently:
There’s a conspicuous absence of wine from the fine-dining world depicted in “The Bear,” as many wine publications have noted recently. I liked Jason Wilson’s take in the New Wine Review: “If The Bear truly opened in 2024, it would be a wine bar.”
Martin Ray Winery in Santa Rosa acquired Healdsburg’s Foppiano Winery and Vineyards, a specialist in Petite Sirah, reports Roger Coryell in the Sonoma County Gazette. Foppiano now joins an umbrella company known as CMB Wines, which also owns the brands Angeline, Synthesis and Courtney Benham.
Belia Ramos, a Napa County supervisor, has filed a restraining order against Debra Dommen, an executive at Treasury Wine Estates. Ramos’ claims against Dommen involve a letter sent to a child welfare agency alleging that Ramos abused her child, reports Dan Evans in the Napa Valley Register. Dommen has asked that the order be vacated.
“Food cocktails are everywhere, and they’re starting to get a little weird,” writes Jaya Saxena in Punch. The author cites actual, real-life drinks that mimic dishes like porcini risotto, chicken soup and a sushi handroll.
THE JAMES C. FLOOD MANSION is a historic mansion at 1000 California Street, atop Nob Hill in San Francisco.
Now home of the Pacific-Union Club, it was built in 1886 as the townhouse for James C. Flood, a 19th-century silver baron. It was the first brownstone building west of the Mississippi River, and the only mansion on Nob Hill to structurally survive the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1966.
BIDEN SET TO JOIN LIST OF THOSE MAKING BIG MISTAKES
Editor,
President Joe Biden is failing to acknowledge that his problem has morphed from concerns about his ability to serve to his electability. The issue has become circular, the very reason that led to the need for him to step down is the same reason why he refuses.
I believe the critical nature of this situation was spawned by three people: 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg and former President Barack Obama.
I believe that Clinton lost to Donald Trump because she permitted her campaign to turn complacent and sloppy. Ginsberg selfishly refused to do what’s best for the county by stepping down and allowing her seat to be filled by a different president. Obama relied on official channels to deal with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell during the blocked nomination of Merrick Garland. The dispute should have been settled unofficially by respective staff members behind the scene well in advance of going public.
Biden is well on his way to becoming the fourth member of the group. Moreover, there are no short term avenues to recover from the errant actions of the Supreme Court. Even if Trump loses in November, his supporters will still be here post election. Our country has proven to be remarkably resistant. It better be.
Steve McClure
Larkspur
ON RFK JR.
by Deborah Friedell
Robert F. Kennedy Jr was nine years old on November 22, 1963 when his mother told him that “a bad man shot Uncle Jack.” He was 14, asleep at boarding school, when his father was assassinated at a hotel in Los Angeles. He became used to the sound of people weeping everywhere he went, no matter what he did. He looked so much like his father that “even fifty years after his death, people cry when they see my face.” On airplanes he could expect to be upgraded, or at least to have “flight attendants smuggle me first-class meals in coach.” In restaurants, “waiters refuse to give me a check. Even toll collectors on highways, who will never see me again, refuse to take my money.” They often tell him what he already knows: “Robert F. Kennedy was the greatest president that America never had.”
In his memoir, American Values: Lessons I Learned from My Family (2018), RFK Jr remembers the way he felt just a few months before his father was killed, when Lyndon Johnson announced that he wouldn’t seek re-election in 1968, clearing the path for RFK to “reclaim the throne in memory of his brother.” Once again there was going to be a Kennedy in the White House.
“‘We’re going to win,’ I said to myself for the first time. ‘The war will be over in January. Our soldiers are coming home. Instead of building million-dollar bombers, our country will spend that money constructing schools and health centers and rebuilding our cities.’ All the things I had heard my father talk about were about to come true. He would restore America’s moral standing, revitalize the cities and make the poor a part of our democracy. Suddenly I believed it was all possible – and so did a lot of other people.”
All of which is the reason – RFK Jr. now believes – the CIA had him killed. In his retelling of American history, the Kennedy family has been locked into an intergenerational war with the agency almost since its founding: it is the “dark force infiltrating American politics and business, unseen by the public and out of reach of democracy and the justice system,” an “enemy within” that poses a “greater threat to our country than any foreign enemy,” all the more insidious because its agents look and sound like ordinary Americans, coaching Little League, shopping at Target. He thinks that President Kennedy died because he was too much his own man, refusing to do the agency’s bidding in Cuba and East Asia. “The CIA’s murder of my uncle was a successful coup d’état from which our democracy has never recovered.”
And since his father was on to them – RFK Jr. claims that the “first thing he was going to do” as president was “to remove the clandestine services from the CIA and make the CIA what it was supposed to be, which was an intelligence gathering organization” – they had to get rid of him too, ushering in the Nixon presidency and all our woe.
As far as Kennedy assassinations go, the murder of RFK has always seemed relatively straightforward. More than seventy people – hotel staff, campaign staff, supporters, journalists, ineffectual security guards, the editor of the Paris Review – were in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel with Sirhan Sirhan when he shot RFK with a .22 caliber revolver. (Eyes were on him because he first yelled: “Kennedy, you son of a bitch!”) It was the first anniversary of the Six-Day War and Sirhan, a Palestinian refugee, later confessed that he’d become “enraged at the gloating at which the Jewish community in Los Angeles was carrying on in celebration of that victory over the Arabs.” RFK had made a campaign promise to provide the Israeli military with fighter jets, “instruments of death and destruction against my people. I am not going to accept that, and never will I accept or acquiesce to it.” RFK Jr thinks that Sirhan might have attempted to shoot his father, but the bullet that actually killed him was fired by a “CIA asset” hiding in the crowd. Another theory is that Sirhan Sirhan really did kill his father, but that he had been brainwashed by the CIA into doing it. In any case, RFK Jr. thinks that the agency has only grown more vicious, “metastasized like a cancer, to threaten the very democracy and national security that it was commissioned to safeguard.” He blames the CIA for the Russian invasion of Ukraine and suggests (in his book The Wuhan Cover-Up) that the CIA is part of the cartel responsible for the spread of Covid-19.
RFK Jr. doesn’t say when he figured all this out. It’s as though he’s always known. After his father died, he became an alcoholic and, for many years, a heroin addict. (He was also, his biographer Jerry Oppenheimer suggests, a sex addict who sometimes preyed on women; RFK Jr. himself has written that his “greatest defect” is his possession by “lust demons.”) A neurological disorder affects his voice – he can’t talk without sounding like he’s choking. “I have cognitive problems, clearly,” he said under oath twelve years ago, suggesting that the cause was probably a brain-eating parasite. But he didn’t give up hope that he might one day run for president: “to pick up the flag” where his father dropped it.
He’s never run for political office before. For much of his career he was an environmental lawyer, though he is quick to assure voters that he doesn’t buy into the “climate change orthodoxy,” which he says is a plot to curtail civil liberties.
For the last few years he’s run an anti-vaccine disinformation group called Children’s Health Defense – its main claim to fame is having caused a deadly Samoan measles epidemic in 2019. When the coronavirus pandemic began, he must have realized his moment had come. He created a podcast and took to social media. “Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people,” he claimed. “The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.” Vaccines were causing autism; tap water was making kids transgender. The National Institutes of Health, the Gates Foundation, Google, the New York Times, the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine were all deliberately derailing access to life-saving drugs, and were working to prolong the pandemic in order to impose vaccines on a captive population. It was hard to keep up with his many claims, each more batshit than the next, though many of them are helpfully compiled in his book The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health (2021).
Sometime after RFK Jr. stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial and insisted that American anti-vaxxers were more imperilled than Holocaust victims – “even in Hitler’s Germany you could cross the Alps into Switzerland. You could hide in an attic, like Anne Frank did” – Republican megadonors encouraged him to run against Biden in the Democratic primary and put more than $25 million into his SuperPac. There was a rumor that Donald Trump, in thrall to Camelot glamour, became so enamoured of a “Trump-Kennedy” bumper sticker that he asked RFK Jr. to be his running mate; RFK Jr. says that the Trump team offered him the role, which Trump has denied.
He’s now running as a third-party candidate; his billionaire running mate, the ex-wife of a Google co-founder, seems to be content to bankroll his campaign until the end. Democrats still haven’t recovered from the 2000 election, when nice lefty pro-seatbelt Ralph Nader won 97,488 votes in Florida, which Al Gore lost by 537 votes.
RFK Jr. is now polling around 10 per cent – much better than Nader, who took less than 3 per cent of the vote – though at the moment pollsters can’t agree on which candidate he hurts more. Biden is trying not to lose votes to RFK Jr. by making campaign advertisements featuring the many Kennedys who are endorsing him: Chris Kennedy, RFK Jr.’s brother, calls Biden “the RFK of his generation.”
For his part, Trump has been calling RFK Jr. a “radical left lunatic” and a “fake anti-vaxxer” and is trying to cut into his base by promising that “from day one” he’ll cut federal funding for schools with vaccine mandates.
Which Americans find RFK Jr. most appealing? He has a strong claim on the conspiracists, the 16% of Americans who agree with the statement that “the government, media and financial worlds in the US are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation.” He also hopes to capture independents – by far the largest voting bloc in the country (about 49% of the electorate) – who don’t feel they have a home in either of the major parties and aren’t wild about Trump or Biden.
RFK Jr. is pro-organized labor, hard to pin down on abortion, pro-Putin, and claims to be the most pro-Israel candidate in the race. (He’s said that the Palestinians are “the most pampered people by international aid organizations in the history of the world.”) He’s in favor of a higher minimum wage, higher taxes on the wealthy, the legalization of marijuana and is opposed to gun control.
But mainly he’s counting on the multitudes who’ve always loved his family to come out for him. Norman Mailer thought that the Kennedys “seemed magical because they were a little better than they should have been, and so gave promise of making America a little better than it ought to be.”
But they weren’t, and they don’t.
THE KEY TO LONGEVITY IS BORING
by Brad Stulberg
The other day, someone at my gym approached me and lamented that he could spend nearly every waking hour of his life executing the countless viral health and longevity recommendations popularized by internet influencers and podcast hosts, and he’d still feel that he is falling behind.
He was alluding to a complicated and often contradictory menu of “biohacks” (shortcuts for improving our biology, all of which lack scientific rigor) and “protocols” (highly specific regimens for exercise, sleep and nutrition). In this era’s search for eternal youth, there are supplements, green powders, cold plunges, the supposed benefits of low-angle morning sunlight, continuous glucose monitors for non-diabetics, box breathing, the proposed benefits of rapamycin (a drug originally used in organ transplants being adapted for longevity), and countless restrictive diets that range from avoiding seed oils to becoming aware of the “hidden dangers” in fruits and vegetables to shunning nearly everything but meat.
While obsessions with health and longevity have long dogged humanity, this latest version is intensified by an ecosystem in which influencers and podcasters profit from our attention and quest for health by getting sponsorships from supplement companies, sleep trackers and other pseudoscientific wellness products. In 2016 the global supplement market amounted to $135 billion. Today it’s ballooned to $250 billion. That figure is projected to hit nearly $310 billion within the next four years.
Some of these interventions have limited uses, while others range from the absurd to the truly harmful. It’s a shame that people are spending their money and energy on such things — even more so because the key to a longer, healthier life is no mystery.
Research has long shown that health and longevity comes down to five fundamental lifestyle behaviors: exercising regularly, eating a nutritious diet, eschewing cigarettes, limiting alcohol consumption and nurturing meaningful relationships.
This stuff is simple, somewhat boring and harder to make money off of than trendy supplements, complex-sounding theories and new gadgets — but it’s what actually works.
For a landmark 2017 study published in the journal Health Affairs, researchers analyzed data dating back to the 1990s of more than 14,000 American men and women starting at the age of 50. They found that 50-year-old nonsmokers who drank alcohol in moderation and who were not obese could expect to live, on average, seven years longer than their peers who did not share these traits. The average life expectancy for women living this trio of lifestyle behaviors was just shy of 89 years. For men, it was nearly 86 years. By tracking disabilities associated with aging, such as trouble walking, bathing and getting out of bed, researchers found that of those seven additional years, six were typically disability-free.
The role of relationships in longevity was examined in a 2023 meta-analysis published in the journal Nature Human Behavior that included more than two million adults. Researchers found that at any given age, there is a 14 percent higher risk of dying early associated with loneliness and a 32 percent higher risk of dying early associated with social isolation.
Maintaining relationships is not only about living longer, but also about living well. The Harvard Study of Adult Development followed over 700 men beginning in 1938, later incorporating their spouses, and, more recently, over 1,300 descendants of the first group. The study’s director and associate director, Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz, explained in The Atlantic last year that they came to a “simple and profound conclusion: Good relationships lead to health and happiness.”
Still, the dangled promises of the internet health and longevity movement are tempting. A large part of its appeal is the fantasy of, and desire for, control: If you just do all of these routines and regimens and take all these supplements, then you’ll live forever and never grow old or become ill. But accidents happen. So, too, do random cell mutations that precipitate fatal cancers. And yet the fantasy of controlled longevity persists.
Over the last decade, I have studied excellence, and I’ve worked with some of the world’s best performers in the process. What makes a professional athlete or an Olympian great is not waking up at 5 a.m. to cold plunge and gaze at the sun. Rather, greatness is a result of focusing on the fundamentals of a respective craft, executing those fundamentals with relentless consistency for years (if not decades), adopting the right mind-sets, and surrounding yourself with the right people. The right genetics also help.
Health anxiety has risen greatly over the last few decades. The deluge of online content about chasing perfect biomarkers and immortality plays a role in that. And it also offers a contradictory problem: There is a real danger in focusing so much on extending the number of years in our lives that we neglect to focus on the life in those years. This is as true for the 50-year-old on Instagram as it is for a 16-year-old on TikTok.
It follows that perhaps the best protocol for living a good, long, fulfilled and productive life is to focus on nailing what actually matters, and then not stress about the rest. If your concern is that life is fragile and short, you simply don’t have time to waste.
(Brad Stulberg is a member of the adjunct faculty at the University of Michigan Graduate School of Public Health, the author of “The Practice of Groundedness” and “Master of Change,” and a co-founder of the newsletter “The Growth Equation.”)
TWO OLD MEN ARE SITTING IN A BAR.
One of them looks at the other and says, “You look familiar… where you from?”
The second old man replies, “Ireland.”
The first old man looks astonished and says, “No way. I’m from Ireland myself, what a small world!”
The second old man then looks at the first: “What city?”
The first old man says, “Dublin?”
The second old man looks astonished.
“No way. I’m from Dublin meself! What a small world.”
The first man looks at the second old man. “What school you go to?”
The second old man replies, “Saint Mary’s class of 89.”
The first old man is absolutely baffled.
“NO WAY. Saint Mary’s class of 89 myself! What a small world!”
At this point, another man comes into the bar and says to the bartender, “Hey, Joe! Anything interesting going on?”
The bartender says, “Not really… But the Murphy twins are drunk again.”
WOULD YOU PASS THE COGNITIVE TEST JOE BIDEN REFUSES TO TAKE?
(DailyMail.uk)
Pressure is mounting on President Joe Biden among voters and his own party to stand down or prove he is mentally fit enough to beat Donald Trump.
The 81-year-old has repeatedly refused to take a gold-standard cognition test that looks for signs of dementia or Parkinson's, which many doctors suspect he has.
Biden has said he doesn't need to take the exam, claiming 'every day I have that test' - implying the job of president itself is a test of his mental acuity.
By contrast, Donald Trump has infamously bragged about 'acing' the test twice, bragging that he scored a perfect 30 out of 30 on both occasions.
So, how would you do? We've included instructions on how to do the test yourself at home at the bottom of this article. DailyMail.com has also spoken to the creator of the so-called MoCA test on his thoughts about Biden.
This is a copy of the sheet the examiner and patient fill out during the 10-minute test
The Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) is a 10-minute test was created in 1996 for medical professionals to identify mild cognitive dysfunction, a precursor of dementia.
It assesses concentration, attention, memory, language, calculations, orientation, executive functions and visual skills.
The test is not a 'medical capability assessment' but a medical tool for screening cognition and is intended to be only administered by healthcare professionals that have received the required training and certification.
A score above 26 is deemed 'normal,' while anything lower than that is cause for concern.
Those who do well on the test do not need further cognitive examination.
The average score is 27.4. People with mild cognitive impairment score an average of 22.1, while Alzheimer's patients tend to score around 16.
First used in Montreal, Canada, the test is now one of the most respected methods of assessing cognitive health worldwide, available in over 100 languages and dialects, and formats for testing illiterate patients and in other cultural settings (by changing certain references).
If a patient has failed the MoCA or is suspected to have more subtle impairments, a 30 minute or a 60 minute battery of neuropsychologic tests are recommended, or a referral for more extensive neuropsychologic testing may be necessary.
Can You Pass The Cognitive Test That Experts Want Biden To Take?
This is how a doctor performs the test, and how a patient is graded. To test yourself, you'll need a partner and a sheet of paper.
Physicians say you should only do the test with a doctor to make sure the results are accurate and well-interpreted. There is a physician-approved self-test version which you can take online.
- Alternating Trail Making
Test: Write the first five letters of the alphabet and numbers (1-5, A-E) on a piece of paper.
Now connect them with dotted lines in ascending order.
Result: You get a point for every successful pair: 1-A; 2-B; 3-C; 4-D; 5-E. No lines can be crossed. The patient earns 0 if they make a mistake that is not immediately corrected.
- Visuoconstructional Skills (Cube)
Test: Draw your own version of a cube.
Result: One point if it is drawn correctly (i.e. three-dimensional, all lines are drawn, no line added, lines are relatively parallel and their length is similar – no point if any of those criteria are missing).
- Visuoconstructional Skills (Clock)
Test: Draw a clock, putting in all the numbers and set the time to 10 minutes past 11 o'clock.
Result: One point is allocated for each of the following three criteria:
Contour (One Point): the clock face must be a circle with only minor distortion acceptable (i.e. slight imperfection on closing the circle).
Numbers (One Point): all clock numbers must be present with no additional numbers; numbers must be in the correct order and placed in the approximate quadrants on the clock face. Roman numerals are acceptable. Numbers can be placed outside the circle contour.
Hands (One Point): there must be two hands jointly indicating the correct time; the hour hand must be clearly shorter than the minute hand. Hands must be centered within the clock face with their junction close to the clock center.
A point is not assigned for a given element if any of the above-criteria are not met.
- Memory
Test: This will involve your partner. Ask your partner to read out the below list of words, and then say back as many of the words as you can remember.
Face, Velvet, Church, Daisy, Red
Result: No plus points for this test, but minus points for every word missed or that is incorrect.
- Attention
Test (numbers): Ask your partner to read out the below list of numbers, then recite the numbers back to them in order.
2 1 8 5 4
Also ask your partner to read out the below list of numbers, and then recite them back to them in a backwards order.
7 4 2
Result: One point for getting each scenario right
Test (letters): Ask your partner to read out the below list of letters at a rate of one per second, and tap every time you hear the letter A.
F B A C M N A A J K L B A F A K D E A A A J A M O F A A B
Result: One point if no mistakes. No points if two or more errors.
- Test (math): Begin at the number 100, and then count down by subtracting seven every time. Do this five times. Your answers should look like the below numbers.
93
86
79
72
65
Result: Three points if four or five answers are correct, two points if two or three are correct, one point if one is correct, no points if they are all wrong.
- Sentence Repetition
Test: Ask your partner to read out the below sentences, and then say it back to them. The sentence must be exactly the same, with no substitutions or changes to words.
'I only know that John is the one to help today. The cat always hid under the couch when dogs were in the room.'
Result: One point for each correct sentence.
- Verbal Fluency
Test: Set a timer for 60 seconds and try to think of as many words as possible that begin with the letter F. The aim is to get at least 11 words.
These words cannot be proper nouns, like Bob or Boston, and cannot be the same sounding but with different suffixes (e.g. love, lover, loving).
Result: One point for reaching 11 words or more within a minute.
- Abstraction
Test: The similarity between a banana and an orange is that they are both fruit. Find the similarity between the following two pairs.
Train - bicycle, and watch - ruler
Result: One point for each similarity that is correct
Acceptable answers:
Train and bicycle: means of transport, means of traveling, used to take trips
Ruler and watch: means of measurement, measuring instruments
Unacceptable answers:
Train and bicycle: they have wheels
Ruler and watch: they have numbers
- Delayed Recall
Test: Try to recall all the words you heard earlier in the memory section, on question five.
Result: One point for each word that was recalled correctly.
The words Were Face, Velvet, Church, Daisy And Red.
- Orientation
Test: Say the exact date, and then the month, year and day. Also say the place where you are and the city that you are in.
Result: One point for each that is correct, up to a maximum of six points.
Total Score:
Add up all the points accumulating, adding a point if the patient has fewer than 12 years of formal education.
Around 16: cognitive health of an Alzheimer's patient
Around 22: cognitive health of someone with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI)
Above 26: Normal
30: Perfect score
(DailyMailUK)
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY
Joe Biden announced resolutely that he would only step aside for the candidacy of President, if he was instructed to by God Himself, over a week ago.
Now major democratic names are declaring that they will “respect Biden’s decision whether or not to run, when he makes it”. A decision he already made……
Does the cognitive malaise run through the entire party?
FRIDAY'S LEAD STORIES FROM THE NYT
‘No Poll Says That’: Biden Digs In as Democratic Fears Deepen
Inflation Cooled Further in June, Welcome News for the Fed and Consumers
Israeli Military Admits Wide-Ranging Failures in Border Village Attacked on Oct. 7
Why Nursing Home Residents Still Suffer Despite Tough State Laws
Shelley Duvall, Star of ‘The Shining’ and ‘Nashville,’ Dies at 75
FOIA FILES: CLEMSON UNIVERSITY
The FOIA request we sent Clemson University reveals a tight-knit relationship between university professors, federal law enforcement, and the news media.
by James Rushmore
If you’ve read the Twitter Files, you’re likely already aware of the social media platform’s interactions with Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub. The relationship between the two parties was tense. Internal communications confirmed Twitter’s annoyance with Clemson’s practice of “running to [the] press” with claims that Russian trolls were running rampant on their site. In May 2020, Yoel Roth, then head of site integrity at Twitter, voiced some of those concerns to Nick Pickles, the company’s global senior strategist for public policy.
Roth also took issue with the Hub’s persistent attribution of certain accounts to Russian trolls. Later that same month, he questioned the Hub’s Russia-heavy focus.
What is the Media Forensics Hub? Described as “an interdisciplinary team of researchers working to study and combat online deception,” the project kicked off in 2017. That was the year communications professor Darren Linvill and economics professor Patrick Warren joined forces to “uncover and expose” millions of tweets they attributed to Russian trolls. Sponsored by the taxpayer-funded South Carolina Research Authority, the Hub was officially launched in May 2020. Two years later, along with the University at Buffalo and several other institutions, it received a $5 million grant from the National Science Foundation.
Last May, Racket filed a FOIA request with Clemson. Our search produced a series of emails that make explicit reference to the university’s dealings with federal law enforcement agencies (providing Clemson “help with resources,” among other things), social media companies, and the news media. The Clemson files are difficult to summarize, but offer probably the most comprehensive portrait we’ve gotten yet of the role such ostensibly non-governmental “anti-disinformation” research institutions can play as middleman organizations. These emails also document the high degree of influence the school had with federal agencies and media, even if Twitter was not always as cooperative.
A summary of key communications is listed below, while three new batches of documents have been uploaded to the Racket FOIA library, where as always, they’re not paywalled...
racket.news/p/foia-files-clemson-university
WHY THE NEWS MEDIA'S JOB IS TO GROOM US
Large numbers of Palestinians and Ukrainians were killed in missile strikes days apart. The media's differing treatment of these comparable events is the clue to what the media's really there to do
by Jonathan Cook
When all we have to rely on in understanding our relationship to the news media is the media’s self-proclaimed assessment of its own role, maybe it is no surprise that most of us assume the West’s “free press” is a force for good: the bedrock of democracy, the touchstone of a superior western civilisation.
The more idealistic among us think of the news media as something akin to a public service. The more cynical of us think of it as a competitive marketplace in information and commentary, one in which ugly agendas are often in evidence but truth ultimately prevails.
Both views are fanciful. The reality is far, far darker – and I speak as someone who worked for many years in the Guardian and Observer newsrooms, widely seen as the West’s most progressive newspapers.
As readers, we don’t, as we imagine, “consume” news. Rather, the news consumes us. Or put another way, the media uses the news to groom us, its audience. Properly understood, the relationship is one of abuser and abused.
Sounds like a paranoid conspiracy theory?
In fact, just such an argument was set out many years ago – in more academic fashion – in Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman’s book Manufacturing Consent.
If you have never heard of the book, there may be a reason. The media don’t want you reading it.
When I worked at the Guardian, there was no figure more reviled in the newsroom by senior editors than Noam Chomsky. As young journalists, we were warned off reading him. How might we react were we to start thinking more deeply about the role of the media, or begin testing the limits of what we were allowed to report and say?
Chomsky and Herman’s Propaganda Model explains in detail how western publics are “brainwashed under freedom” by a media driven by hidden corporate and state interests. Those interests can be concealed only because the media decides what counts as news and frames how we understand events.
Its chief tools are misdirection and omission – and, in extremis, outright deception.
Tribal camps
The Propaganda Model acknowledges that competition is permitted in the news media. But only of a narrow, superficial kind, meant to divide us more usefully into tribal, ideological camps – defined as the left and the right.
Those camps are there to keep us imagining that we enjoy a plurality of ideas, that we are in charge of our response to events, that we elect governments – just as we enjoy a choice between watching the BBC and Fox News.
But our herding into oppositional camps isn’t really about choice. The camps are there to keep us divided, so we can be more easily manipulated and ruled. They are there to obscure from us the deeper reality that the state-corporate media is the public relations arm of an establishment that needs us weak.
To survive, the western power establishment has to engineer two related kinds of popular endorsement:
First, we must consent to the idea that the West has an inalienable right to control the Earth’s resources, even at the cost of committing terrible crimes both against the rest of humanity, such as the current genocide in Gaza, and against other species, as we wreck the natural world in our pursuit of impossible, endless economic growth on a finite planet.
And second, we must consent to the idea that the richest and most powerful elites in the West have an inalienable right to cream off most of the profits from this industrialised rape of our only home.
The media rarely identifies this wasteful, greed system, so normalised has it become. But when given a name, it is called capitalism. It emerges from the shadows only when the media need to confront and ridicule a bogeyman caricature of its main ideological rival, socialism.
Immersed in propaganda
The news media have been fantastically successful at making a system of suicidal resource extraction designed to enrich a tiny number of billionaires seem entirely normal to their audiences. Which is why those same billionaires are as keen to own the news media as they are to own politicians. In fact, gain ownership of the media and you own the political class too. It is the ultimate two-for-one offer.
No politician can afford to take on key state-corporate interests, or the media that veils those interests – as Jeremy Corbyn soon found out in the UK a few years back.
I have spent the past 15 years or more trying to highlight to readers the true nature of our relationship to the media – the groomer and groomed – using the media’s coverage of major news events as a practical peg on which to hang my analysis. Talking about the abusive relationship purely in the abstract is likely to persuade few, given how deeply we are immersed in propaganda.
Understanding how the media carries out its day-to-day switch and baits, its omissions, deceptions and misdirections, is the key to beginning the process of freeing our minds. If you look to the state-corporate media for guidance, you are already in its clutches. You are already a victim – a victim of your own suffocating ignorance, of your own self-sabotage, of your own death wish.
I have expended many hundreds of thousands of words on this topic, as have others such as Media Lens. You can read a few recent examples from me here, here and here. Or you can watch this talk I gave on how I freed myself professionally from the clutches of the corporate media and gained my freedom as an independent journalist: youtu.be/YOfLsj_qh4w
Different narratives
But rarely do we have examples of propaganda so flagrant from our “free press” that it is hard for readers not to notice them. This week the state-corporate media made my job a little easier. Over the past few days, it has reported on two closely comparable events that it framed in entirely different ways. Ways that all too clearly serve state-corporate interests.
The first such event was an Israeli air strike last Saturday on a school in Gaza, where Palestinian civilians, including children, had been sheltering from months of a rampaging Israeli military that has slaughtered many tens of thousands of Palestinians and destroyed most of the enclave’s homes and infrastructure.
The massive scale of death and destruction in Gaza has forced the World Court to put Israel on trial for genocide – not that you would know from the media coverage. The genocide case against Israel has been largely disappeared down the memory hole.
The second event, on Monday, was a Russian air strike on a hospital in Kyiv. It was part of a wave of attacks on Ukrainian targets that day that killed 36 Ukrainians.
Let us note that on a typical day in Gaza, at least 150 Palestinians are killed by Israel. That has been happening day after day for nine months. And the death toll is almost certainly a massive under-estimate. In decimated Gaza, unlike Ukraine, officials long ago lost the ability to count their dead.
Let us note too that, despite huge numbers of Palestinian women and children being killed each day by Israeli missiles, the news media largely stopped covering the carnage in Gaza months ago. The BBC’s main evening news barely reports it.
The fact alone that the killing of 36 Ukrainian civilians attracted so much attention and concern from the western media, in a war that’s more than two years old, when there is a far larger daily death toll of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, which our governments have been directly aiding, and the slaughter is of more recent origin, is telling in and of itself.
So how did our most trusted and progressive media outlets report these comparable events, in Gaza and Ukraine?
The headlines tell much of the story.
In an all-too-familiar pattern, the BBC shouted from the rooftops: “At least 20 dead after ‘massive’ Russian missile attack on Ukraine cities”. It named Russia as responsible for killing Ukrainians, and did so even when there was still some debate about whether Russian missiles or Ukrainian air-defence missiles had caused the destruction.
Meanwhile, the BBC carefully avoided identifying Israel as the party that killed those in Gaza sheltering from its bombs, even though Israel long ago stopped pretending that feeble Palestinian rockets could cause damage on such a scale. The headline read: “Air strike on Gaza school kills at least 15 people.”
The Guardian’s headlines were even more revealing.
The paper did, at least, identify Israel as responsible for the killing: “Israeli strike on Gaza school kills 16, say Palestinian officials.”
However, the dry, matter-of-fact language about those Palestinian deaths, the suggestion that the deaths were only a claim, and the attribution of that claim to “Palestinian officials” (with the now widely accepted implication that those officials can’t be trusted) was intended to steer the emotional response of readers. They would be left cold and indifferent.
The framing was clear: this was just another, routine day in Gaza. No need to be overly invested in Palestinian suffering.
Contrast that with the entirely different tone the Guardian struck in its headlines on the cover story of the attack on Ukraine: “‘No words for this’: horror over Russian bombing of Kyiv children’s hospital.” The subhead reads: “Witnesses express shock and revulsion after deadly missile strike on Ukraine’s largest paediatric clinic.”
The emphasis is on “horror”, “shock”, “revulsion”. “No words”, we are told, can convey the savagery of this atrocity. The headline’s emphasis is on the targeting of “children” with a “deadly missile”.
All of which, of course, could be equally said about the horror of Israel’s targeting of Palestinian children day-in, day-out. But, of course, isn’t.
Swaying readers
If this isn’t convincing enough, take another example of the Guardian’s treatment of comparable events in Gaza and Ukraine. Here is how the paper reported Israel destroying Gaza’s largest hospital back in November, when such actions had not yet become routine, as they are now, and when it had killed far larger numbers of civilians at the hospital in Gaza than Russia did in Ukraine.
The headline reads clinically: “IDF says it has entered Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital in ‘targeted’ operation against Hamas.”
The Guardian readily repeats the Israeli military’s terminology, conferring legitimacy on the carnage at al-Shifa hospital as a “targeted operation”. The fact that patients and medical personnel were the main victims is obscured by the Guardian’s repeating of Israel’s claim that it was simply “targeting Hamas” – just as Israel’s wanton destruction of Gaza has supposedly been about “eliminating Hamas”, even as Hamas grows stronger.
Apparently there is no “horror, “shock” or “revulsion” at the Guardian over the destruction and killing spree at Gaza’s largest hospital. Such sentiments are reserved for Ukraine.
The same differences are illustrated in the US “liberal” media, as Alan MacLeod noted on X.
A day after Russia’s strike on Ukraine, Israel was attacking another school shelter in Gaza. The New York Times made it clear how differently readers were supposed to feel about these similar events.
Headline: “At Least 25 Reported Killed in Strike on School Building in Southern Gaza.”
Note the passive, uncertain treatment – this was, after all, only a report. Note too that the perpetrator, Israel, remains unidentified.
Headline: “Russia Strikes Children’s Hospital in Deadly Barrage Across Ukraine.”
In stark contrast, Russia is clearly identified as the perpetrator, the active voice is used to describe its crime, and once again emotional descriptors – “deadly” – can be readily deployed to sway readers into an emotional response.
Headlines and photos are the part of a story that almost every reader sees. Which is why their role in framing our understanding of events is so important. They are the print media’s main means of propagandising us.
Skewed priorities
Broadcast media like the BBC work slightly differently in manipulating our responses.
Running orders – the channel’s way to signal its news priorities – are important, as are the emotional reactions of anchors and reporters. Just think of the way Steve Rosenberg, the BBC’s Moscow correspondent, half-stifles a sneer every time he mentions Vladimir Putin by name, or how he struggles to suppress a scoff at any of the Russian president’s statements. Then try to imagine any BBC reporter being allowed to do the same with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, let alone British leader Sir Keir Starmer.
Another way to make us invested in some events but not others is by concentrating on what are called “human-interest” stories, taking ordinary individuals and making their troubles and suffering the focus of a piece rather than the usual talking heads.
The BBC evening news, for example, has largely stopped reporting on Gaza’s suffering. When it does, reports occur briefly and late in the running order and they usually cover little more than the dry facts. Human-interest stories have been rare.
The BBC broke with that trend twice on Tuesday’s News at Ten – in the midst of Israel twice targeting schools that were supposed to be offering shelter to Palestinians already driven from their homes by Israeli bombs.
Did the BBC tell the stories of the victims of those air strikes? No, those attacks received the most minimal coverage.
The first human-interest story concerned a Ukrainian mother, shown desperately searching for her child in the aftermath of the attack on the Kyiv hospital the previous day, as well as their later reunion.
The second human-interest story, this one from Gaza, didn’t concern any of the many victims of the Israeli attacks on school-shelters. It focused instead – and at great length – on a Palestinian man beaten in Gaza for opposing Hamas rule.
In other words, not only did the BBC consider the day-old deaths of Ukrainians far more important news than Israel's killing that day of 29 Palestinian civilians, but it also considered the beating of a man by Hamas as a bigger news priority too.
When we are encouraged to care about Palestinians, it is only when the odd one is being brutalised by other Palestinians, not when millions of Palestinians are being brutalised by their occupier, Israel, in their ghetto-prisons.
The pattern to this skewing of news priorities, the constant distorted framing of events, is the clue to how we should decipher what the media is trying to achieve, what it is there to do.
BBC news coverage all too often looks like it is exploiting any opportunity to highlight violence by Russia, in strict accordance with British foreign policy objectives. Equally, it all too often looks like the BBC is engineering pretexts to ignore or downplay violence by Israel, again in strict accordance with British foreign policy objectives.
Ukraine is a key battleground for the West in its battle for global “full-spectrum dominance”, Washington’s central foreign policy strategy in which it positions itself so that no other great power, such as Russia and China, can challenge its control over the planet’s resources. The US and its western allies are ready to risk an entirely unnecessary nuclear war, it seems, to win that battle.
Israel, meanwhile, a colonial fortress-state implanted by the West into the oil-rich Middle East, is a critically important ally in realising Washington’s dominance in its region. The Palestinians are the fly in the ointment – and like a fly, they can be swatted away with utter indifference and impunity.
With this as our framework, we can understand why the BBC and other media fail so systematically to fulfil their self-professed remits of reporting objectively and disinterestedly, and fail to scrutinise and hold power to account – unless it is the power of an Official Enemy.
The truth is the BBC, the Guardian and the rest are nothing more than conduits of state-corporate propaganda, masquerading as news outlets.
Until we grasp that, they will continue grooming us.
jonathancook.substack.com/p/why-the-news-medias-job-is-to-groom
Presenting the details behind today’s concluding MCT image:
https://www.et-cultures.com/post/a-briefing-glimpses-of-uap-related-non-human-intelligences-and-their-activities
Where’s that report on the “trade talks” between ET and the feds?
Awoke early in the cool, still morning in Ukiah. Did a neti wash followed by Albuterol/Swiss Olba inhalations/cough syrup featuring English Ivy/ regular cough syrup/Vicks extreme cough drop/Swiss cough drop, and consequently am breathing normally. No wheezing. The Adventist Health medical group has tested thoroughly, and concluded that there is a COPD symptom evident but no disease could be found. Am welcome to come in for a “breathing treatment” at any time. For about the five hundredth time, I don’t smoke. Anything. At all. The stoners still hanging around South State Street near Talmage Road chide me for not making use of the myriad options available on the black market, which not only bring relief but “probably would cure the f-ing thing, since they told you that you don’t have anything in the first place!” Apparently if I weren’t so stupid, I’d be smoking fentanyl (minus the xylazine animal tranquilizer), drinking high gravity beer, and chewing CBD gummies. Yoga practices have had no apparent effect. That leaves divine intervention, the go to for a lot of problems nowadays. I’ll just keep playing LOTTO.
” when he confused Putin with Zelensky and Kamala with Trump.”
Minor errors, nothing to fret over; just par for the course for a braindead ass, who should get out of politics, especially out of the oval office. Haven’t ever voted for him, and never will.
The dems need to quit scraping the bottom of the trash barrel for prezudinchul candidates. In the meantime, my ballot will remain blank in the prezudichul category, for the second time in a row…damned if I am going to vote for a braindead idiot, even if he is the best his party can scrape together. Maybe four more years of the brainless mutant will cause people to awaken and take things into their own hands…for the very first time in the country’s history. That will be the end of idiocy like Heritage produces.
I try not to weigh in on national stuff and keep to Mendocino County issues but here we go.
I hate it when we say “Not my President” if we were all acting like Americans we would likely not be saying that. There have been a few I liked and a few I dislikes however they were all “My President”.
I feel terrible about the shape our country is in at the moment. I also feel terrible for President Biden.
Lots of people are saying he’s in great shape for his age and honestly it’s a different game than that.
Michael Jordan is in great shape for his age of that I am certain. That being said he doesn’t belong on the court with Steph Curry because he wouldn’t be able to compete.
At some point we also have to look at the well being of the president and ask what is being done to him in this process. At times it looks like elder abuse.
My pop was about 81 when we noticed he was suffering from cognitive decline, it worsened over the next 6 years until he passed. We sheltered him from what could be a tough world for someone suffering this condition. Thats what sons and daughters do and we were lucky to have an RN sister, without her knowledge it wouldn’t have been possible.
I can honestly say I wouldn’t let my father go through this. So as the children of our nation is this OK? That’s my question and
That’s my 2 cents.
Thank you Matt Kendall for your thoughtful, humane comments–beyond the politics of it all– on a very fraught national issue. I hope we find a decent answer to it for all involved, and for America.
Truth, Justice, Wisdom….. the lonely road…. 🌷✌️
To bad you can’t get a burger for 99 cents… lol 😂
mm 💕
ON RFK JR.by Deborah Friedell:
I completely agree.
Once again, thank you AVA.
Yes it’s a good piece. He’s acting out his personal problems on the political stage, to the detriment of the nation and the embarrassment of his family and former environmental colleagues, but fully funded by rightwing interests.
And anybody with scientific training knows he’s completely bonkers, but he’s milking that too.
(It’s from the London Review of Books)
Agreed, he is not anywhere near being balanced. Do you know how he is milking it and what his proposal might be for mental health treatment is the US?
As I read AVA, I somewhat understand the difficulties in Mendocino. I do not know of any place in the US that it better. Does anyone have a template for elsewhere which works better?
I read an article about how Houston has been dealing with the homeless.. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/22/opinion/homeless-houston-dallas.html.
True, housing does not directly focus with serious mental illness, but it helps.
Any thoughts Mazie?
Thanks again to AVA.
Robert Marbut supplied Mendo with a template, but the City of Ukiah and BOS punted and left it up to the NGO’s. Fort Bragg accepted the template and have had great success.
MAGA Marmon
Interesting, do you have further info on the template? I haven’t been in Mendocino for 18 months. The last time I visited, there were lots of cautions walking around. But, I noticed some small houses in the center of town. Asked and was informed they were for the elderly. Fair enough
Interesting. Do you have details about the template?
I live in Paris France. From what I see amongst my friends, they provide great mental health care. Which is part of the huge amount of taxes paid by French citizens. I still vote in the USA, in Texas and I take that seriously.
Homeless is becoming a huge problem in France. Most of them are illegal immigrants. I have no comment on that because I don’t vote in France. However I can say that the only resource for some of them are the churches which provide them sanction, still there is only so much the churches can do. Paris is busy bussing out the homeless to rural towns with no resources to house them or help them to create a Potemkin village for the Olympics. Can you imagine their mental health?
I cannot get into a discussion on illegal immigrants… in France or the USA.
Hi Anne,
Great article and their solution to addressing the issue in Houston is effective because of providing housing and unified team work to meet the needs of the citizens. This is good but the grey area is always those with the most severe mental illness and addiction being left in the throes of their illness/psychosis and we expect them to have comprehension and choice when they are urinating on themselves and eating trash and committing petty and felony crimes. Intervention is the necessary component to fix these issues but must be accomplished through community responsibility and action via service providers. Everyone believes that the other is doing their part, but are they ? I beg to differ, because if we by any means allow a sick individual to suffer believing they made that choice, while we hold firmly the key to change, we are making the homeless street people suffer more by our own hand. I had a very hard lesson in this, and it was the best thing I have learned on this mental illness road, that in order to help someone who is incapable of helping themselves you must do something and act in some way you never have before, we must embrace it differently and according to need not perceived BS. No one would act on our behalf to help, so I did it was my only choice for saving my son, I had to kick him out and demand that RCS take charge and house him, they did and that was the catalyst to a significant change in our lives. Fucking painful as hell but 18 months of psychosis, paranoia and delusions was worse, much worse. And it literally did not nor should have been that way, the action to intervene should have been swift and immediate just like as I have said before if you or I were having a heart attack, everyone will rush to your side and save you. Not when someone is crazy “politically incorrect I know but is true” no one comes. We have to start saving each other and that requires an enormous amount of change especially in mindset of these issues. We must provide housing, treatment, support and engage families because we are the first and only line of defense for the individual and the community.
mm 💕
There were arguably three elements. First, the city had strong political leaders who herded nonprofits so that they worked in unison rather than competing. Second, Houston’s lack of reguion. When the services in place are ineffective as we have here in Mendo and we all believe it is an individual or entitty responsibility and the approach is nto holistic and unified lation makes it easy, quick and cheap to build new apartments: Building a small one-bedroom can cost less than $200,000, while Los Angeles spent as much as $837,000 per apartment for people who were homeless. Third, Houston focused less on general help, such as handing out jackets or providing counseling, and more on moving people into apartments and providing ongoing care to keep them housed.
Houston’s lack of region or religion? Houston is a god fearing town. Like it or not. If you meant region, please clarify.
To be agreed, “Third, Houston focused less on general help, such as handing out jackets or providing counseling, and more on moving people into apartments and providing ongoing care to keep them housed.”
But a roof over your head is a good start. Mental health care in the US, as mentioned, is not sane.
How much of your tax dollars are being wasted on nonsense and not addressing this serious issue? I read in the AVA that there is a lot of nonsense in Mendocino. Keep up the good fight Mazie.
Anne that last portion was from article you shared about Houston!!!!
lol
sorry I should have added quotes and completely blew it ….
mm 💕
I will add, I am not part of any church or religion.
Mental illness often appears in adolescence. After a child is of a age, good luck. Before that the parent(s) have to grab the child by and get help. If available and not drugs floating around. 51/50 is useless. Long term professionals are.
I have seen mental illness in my family. Luckily my mother saw it and dealt with the child in question. It took four long years.
As I have written in the AVA before, you scrape back homelessness, often you find drug abuse. You scrape back drug abuse you often find family abuse and/or a genetic pre-disposition to instability.
I have counseled some of my friends about this. when their under aged child started to go off – more than most adolescents – most heard me, one didn’t. The child was dead in a year.
I am glad to hear your child survived but the must be more availability of decent health care in the US. For adults, in my opinion 51/50 is useless.
Again, keep up the good fight.
How dare he battle against Pfizer and Monsanto’s or think to disrespect blackrock. These are the liberal building blocks. He questioned the increase in auto immune disease, what a creep. He’s loony enough to believe young families should be able to own a home and receive a home equity loan to start a small business. The American dream is gone. You don’t battle global warming with more capitalism you plant more trees, and if you want less co2 now then hand out solar panels.
So if RFK (like some of us) claims the Ukraine bloodbath was unnecessary and should be concluded pronto he is pro-Putin? Otherwise he is crazy, although the CIA did kill at least JFK.