BELOW NORMAL TEMPERATURES in the interior this weekend, followed by slow warming early to mid next week. Coastal areas will remain cooler with occasional low clouds and patchy fog. (NWS)
STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): On the coast this Saturday morning I have a foggy 54F. A lots of fog & clouds are in the forecast currently with some clearing. It sure did not clear out yesterday though?
GRANGE FIRE, PHILO: On Line Comments
CALFIRE (Friday, 7pm):
Forward progress remains halted, containment increased to 25%, evacuation orders and warnings lifted. 128 fully open.
GRANGE FIRE SUBDUED; HIGHWAY 128 REOPENED
by Mary Callahan
An aggressive jump on the 80-acre Grange Fire in Mendocino County’s Anderson Valley by air and ground Thursday afternoon and evening seems to have brought the wildfire under control, allowing life in the Philo area to return somewhat to normal on Friday, local residents said.
One residence along Highway 128 was lost and five structures were damaged in the 3:38 p.m. fire, which grew from a series of ignition sites along the highway between Boonville and Philo, near the Anderson Valley Grange.
But several residents said the smoke had subsided Friday and the fire, though smoldering, was basically out. Firefighters remained on the scene to monitor the situation and put out hot spots.
“Everybody here was pretty lucky we didn’t have terrible winds, and it could have taken a real turn for the worse,” said Kevin Orr, who owns the Indian Creek Inn, located west of the fire, as well as several rental units on the fire’s east side, off Highway 128.
He also noted the assist from cooler weather, especially compared to several 105- and 107-degree days that prevailed a week earlier. The buffer provided by vineyards in the area also helped.
That’s small comfort to a friend who lost his childhood home to the fire just across the property line from one of Orr’s rentals, he said.
“Our neighbor’s house was burned to the ground, unfortunately,” he said.
But no injuries were reported despite the fire’s rapid growth and advance toward numerous rural homes in the area. Cal Fire called the fire’s forward progress stopped on Thursday evening.
One zone remained under mandatory evacuation order Friday, but all orders and warnings were lifted by 5 p.m., with repopulation of Vista Ranch Road scheduled for 6 p.m., according to Cal Fire PIO Scott Morgan.
Highway 128, restricted to one-way traffic for about a mile earlier Friday, also was opened by Friday afternoon.
“The power’s back on, and people are just going back to work and everything,” said Erika Valencia, a clerk at Lemons’ Philo Market.
Cal Fire, which at one point Thursday had put the fire at 150 acres before downsizing it to 80 acres later that night, said Friday afternoon the fire was still just 25% contained.
Investigators were out and about examining the scene on Friday, locals said. One told Orr it might have been started by a vehicle towing a trailer and dragging a chain, he said.
Gideon Burdick owns the Boonville Barn Collective with his wife, who saw the flames in the moments after they ignited on her way home from the market. She called him, then called 911.
A volunteer with the Anderson Valley Fire Department, he said he quickly responded to help battle the blaze and was busy working when he realized it was headed toward his home and farm.
His home, he said, is now “covered with retardant,” and some of his pepper and bean plants have been burned. It also “was emotionally difficult to have it be right there,” he said of the fire.
“It’s unfortunate, but like I said, all our people and our structures are OK, and I serve with an awesome fire department and it was great to be working alongside them yesterday,” Burdick said. “I couldn’t be prouder of the work we did.”
The Mendocino County Fairgrounds in Boonville had been set up as an evacuation center for people and livestock. Small animals can be evacuated to the Ukiah Animal Shelter at 298 Plant Road, in Ukiah, officials said.
(pressdemocrat.com)
ERNIE PARDINI
Those who would like to donate to the Anderson Valley Volunteer Fire Department can do so by mailing a check to the AV Volunteer Firefighters Association, AVVFFA, PO Box 414, Boonville, CA 95415 or via PayPal to @avvffa.org.
STEPHANIE BARTON:
I'm fundraising on behalf of life long valley residents, Jack ‘Lindsey’ Clow and his daughter, Alisha who heartbreakingly lost everything in the Grange Fire that devastated the valley Thursday afternoon. Thankfully, he and his animals got out safely just before losing it all. If you could find it in your heart to donate, absolutely anything helps. If you can't, that's ok too. Please share!
My husband saw the vehicle go by Lemon's Market (he and a few other folks said the guy was “flying through town”) and the tongue of the trailer wasn't attached to the hitch. So not only was it dragging the chain, that was barely holding on, but if the chain had broken? … And perhaps I'm being a jerk, but, wouldn't he have noticed something? I don’t know, like, handling, and damn. Why is this truck so gutless? As the tongue of the trailer is bouncing up and down onto the highway and sparking? I'm glad everyone is safe and my heart absolutely breaks for everyone who lost their homes. I set up a gofundme for Lindsey and Alisha. Anything helps. I realize times are hard.
https://www.gofundme.com/donate-to-jack-and-alishas-recovery
ROSSI HARDWARE:
Good morning all… Unfortunately yesterday one of our Hardware store family members lost their house in the fire. I know we will come together as a community to support them as best as we all can. That's the beauty of our small town. There has been a GoFundme page started, and we will have a donation jar at the store. Friday morning the store has been closed due to this tragedy. Mike will be opening the store Friday afternoon after lunch for anything you may need.
JENNIFER PASEWALK:
Vista Ranch is open. Yay, finally home.
TED WILLIAMS
I had the opportunity to respond to the Grange Fire in Anderson Valley on an Albion engine. I saw teamwork by firefighters from around the county, CalFire, law enforcement, CalTrans, PG&E, and AT&T. I also witnessed the destructive force of fire on a dry landscape. I am grateful for all the people involved at the scene and those supporting from afar. More than ever, we need to prevent ignition.
ALBION LITTLE RIVER FIRE PROTECTION DISTRICT
AV WINEGROWERS ASSOCIATION
Not even 24 hours after the start of the Grange Fire we are back to clear skies. Thank you first responders and community volunteers for your efforts to protect our beautiful valley and community
No wineries or vineyards were compromised and the 2024 vintage will be a great one. Harvest is around the corner
The AV Fire Department is having a tri-tip fundraiser this Sunday at the Boonville Fairgrounds. They also accept donations online for anyone who may want to contribute.
KZYX:
No live shows or call in shows this weekend.
Just want to let everyone know that while the main studio in Philo thankfully made it through yesterday’s fire intact, unfortunately some damage to studio equipment occurred when the power surged back on. In addition, our internet and phone systems are down.
The production team is working behind the scenes as hard as they can to get everything in Philo operational soon. Thank you for your patience.
SENATOR MIKE MCGUIRE
Thanks to our firefighters for their good work today and through the night. Thanks to Cal Fire and to the neighboring Fire Departments who sent engines over to support our community. Our thoughts are with the people of AV who have lost property and who are evacuated.
Stay safe out there!
JO SPIES ATHEY
Going camping on the Mendocino coast this weekend?
Enjoy your time.
Please do not use Hwy 128 to get there.
We had a fire yesterday in Anderson Valley and 128 is/was only open to one way traffic in the Philo area.
Do not think you can haul your trailer/RV to the coast using Mountain View Rd in Boonville. It has never been and will never be a short cut to the coast. It is a very very narrow windy road.
And lastly, check your trailer chains. Check your attached equipment. Yesterday’s fire was probably started by something dragging on the highway for miles. We, in Anderson Valley, were lucky more spots did not go up in flames.
Enjoy your vacation. Enjoy the coast and maybe Anderson Valley when you return home. Above all travel safely. Thank you.
‘MARCHIE’ SUMMIT
Death is never easy, no matter how prepared you are, or how long someone’s life has been. You always long for more time.
Marchie “Grandma” lived a long full life of 99+ years. It wasn’t always easy. In fact, sometimes her life was downright hard, but she would tell you, “God was always good”. She was more than ready to meet her Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Anyone who had the privilege of knowing her, knew her love for Jesus, because she would tell you and ask if you knew him too. Marchie had the gift of prayer, she prayed constantly. She always had a scripture or a hymn to share, whether you asked for it or not, but it was always a blessing to hear.
Marchie was born in Caddo Gap, Arkansas to Magdeline “Maggie” Coffman and James E. Coffman. She was one of ten children, Jerry, Cleo, Dorothy, Elsie, Ruby, Cathrine, Marchie, Wanda, Sonny, and Maurine, all of her siblings preceded her arrival in heaven.
While living in Arkansas, she married Wilson Thomas Summit and had four of their six sons (Tom, Tony, Dewey, Danny, David, Don) in Arkansas. In 1951, they packed up their family and moved to Boonville, Ca. This move to California, like many families from Arkansas were doing at the time, was a result of the booming old-growth logging industry. Coffman family members already in Anderson Valley, called their relatives back in Arkansas, telling them there were plenty jobs to be found in California, so they went.
Marchie was a housewife and mother to her 6 sons, but she also did odd jobs here and there to earn a little money. Many will remember the scrumptious pies she baked and sold in front of her home in Boonville. She was also a seamstress. Marchie could mend just about anything. She loved getting together with other women, be it family or friends, to stitch a quilt and fellowship. She was a talented quilter. She also loved a good bargain and yard sale.
Marchie's legacy lives on through her surviving family: sons Tommy (Joyce), Tony (Colleen), Danny (Debbie), David (Janese), and Dan (Debbie); grandchildren Tommy, Todd, Jonathan, Jeffrey, Jason, Sarah, Aimee, Christian; Laura; Lane; Rachel; Megan; Mandi; Joshua; Kelsey; 24 great-grandchildren; and two great-great-grandchildren. Her presence will forever remain in their hearts as they cherish memories of her love and wisdom.
Marchie Summit was preceded in death by her beloved husband Wilson Summit; son David Summit; grandsons William Summit and Peter Summit; great-granddaughter Savannah Logan.
She enjoyed attending church at the Assembly of God, and spent as much time as possible there, singing, worshiping and serving.
As many know, if you knocked on her door, she would welcome you in for some conversation, sassafras tea or coffee, pie, and/or some kind of fried food, if you weren’t careful it just might have been frog legs. You always left full and felt better about life. That was Marchie, she lived to lift others up. She will be greatly missed, but her legacy will live on in her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren, and everyone who ever had the privilege of knowing her.
A Funeral Service for Marchie Summit will be held on July 31, 2024, at 10:00 AM at Eversole Mortuary in Ukiah followed by a Graveside Service at the Boonville Cemetery and a Memorial Gathering at Senior Center-Anderson Valley in Boonville starting at 2:00 PM.
This is not goodbye, it’s see you later, Grandma. Thank you for sharing the love of Jesus with us. May we all strive to share it with others.
PETE E. BENVILLE
12/12/1936 - 6/1/2024
Our beloved father, Pete E. Benville, sadly passed away on June 1, 2024, at the age of 87. Thankfully, he was able to complete his life at the home he designed and built in Boonville, CA, with his two daughters present.
Pete was born in Seattle Washington, and raised in Soap Lake, Washington, where he cultivated lifetime friendships. He graduated from Washington State University with a degree in Chemistry. After finishing college, Pete served seven years in the Army Reserves while working as a chemist in Cook, Washington, where he met his wife, Linda. Wanting a warmer climate, the two moved in 1968 to sunny California. Pete found a position as a Research Chemist in Tiburon, where he remained until his retirement.
He was a private pilot with an adventurist spirit. He took pleasure in taking friends and family up in his Beechcraft Musketeer. Along with flying, Pete found joy in God and the Bible, rejoiced in his church community, loved spending time with friends and family. He was a Do-It-Yourselfer whether building his own house or fixing his cars. Pete believed in lifetime learning and hard work. He was athletic and enjoyed playing tennis along with other outdoor activities and spent many evenings square dancing. He had a unique sense of humor. Pete thought it was funny to name the family Golden Retriever “Au” which is the symbol for gold.
His friends describe Pete as kindhearted and said he always offered a helping hand when needed. This kind, loving man will be greatly missed.
Pete is survived by his two daughters, three grandsons, niece, nephew, cousins and his beloved mutt, Pooch.
To honor Pete's memory, we are holding a Celebration of Life in California.
UKIAH TRANSFER STATION FIRE: LIKELY SPARKED BY LITHIUM-ION BATTERY
by Justine Frederiksen
An improperly disposed of battery likely sparked the fire that destroyed a large building at the Ukiah Transfer Station early this month, the Ukiah Valley Fire Authority reported.
So many bales of recyclables, some of them 10-feet-high, were still smoldering in the warehouse several hours after the large building caught fire around 4 a.m. July 2 that UVFA Battalion Chief Justin Buckingham said it would “probably be a few days before I can get inside to take a look,” explaining at the time that the warehouse was “filled with green waste and mixed recyclables (such as cardboard), which is why it is still burning.”
Once Buckingham was finally able to get into the building to try and determine how the fire started, he said “due to (crews) having to remove all of the materials to continue extinguishing the fire, the investigation was inconclusive.”
However, Buckingham said it was determined to have been “accidental, most likely caused by a lithium ion battery improperly disposed of that ended up in one of the bales of mixed recyclables.”
Michelle Goodman, outreach manager at C&S Waste Solutions, which owns and operates the Ukiah Transfer Station, said that batteries are one of the two main causes of fires both at their sorting facilities and on their trucks.
When asked what type of battery was the culprit, Goodman said that “by the time we actually see the battery, it is too charred to identify,” but she added that the lithium ion batteries that power computers, cell phones and other electronics are found all too frequently in both the recycling and garbage bins her company picks up outside people’s homes.
“We are finding a lot of e-cigarettes, as well,” said Goodman, explaining that the problem with the discarded batteries comes when they are crushed, often inside the trucks that empty people’s bins. In fact, Goodman said lithium ion batteries were responsible for a fire on a garbage truck in Fort Bragg last month.
“The batteries become a hazard once they get mechanically damaged, such as smashed by equipment at the dump, and such fires are becoming a problem nationally with more fires occurring at transfer stations all over,” said Buckingham, noting that “even a lot of the AA and AAA are Lithium ion batteries.”
To properly dispose of the batteries, Buckingham said “people can keep them separate and drop them off at all of the transfer stations in the county (Albion, Boonville, Caspar, Covelo, Gualala, Laytonville, Potter Valley, Ukiah, Willits, Westport), as well as the household hazardous waste facility on Taylor Drive.”
For more information, call the recycling hotline at 707-234-6400.
SHACKMAN’S BUMBLING BURGLARIES
On Thursday, July 25, 2024 at approximately 10:44 AM, Mendocino County Sheriff's Office Deputies were dispatched to an in progress burglary in the 2800 block of South State Street, Ukiah.
Upon arrival, deputies located an open door and evidence that someone had entered the residence. Deputies conducted a search of the residence with the assistance of MCSO K-9 Jet, but did not locate anyone inside. Upon preliminary investigation, deputies learned that whoever was inside the residence had left just prior to their arrival.
Mendocino County Sheriff's Office Deputies concluded their investigation and began canvasing the area. A short time later, deputies were informed the suspect had returned and was inside the residence. Deputies returned and quickly apprehended Sydney Shackman, 56, of Ukiah inside the residence.
A search was conducted of Shackman's personal belongings, which revealed she was in possession of multiple pieces of jewelry that belonged to the homeowner. Mendocino County Sheriff's Office Dispatch informed deputies that Shackman was on probation with an “Obey all laws” clause.
Shackman was placed under arrest for Misdemeanor Violation of Probation and Burglary. Shackman was subsequently booked into the Mendocino County Jail where she was to be held in lieu of $50,000 bail.
ADAM GASKA:
Just another day in Ukiah.
This afternoon, my boss was alerted to a break-in at her house on the south end of Ukiah from security cameras. A woman had broken in. When her husband and Sheriff's arrived, she was gone. They took a rwport and left. I showed up and the woman had returned. She was talking to the husband. She was muttering nonsense. Not sure if it was drugs, mental illness or both. The husband chatted with her and stalled her while I called the sheriff who returned and arrested her. Looking around, we found stolen mail, phones, laptops belonging to other people. We opted to press charges hoping that along with her past charges, it will lead to a lengthy incarceration. Unfortunately, in many cases, being incarcerated is the only way to access any kind of treatment.
59 YEAR OLD UKIAH MAN DIES AFTER JUMPING OFF NOYO BRIDGE
On July 25, 2024 at approximately 2:41 p.m., Fort Bragg police officers were dispatched to the Noyo Bridge for the report of a lone adult male climbing over the outer rail, witnessed by a passing motorist. Officers arrived on scene within a minute of receiving the call and could not locate anyone on the bridge. An officer checking the area on foot saw a body floating in the Noyo River below.
Emergency personnel rushed down to the harbor in rescue effort. One officer stopped to ask for a floatation device from a commercial fishermen. Scott Hockett and the crew of the Blue Pacific F.V. provided the floatation device, then immediately headed out in the Blue Pacific in an effort to assist. Shortly after arriving in the area, a US Coast Guard vessel arrived and assumed the rescue effort. It was quickly determined the victim was deceased.
Based on evidence located and witness statements, no foul play is suspected at this time. MCSO Deputies arrived to begin a coroner’s investigation. The victim is not believed to reside on the Mendocino Coast. His identity is being withheld until it can be confirmed and next of kin notified.
FBPD is grateful for the immediate assistance we received from the crew of the Blue Pacific F.V., US Coast Guard, MCSO, Fort Bragg FD and EMS personnel.
If you or someone you know is in crisis and contemplating suicide, please call 988 - the national suicide & crisis hotline or Redwood Crisis Services’ 24-hour crisis line at (855) 838-0404. Someone is always available to listen.
Anyone with information on this incident is encouraged to contact Sgt Welter of the Fort Bragg Police Department at (707)961-2800 ext 212.
This information is being released by Chief Neil Cervenka. All media inquiries should contact her at ncervenka@fortbragg.com.
SUPERVISORS RAISE, AN ON-LINE COMMENT: These knuckleheads, who were elected by a bunch of knuckleheads, are running Mendocino County right into the ground.
Have you BEEN to Ukiah? Willits?
A few people actually have money and businesses, and a lot of people are living in old Motel Rooms, crappy old houses, Travel Trailers and god knows what else…
The average income in Mendocino County is $32,000, and it hasn’t gone up much in 10 years…
Why do these idiots, and the idiots in charge of every other county, deserve large raises?
Life in Mendo is educational, but the working people there, the ones who actually have jobs and homes and substance, all commute in from somewhere else, and I met folks in Willits who commuted to San Rafael, to get a decent job…
No wonder, and it is amazing how many people have jobs where they do absolutely nothing of value while pretending to control everything else, and who are paid over $100,000/year!
Same thing in Lake County, same thing in Humboldt County…
And, not a few of these folks actually got their jobs, by running unopposed!
Life is weird, people are kinda funny, but Governments are all disturbingly corrupt, incompetent and nepotistic, and the most toxic narcissists, are sitting in “Supervisor’s Seats” all over Northern California.
“Hmmmm, what should we do today?” “I know, let’s give ourselves a raise!”
Salaries of Mendocino County Employees:
According to Indeed, the average salary for a Mendocino County employee ranges from $35,111 per year for a Senior Staff Assistant to $202,199 per year for an Environmental Health Officer. Hourly pay ranges from $19.46 for a Senior Staff Assistant to $60.39 for Deputy County Counsel. For example, the average hourly pay for a Deputy Sheriff is $35.61, which is 36% higher than the national average. Glassdoor also lists salaries for other County of Mendocino positions, including Social Worker and Staff Assistant.
Hey, enjoy being the only ones keeping up with the costs of living, who actually live in your county!
WELCOME TO OUR MENDOCINO FOOD AND NUTRITION PROGRAM'S NEW EMPLOYEES, MARY AND ROBERT!
Robert is joining as our Willits Warehouse Supervisor, and Mary is our Development Director! They're both already making a huge impact, and we're so excited to see the MFNP grow!
The MFNP is the umbrella organization dedicated to connecting food banks, pantries, pop-ups, senior centers, and more around Mendocino County to distribute healthy, fresh food for all. And big changes are coming, so look out for exciting news in the coming weeks!
UKIAH CONSTRUCTION UPDATES FOR THE WEEK OF JULY 29TH:
There’s not a lot to report this week, as we’re in the very final stages of the project. Striping is beginning, and some of that work will occur at night to help minimize impacts to traffic. Soon, there will be benches, garbage cans, and bike racks added, as well as landscaping.
When the striping is complete, all the traffic signals will begin operating normally except the one at Gobbi/State, which will remain on flash until the utility work on Gobbi Street is completed. AT&T is finally onsite to remove their overhead lines and the old utility poles; that work will continue until about mid-August.
The biggest visual impacts will occur when the landscaping goes in and the old utility poles come out. Take note of our old Highway 101 one last time before the transformation is complete!
Have a great weekend—
Shannon Riley, Deputy City Manager
LITTLE RIVER MUSEUM--FRESH SUPPLY OF JIGSAW PUZZLES COMING FOR THIS WEEKEND.
Little River Museum has a fresh supply of jigsaw puzzles coming this weekend to go with our antique puzzle display ($5 each). Our antique toys and train exhibit it up and functioning, and the hands-on Woodlands Wildlife exhibit is getting a lot of attention too. Free admission, free local Pomo Indian trail maps and a recording of spoken Pomo language. Their summer encampment was directly behind the museum back in the day.
Local genealogy files, local history interviews and books, and lots of interesting exhibits. Did you know that many of the brick patios we see in friends' yards originally came from England as ballast in the holds of sailing ships back in the late 1800s. The ships unloaded them here and filled their holds with lumber from local mills. The bricks were purchased to make blacksmith forges, chimneys and patios. Some are imprinted with the name of the company that made them. Open 11-4 Saturday and Sunday. Little white house with an architectural surprise located just north of Van Damme beach (8185 Highway One, Little River). All visitors receive one free raffle ticket--good for local prizes.
Ronnie James ronnie@mcn.org
SIERRA NEVADA MUSIC FESTIVAL CANCELLATION, continued.
Our long-beloved Sierra Nevada World Music Festival was cancelled this year. It left many people very sad and a few very mad, and understandably so, as there was very little cash left for refunds (many others seem to understand, and have been kind about it). I can only speak for myself, not the promoters, but a main point I was trying to make, not really included by the writer of a recent news story, was that anybody who alleges that anything about this outcome was actually intentional or some kind of scam must not know much about the realities and certainly don’t know the people who put this wonderful show on for decades (that’s also libelous). Dozens of fests have cancelled this year, for similar reasons — high costs and low sales. We all lost out, some more than others. I didn’t get paid either, but this was never about money. It’s been my favorite weekend of the year for decades. I was honored to serve as MC thanks to founder Warren Smith. I miss it and everyone in the extended #snwmf family. That’s my view from the stage. Nothing else like it, alas. Thank you, with a huge sigh.
— MC Rico (Steve Heilig)
CIRCLE UP!
Circle Dance this Sunday, 3-5pm, in Mendocino
Greetings! Join us this Sunday (7/28), 3-to-5pm at the Mendocino Community Center for our monthly circle-dancing. No previous experience or partners necessary! All dances are taught before each one. $5 donation is encouraged.
Re Covid safety, please don’t come if you are not feeling well or have been exposed. We actively support at-risk individuals or persons caring for at-risk people to wear masks if they would like. However, masks are not required.
Dance is one of the oldest ways in which people celebrate community and togetherness, and the circle is the oldest dance formation. Circle Dance mixes traditional folk dances with new choreography's set to a variety of music both ancient and modern. Dances can be slow and meditative or lively and energetic.
Circle Dance groups are a grass roots phenomenon, with hundreds of dance circles in the US, England, and throughout the world. The Mendocino group has been dancing every month for over 30 years. As one dancer put it, “We are doing what people have been doing for millennia, on beaches, in forest glens, around campfires-- dancing together in circles to express joy, passion, solidarity, pain and faith.”
For more information on Sacred Circle Dance go to http://www.CircleDancing.com
For local info contact Devora Rossman at drossman@mcn.org or 937-1077122.
LOCAL EVENTS (this weekend)
PLANS WE'VE GOT, CLUES WE'RE LOOKING FOR
Staff Report & Agenda for August 1, 2024 Planning Commission Meeting
Dear Interested Parties,
The Staff Report(s) and Agenda for the August 1, 2024, Planning Commission meeting is now available on the department website at:
Public Hearing Bodies | Mendocino County, CA
https://www.mendocinocounty.gov/departments/planning-building-services/public-hearing-bodies#!
Please contact staff if there are any questions,
Thank you
James Feenan
Commission Services Supervisor
BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND
WOODY GUTHRIE’S AMERICAN SONG
Songs & writings by Woody Guthrie, Conceived & created by Peter Glazer
Orchestrations and arrangements by Jeff Waxman
Directed by Elizabeth Craven
Music Direction by Jenni Windsor & Dave Alden
The Mendocino Theatre Company, in collaboration with Gloriana Musical Theatre, is bringing back the popular and critically acclaimed production of Woody Guthrie's American Song. This revival features the same beloved cast and band, promising a limited run from August 7 to August 25. Directed by Elizabeth Craven with music direction by Jenni Windsor and Dave Alden, this musical journey through America celebrates the life and works of the iconic troubadour Woody Guthrie.
The show, conceived and created by Peter Glazer, is a heartfelt tribute to Woody Guthrie, featuring thirty of his songs and selected writings that reflect the essence of American life from the 1920s to the 1980s. Audience members can expect toe-tapping tunes, haunting ballads, protest anthems, and songs of hope, offering a panoramic view of American history and culture. Woody Guthrie's American Song has been a beloved musical tribute since its inception in 1988 and continues to captivate audiences of all ages.
The ensemble of five actors and four musicians will guide viewers on a musical journey from the heartland of Oklahoma to the bustling streets of New York City, capturing the essence of Guthrie's life and legacy. This production is a must-see for those who appreciate American history, struggles, and joys, as it presents a raw and unvarnished celebration of the human experience. From Guthrie's humble beginnings in Oklahoma to his untimely passing, the play invites audiences to witness the evolution of one of America's most influential folk artists. With a mix of powerful storytelling and Guthrie's timeless music, Woody Guthrie's American Song promises to be a moving and immersive theatrical experience for all who attend.
ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
Mendocino Theatre Company in association with Gloriana Musical Theatre, of Ft. Bragg, CA has assembled collaborative ensemble of actors, singers and instrumentalists under the stage direction of Elizabeth Craven (MTC) and musical direction by Jenni Windsor (Gloriana) and Dave Alden. Included in the acting/singing ensemble cast are: Byron Greene, Carrie Fishman, Maria Ramos, Steve Worthen. The WGAS band includes: Dave Alden (Band Director/guitarist); Dan Coulson and Meghan Miller (acoustic bass); Zoe Berna & Emily Berna (fiddle); Alex Miller & Jim Gilbert (banjo, mandolin). The play’s scenery and lights are designed by Jeff Rowlings, sound design by Zach Taylor, multi-media design by Elizabeth Craven and costume design by Susan Collins.
Performance Dates:
August 7, 8. 9, 10, 15, 16, 17, 22, 23, 24 at 7:30 PM, August 11, 18 and 25 at 2:00 PM
Location: Mendocino Theatre Company’s Helen Schoeni Theatre
25200 Little Lake Street (corner of Little Lake and Kasten)
Mendocino, California
Tickets available by calling the MTC Box Office 707-973-4477 or visiting online at mendocinotheatre.org
Ticket Price: $33
ED NOTES
WITH THE MAGATS calling us Marxist liberals (sic) and radical socialists (double sic), a reader asked me to recommend some books on radical lit. I replied that I had stumbled around the stacks for years trying to find a readable history of the Russian Revolution, defining “readable” here as a history that didn't put me to sleep by the end of the first paragraph, but here are the ones I've read all the way through.
I NOD OFF EASILY, though, and am hardly an authority on either the subject of the Russian Revolution or expedited reading on it, but I'd begin the way I began, which was with pre-Rev creative lit — Chekhov primarily — to get a feel for what Russia was like before the Bolsheviks took over. If you can find a copy of Chekhov's Czarist-commissioned non-fiction report, “The Island: A Journey to Sakhalin,” which I read only a few months ago for the first time, you might agree that it's as good a picture as any on the conditions that inspired the revolution.
LENIN: THE NOVEL by Alan Brien, a British writer, based on the life of Lenin is also a painlessly quick crash course in the history of the Russian Revolution as seen through the eyes of Brien’s brilliantly re-created Lenin. It's one of the few novels I've read based on an historical figure that has seemed consistently plausible against the known facts.
FOR STRAIGHT HISTORY, there's ‘Ten Days That Shook the World’ by John Reed, Oregon's finest son. He also wrote some short stories collected under ‘Daughter of the Revolution and Other Stories’ that are useful in understanding what the revolutionary period was really like. (The cornball movie, ‘Reds’ was based on Reed and the RR.)
IF YOU'VE GOT lots of time and serious staying power, Trotsky's version of the Russian Revolution is well worth the effort. As a guide to the post-revolution civil war period, the stories of Isacc Babel are unsurpassed, so supremely surpassing that Babel was eventually executed by Stalin. Of course there's ‘Dr. Zhivago’ and all the books by Solzhenitzen, which should be read with one eye on the crank factor he brings to his work, not that it's for the likes of me or anyone else to patronize the old boy, brave as he was all those grim years he was on the receiving end of perverted socialism.
I ALSO RECOMMEND a couple of histories by a British historian named Antony Beevor: ‘Stalingrad’ and, I think, ‘The Fall of Berlin.’ Both these books give you a good sense of Soviet Russia at war. (And also give you the full sense of Hitler's incompetence as a military strategist; Stalin was much the superior of the two.) Edmund Wilson's ‘To The Finland Station’ is the best overall book on the revolution I know of; it's available at most used book stores still. (Wilson's book on the literature of the American Civil War — ‘Patriotic Gore’ — is the best overall account of that pivotal cataclysm so far as I'm aware, conceding the obvious limitations thereof.)
THERE'S NO WAY to recommend books on the Russians’ role in the Spanish Civil War without getting into fights with at least a dozen AVA readers, but ‘Homage To Catalonia’ by Orwell is very good from the anarchist/unaffiliated radical perspective. There are also lots of good memoirs by American and British communists who fought in Spain that discuss the complicated politics of it from the opposite perspective of Orwell, including two by men I happened to have known — the late Harry Fisher and the late Alvah Bessie. Lots of contemporary scholars and crank leftists, looking back at Spain all these years later, tend to dismiss the Lincoln Brigade as dupes, Stalinists, whatever. Not me. They went to Spain to fight fascism and that's what they did, although they too mostly came to have second thoughts about Stalin's role there.
ONE MORE BOOK I found in a long gone Frisco used book store that's probably unknown to anyone but me and three or four junior professors is called ‘An American Looks at Karl Marx’ by William J. Blake, is a native of Missouri who went on to become a big shot capitalist as a director of the London Scottish Banking Corp. and editor of the long-defunct, ‘Magazine of Wall Street.’ Mr. Blake, it is safe to say, was not a communist, but his 1939 book on Marxism is the most lucid I've read — the only one I've read because all the others I've tried had me snoring half-way through their prefaces, and catatonic by the time I got to the opening chapters.
CATCH OF THE DAY, Friday, July 26, 2024
ISMAEL CORONA, Carmichael/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs.
ALEX KADOSHNIKOV, Sacramento/Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, failure to appear.
CHRISTOPHER KEYES, Ukiah. Failure to appear, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)
LARRY MILLER, Eureka/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.
JESUS MONTES-DEOCA, Ukiah. Solicitation of minor to use controlled substance, cruelty to child-infliction of injury, contributing to delinquency of minor, controlled substatnce.
RICHARD NEAGLE, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs, resisting.
ANDREA SCROGGINS, Willits. Disobeying court order.
AARON SIMPSON, Ukiah. Controlled substance for sale, paraphernalia.
MARK SPITSEN, Ukiah. Failure to appear, probation revocation.
ERIC WRIGHT, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.
MEMO OF THE AIR: Good Night Radio show all night tonight on KNYO!
Soft deadline to email your writing for tonight's (Friday night's) MOTA show is 6pm or so. If you can't make that, that's okay, send it whenever it's done and I'll read it on the radio next week.
Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio is every Friday, 9pm to 5am* PST on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg and KNYO.org. The first hour of the show is simulcast on KAKX 89.3fm Mendocino.
Plus you can always go to https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com
and hear last week's MOTA show. By Saturday night I'll put up the recording of tonight's show. Also there you'll find an assortment of cultural-educational amusements to occupy you until showtime, or any time, such as:
Nine moves.
https://27thstreet.me/2024/07/21/double-rook-sacrifice-wins-in-9-moves/
How Garrison Keillor explained they did this was, they'd wrap a wig around a full roll of toilet paper, pin it to the top or back of their real hair with a hundred bobby pins, and then empty a whole can of hairspray at it, after they already had like a quarter-pound of makeup on their face. I'm old enough to have been there for this, and if you were too you know how weird it was, and what it smelled like. They did this for all significant events: weddings, prom, graduations, sometimes for court.
https://www.vintag.es/2024/07/1960s-big-hair.html
And the real story.
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/560
*If you want to do a radio show of your own devising from KNYO's place on Franklin Street, everything you need is there. It's easy and fun. Bob Young will get you started. Contact him: bobb@poetworld.net. If you'd like to set up your own remote studio to do radio live on KNYO from your kitchen or back porch or any event space, or to record your real-life, non-A.I. music, or whatever, I can advise you. It's cheap, and you already have most of what you need, maybe all. I'll be doing my show tonight from Albion, for example, and next week from the Bay Area. Rich Alcott does his show on KNYO from his side-porch in Rutland, Vermont.
Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org, https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com
ONE OF AMERICA'S OLDEST VINEYARDS, Ohio based Meier’s Winery which sells about 30 different labels, has filed for bankruptcy - putting 134 years of wine making expertise at risk, a blow to the homegrown wine industry.
(SF Chronicle)
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY
Frick v Frack. Smoke & mirrors. Wall Street makes gobs of money regardless of which party is in the White House.
Divide & conquer.
Dems vs. Republicans
Saturday TV Rasslin’. When the crowd goes home and the cameras stop, the “Good guys” and the “Villains” all drink beer together and laugh at us rubes paying the bills.
CALIFORNIA VINEYARD WORKERS ARE LOSING WAGES AMID EXTREME HEAT. NOW THEY’RE FIGHTING BACK
by Jess Lander
When temperatures hit 90 degrees in the Sonoma County vineyards where Isidro Rodriquez works, “everything stops,” he said. His employer’s policy is to send vineyard workers home for their safety, but they don’t get paid for lost hours: In the past six weeks, Rodriquez has missed an estimated 15-20 hours of work due to extreme heat, and it’s been difficult to pay his bills.
Rodriquez isn’t alone, said Davida Sotelo Escobedo, an organizer for the advocacy coalition North Bay Jobs with Justice. Escobedo said the organization has recently heard from many local farmworkers who report being sent home early due to high temperatures, causing them to lose wages. Others have risked their health by working in the extreme heat, sometimes without access to nearby shade or sufficient breaks.
“The tiny impact of one day has huge financial repercussions for people’s families,” said Escobedo.
These challenges have reinvigorated an ongoing fight over disaster pay in Sonoma County , which started with farmworkers advocating for better working conditions during wildfires. Rodriquez and roughly 500 farmworkers and community members will march in downtown Healdsburg on Sunday to protest for disaster pay — which would guarantee pay for missed work during extreme heat, fires and other unpredictable climate events — and extra pay when working in dangerous weather conditions.
Roughly 500 farmworkers and community members will march in Healdsburg Sunday to fight for disaster and hazard pay.
Mason Trinca/Special to The Chronicle
The protest, which will start at 4 p.m., is set to be the largest yet organized by North Bay Jobs with Justice, Escobedo said, with turnout expected to be double the size of past marches. The stakes are high, as extreme weather events are happening more frequently than ever. Nine of the 10 hottest California summers have occurred since 2006, and this week marked the fourth round of excessive heat warnings and advisories issued in July by the National Weather Service. Many parts of California are on track to break all-time temperature records.
“It’s going to keep getting worse,” said Escobedo. “Farmworkers are on the frontlines for every extreme event.”
But workers often fear that if they voice their grievances, they’ll lose their jobs. Multiple California State agencies are investigating a claim that six Yolo County farmworkers were recently let go from their jobs in retaliation for leaving early during a heat wave. In 2023, Cal/OSHA issued 925 violations from heat-related inspections of agriculture and construction employers.
“What they’re making isn't keeping up with inflation,” said Escobedo. “When people are in a financially tight spot, they can be scared to speak up.”
Last year, Sonoma County vineyard workers won their fight for some wildfire protections. The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors ruled to deny wineries and growers access to their properties in evacuation zones after it was discovered that hundreds of farmworkers were previously forced to work in toxic, smoke-filled areas to pick grapes.
Only a handful of California companies currently offer disaster pay to farmworkers.
However, there was a caveat: For workers, it could mean going several days or weeks without pay.
The Board of Supervisors set aside $3 million into a disaster fund, and this winter, it distributed $1 million in payouts to farmworkers who lost wages due to heavy rains. North Bay Jobs with Justice believes this is the first county program of its kind, and unlike most farmworker relief programs, the benefit is available to undocumented immigrants. But the coalition also says it’s not enough and believes employers should step up and offer disaster pay to their workers.
Only a handful of companies have done so thus far, like Boeschen Vineyards, a small Napa Valley winery. Owner Doug Boeschen said he had an epiphany after the 2020 Glass Fire, which caused significant damage to his St. Helena property and destroyed one of his neighbors, Chateau Boswell. “We were caught up in our own problems and challenges that harvest,” said Boeschen. “But I realized afterward that there were a lot of people who had it harder than us, and some of those were people who harvest our grapes. They weren’t able to work for long periods of time or worked in hazardous conditions.”
Boeschen now offers disaster insurance and hazard pay to workers. In the case of an evacuation or an unhealthy air quality index above 150, he said workers are given two choices. If they decide to stay home, he will pay them for their hours missed. If they come in, they get time and a half. His policy was designed for wildfires, but he said he views extreme heat as “the same scenario essentially.”
Boeschen said he understands that in this time of uncertainty in the wine industry, which is facing myriad challenges like declining sales and a grape glut, some owners might resist an additional expense. But without farmworkers, “We wouldn’t have Napa Valley as we know it in any way,” said Boeschen. “I believe in 10 years, this will very much be an industry norm and the people that don’t do this will stand out as bad actors.”
(SF Chronicle)
EYE-POPPING CONSTRUCTION COSTS INTENSIFY CALIFORNIA’S CHRONIC HOUSING SHORTAGE
by Dan Walters
It’s not hyperbole to declare that California’s most serious economic, social and political issue is its chronic shortage of housing, particularly for families in the lower income brackets.
As the yawning gap between demand and supply, especially in urban areas, pushes costs upward, it drags down the economy by discouraging investment in job-creating businesses; it drives employers and their workers to other states where they can afford housing; it fuels the nation’s highest level of functional poverty and it’s the major factor in California’s worst-in-the-nation homelessness.
The state has pushed local governments to reduce impediments to housing construction, setting a goal of 2.5 million new units over the current eight-year planning cycle, or an average of more than 300,000 units a year, “and no less than one million of those homes must meet the needs of lower-income households.”
At best, California’s private and public housing developers are meeting a third of that goal, and the recent trend is downward. The state budget notes that in 2023 residential permits declined by 2.9% from 2022 to about 110,000 permitted units, and it projects that while single-family housing construction will probably pick up this year, multifamily units are expected to contract 5.5%, the largest annual decline since 2020.
The budget cites high interest rates, imposed by the Federal Reserve to combat inflation, as a major factor in the state’s stagnant housing picture. But inflation itself — the rising costs of building materials and construction labor — also is a problem, as is the tangle of red tape that projects must endure.
A project now underway in downtown Sacramento, just a couple blocks from the state Capitol, illustrates how high development costs affect supply. The decrepit Sequoia Hotel, originally built in 1906, is being transformed into 88 tiny units of housing — 150 square feet each — for homeless people, at a total cost of $50.1 million, with most of the money coming from the state. That’s nearly $600,000 per unit, more than enough to buy a detached single-family home in one of Sacramento’s middle-class neighborhoods, and close to $4,000 a square foot.
Sacramento is by no means an isolated example of the eye-popping costs of building housing for low-income Californians.
A similar project in downtown San Francisco, converting a fire-damaged building into 35 low-rent apartments, is costing a million dollars a unit, the San Francisco Chronicle revealed this week.
“Just five years ago, the cost to build affordable housing in San Francisco was only about $740,000 a unit, according to the Bay Area Council Economic Institute. But these days units are clocking in at $1 million or even higher, prompting the question of what can be done to bring down costs,” the Chronicle reported.
What indeed?
Governmental projects, such as those in Sacramento and San Francisco, tend to have the highest costs because they must include all sorts of mandates, such as union-scale labor, and they depend on a pastiche of financing sources.
Private projects that needn’t follow those mandates can be done much less expensively, particularly if they consist of modules that have been assembled in factories and then joined together on the site. However, construction unions bitterly oppose such innovations and flex their political muscles to minimize their use.
A new $50 million housing fund created by Apple and private philanthropists will only finance projects that meet strict cost limits — less than $550,000 for studios and less than $700,000 for larger units. That’s still a lot of money, but it’s a step in the right direction.
California will never solve its housing crisis if it doesn’t get more — much more — bang for its bucks.
PARIS PULLS OFF THE IMPROBABLE WITH AN EPIC, SAFE OPENING CEREMONY ON THE SEINE
by Ann Killion,
PARIS — Magnifique!
When Paris announced its aspirational, inspirational plan for the 2024 Olympic Opening Ceremony, the world wondered if it truly would happen. And as, over the past two years, the world became an even more violent place, the doubts increased.
Paris pulled it off Friday night. The Ceremony on the Seine was beautiful, creative and — perhaps most important — safe. It was a celebration of this beautiful city and of the modern Olympic movement, founded by a Frenchman, Baron Pierre de Coubertin.
The promised protests and disruptions didn’t materialize. Though these “open Olympics” were launched under armed guard and behind fencing, the Games were successfully opened without incident.
When the Olympic cauldron, shaped like a hot air balloon, was lit and rose into the sky over the Tuileries Garden, and Celine Dion sang Edith Piaf, the evening was complete. A complete success.
The day started inauspiciously. Paris awoke to the news that the nation’s rail system had been attacked in a series of arson fires detected by authorities hours before dawn. The three affected lines, heading north, east and west in and out of the city, caused travel headaches and huge delays.
But the bigger concern, beyond inconvenience, was whether those coordinated attacks were a harbinger of what this day could bring, this ambitious moment that had been anticipated for more than two years and that required millions of hours of planning. What other threats loomed?
Paris was draped in gloom Friday. Rain clouds hovered low over the Eiffel Tower, dripping disappointment onto the emptying streets, threatening to ruin the party. The city became increasingly quiet as the day progressed, as Metro stations were shut down, the streets were vacant and the main presence was police and gendarmes on every corner.
By late afternoon, the clouds stubbornly refused to dissipate, thwarting photographers’ dreams of golden hour on the Seine and making journalists switch their main concern from staying safe from terrorism to keeping our laptops safe in the rain.
But you could not escape the reality that this was an unprecedented event and safety was the primary concern. Helicopters passed overhead. Atop the recognizable monuments and stately buildings, the black shadows of snipers were the gargoyles of our time.
These Games are being held in a world full of turmoil. The final two countries introduced — host of LA28, the United States, and the host of these Games, France — are both nations internally divided. France is operating under a caretaker government, while President Emmanuel Macron — who was in the grandstands at the parade’s end at Trocadéro — won’t name a new government until after the Games. America continues to split in two. The Russians are banned from Paris and have attempted to launch misinformation havoc on these Games. The Israeli-Gaza violence continues, fomenting protests around the world.
Can the Olympics restore French confidence? Can it help heal a divisive torn world?
It is naive to think so, yet it is important to believe that the world coming together in a peaceful way is a good and important thing. Young athletes laughing and waving flags as they boat down the Seine is a beautiful image. The worst fears of skeptics, who wondered how the IOC could dare to put Israeli athletes on an open-air boat for hours, were thwarted: Israel, Italy, Iceland and Jamaica shared a large boat, cheering and dancing. The Americans, as usual, seemed oblivious to any threat.
The Opening Ceremony began humorously, with an image of a torch bearer arriving at the massive Stade de France, only to find it empty. A French hero, Zinedane Zidane, arrived to take the torch from him and carried it through the streets of Paris, into a Metro station and onto a train, before passing it to what appeared to be a refugee family in a rowboat on the Seine. Clouds in the colors of the French tricolor burst over the Pont d’Austerlitz, and the boat parade began, first with the traditional Olympic leader Greece, followed by the Refugee Olympic Team.
The 4-mile-long ceremony was breathtaking, beautiful and weird, with dancers (who had called off a proposed strike the day before) hanging from what was supposed to be the scaffolding enfolding Notre Dame, a riverside performance by Lady Gaga, a heavy metal tribute to the French Revolution, complete with Marie Antoinette holding her own head as she sang. There was a tribute to the City of Love, complete with what might have been the first Olympic ode to a ménage à trois, something you’re unlikely to see in the recently awarded Salt Lake City 2034 Games.
The Americans had to wait a long time to launch — about two hours after the parade began. The flag bearers, LeBron James and Coco Gauff, stood at the prow, both holding the Stars and Stripes. They were interesting choices for the honor, neither exactly whom you think of first when you think “Olympic athlete” and neither has made the sacrifices that so many of their teammates have made to get here. But it was decided by a vote of those teammates. C’est la vie.
The American boat contingent was huge and raucous. It was a party. And, then — after the television coverage leaped across the globe to show the surfers in the Tahiti morning — France came down the Seine, the proud and jubilant host.
The rain poured down throughout most of the evening. Athletes and media members alike donned clear plastic giveaway ponchos. Reporters scurried for cover, abandoning their precious and long-coveted seats as water pooled around their laptops.
The athletes disembarked at the foot of the Eiffel Tour, and came into the stadium to gather. But only a fraction of those who made the boat trip were there, most likely opting out of standing for another hour or two in the rain.
Zidane reappeared and took the torch, before handing it to the greatest French Open champion, Rafael Nadal, who took the flame on a speedboat headed toward the Olympic cauldron, located in the Tuileries Garden. Serena Williams, Carl Lewis and Nadia Comaneci joined him, all wearing life vests. The relay became French-centric when it reached the right bank and the torch was lit by two famous French Olympians, Teddy Riner and Marie-José Pérec.
The balloon rose into the night sky, a symbol of dreams becoming real. The city below it sparkled in the raindrops. Even the disappointing weather ended up being stunningly beautiful.
Paris had pulled it off.
(sfchronicle.com)
AFTER BIDEN
by Christian Lorentzen
The tin cup is empty, and the ass has gone under. Joe Biden’s political career is over, and he had to do it by autocoup. His two most trusted aides came to him at Rehoboth Beach and told him from a distance — because he had Covid — that he no longer had a path to victory. The money had dried up, he was trailing in all the usual swing states, and even in some states the Democrats usually win without spending much money, like Virginia and New Mexico. The next day he posted his resignation letter to X (formerly Twitter) and followed it up with an endorsement of his vice president. Oh, yeah, c’mon, man, keep her around.
So came to an end a month of blather about the way Biden had become King Lear. The final reckoning was less like Julius Caesar than like sending the president to the self-checkout till at Costco to pay for his own hemlock in bulk.
After Biden’s endorsement, not included in his resignation letter but announced in a subsequent tweet, Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, and most of the governors, legislators and cabinet secretaries who’d been floated as possible rivals submitted their own endorsements and got in line to be vetted as potential running mates.
Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, has called Harris, stepmother of two children, a “childless cat lady”; her outspoken opposition to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade is probably her greatest electoral asset.
Only the blessing of the Obamas was lacking, and it arrived Friday morning. The New York Post reported that Barack Obama favored the Arizona senator Mark Kelly, a former astronaut, but the chaos of a contested nomination at such a late hour (by US standards) and an open convention were never really on the cards.
There was too much money to be bundled in a short time – Harris already has a war chest of pledged donations exceeding $100 million – and the proper way to conduct a convention in modern times is as an elaborate infomercial. These events draw more from the science of public relations than from the techniques of democracy.
This year’s Democratic convention will be held in August in Chicago. The location evokes memories of the 1968 convention, the protests against the Vietnam War and the violent response by local police and the National Guard. Famously, that week no one was killed; unlike during the Republican convention in Miami earlier that summer, when law enforcement officers killed three people, but that uprising occurred in a Black neighborhood removed from the political action and the scrutiny of journalists, though Norman Mailer takes note of the event in Miami and the Siege of Chicago.
In 2020, the Democrats’ virtual convention presented the Black Lives Matter protests after the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police earlier that summer as a cheerful prelude to the Biden campaign in a video set to Bruce Springsteen’s ‘The Rising.’ The party will not be able to do the same with protesters against the genocide in Gaza if they turn up en masse this year.
Benjamin Netanyahu this week spoke to Congress and asserted that Americans protesting against his war are Iran’s “useful idiots,” and White House spokesman John Kirby echoed the claim (while saying “that’s not a phrase we would use”).
Harris shook Netanyahu’s hand and told the press that she wants a ceasefire and won’t ignore the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. It won’t be possible to tell if Harris will be less indulgent of Netanyahu than Biden until she’s elected.
Trump said at the debate that Biden should let the Israelis “finish the job.” Robert Kennedy Jr offers no alternative. The only declared candidate consistently against the slaughter has been Cornel West.
Biden’s speech to the nation about his withdrawal from the race did not give his reason for getting out. It was beside the point anyway. His “sacrifice,” as it’s been called, must come as a relief to himself and his family. And now perhaps he will have preserved his “legacy,” unless Trump wins in November, in which case Biden will be blamed for dithering and not getting out of the way last year. His son Hunter is said to have been sitting in on meetings with him since the June debate that exposed his impairment, though to call him temporary co-president might be an exaggeration. He awaits sentencing on a conviction for lying about his drug use on a gun permit. His father has said he won’t pardon him, highlighting a contrast between his integrity and Trump’s pathological nepotism. A pardon for Hunter now would tarnish the president’s reputation one last time. In that sense it would be a true sacrifice and a real act of love.
(London Review of Books)
MOST OF KAMALA HARRIS’ TOP VP CANDIDATES ARE WHITE MEN. IT’S THE ULTIMATE DEI HIRE
by Joe Garofoli
When Barack Obama, then a young, first-term senator, locked up the Democratic nomination for president in 2008, his campaign felt it needed to balance the ticket: He needed someone older — preferably with foreign policy gravitas — and yes, someone white.
Enter Joe Biden.
No one called Biden a DEI hire, shorthand for “diversity, equity and inclusion.” Nor did anyone say that about Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 running mate.
But that is, essentially, what any vice president is: someone who can broaden the appeal in ways the person in the No. 1 spot lacks. It’s almost by definition an exercise in providing diversity and inclusion.
Now, as Kamala Harris vets potential VPs, she’s seeking to bolster her own strengths in similar ways. Most of the dozen candidates being vetted are white men, including the front-runners, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper.
And once again, no one is writing those men off as DEI candidates.
Instead it’s Harris herself — the candidate with the most experience in the race — who’s having the phrase thrown at her in a way that’s flat-out racist and sexist, not to mention factually incorrect. That hasn’t stopped conservatives like Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., and conservative Newsmax commentator Sebastian Gorka from describing Harris as benefiting from something other than her ability.
“It’s the latest code word for calling someone the N-word,” Steve Phillips, a San Francisco attorney and founder of Democracy in Color, an organization focused on race, politics and building a progressive majority. “They’re trying to feed into this very, very long-standing narrative trope that people of color are where they are, not by merit, but through the use of these unjustified preferences.”
That’s hardly the case with Harris.
San Francisco voters elected Harris twice to district attorney, and California voters backed her twice to be attorney general and then a U.S. senator, where she represented the world’s fifth-largest economy.
But much like how previous generations of conservatives used to devalue the abilities of people of color as “affirmative action” hires, now they’re tagging them as benefiting from policies designed to level an American playing field dominated by white men, who have been 45 of the country’s 46 presidents.
Harris has far more political experience than her opponents. Donald Trump held no political office before being elected president. His running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, has served in elective office only since 2023.
The “DEI” epithet is also rooted in her connection to former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, who openly dated Harris for a year in the mid-1990s when Brown had been separated from his wife for a decade. (Harris and Brown broke up before he took office as mayor.) Brown appointed Harris to two statewide commissions and introduced her to the city’s monied elite while she held a job as a prosecutor in the East Bay. But that was several years before she began her first run for office.
Around the same time, Brown appointed Gavin Newsom, a young Marina District businessman whose father was a judge and had connections to the billionaire Getty family, to San Francisco’s Parking and Traffic Commission in 1996, and to the Board of Supervisors the following year, starting his political career.
But Newsom, a white man who didn’t have a romantic relationship with Brown, doesn’t get tagged as a “DEI hire.”
These nuances and facts get lost in the social media tornado that accompanies a national political campaign. Like when Fox News-turned-SiriusXM radio host Megyn Kelly posted on X this week that Harris “actually did sleep her way into and upwards in California politics.”
A meme circulating on social media shows a photo of Harris and describes her as “a woman who seduces men to climb life’s success ladder. Also known as a Jezebel.”
Jennifer Lawless, author of “Women on the Run: Gender, Media, and Political Campaigns in a Polarized Era,” and a professor of politics at the University of Virginia, said “Harris won statewide in California multiple times. She won nationally as VP. It’s just so offensive. The fact that they have to go back 25 years and talk about an appointment to a commission just highlights the straws at which they’re grasping.”
Wendy Smooth, an Ohio State University professor who is part of the Kamala Harris Project of scholars who have been analyzing the vice president since she took office, said “this is taking us back to ‘Mad Men,’ (where women are hyper-sexualized in the workplace or in spaces of leadership.”
Not to mention it is tarnishing something that is intended to be positive.
“Diversity, equity and inclusion are aspirations for modern American culture. But they’re trying to make (DEI) a bad word,” Aimee Allison, the Oakland-based founder of the She the People organization that advocates for women of color in politics. “It’s really shorthand for a deep anti-blackness that says that what we want is the opposite of diversity, equity and inclusion — a kind of America in which white people have supremacy.”
While the shortlist of candidates Harris is vetting to be her running mate is dominated by white men, it does include Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who seemingly took herself out of the running by saying, “I’m not leaving Michigan,” and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.
But the focus is on the white dudes to, in political politesse, “balance the ticket.”
That is because of a long-held “assumption that the country, if you will, can’t stomach too much progress at one time,” like the first Black and Indian-American female president, said Kelly Dittmar, Director of Research and Scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.
There is no research that backs up whether voters are less likely to vote for or against a woman because of their race or gender, Dittmar said. “It’s a perception of a perception of what voters think.”
“Yes, there’s still racism. Yes, there’s still sexism. Yes, it affects evaluations of candidates,” Dittmar said. “People aren’t voting for Kamala because she’s a woman, and they’re not going to vote against her because she’s a woman. What they’re going to vote on on Election Day is (what) party the candidate belongs to.”
Nevertheless, many expect Harris to pick a white guy as her running mate. And in some cases, for legitimate political reasons. Putting Shapiro or Kelly or Cooper on the ticket could boost the chances of Democrats winning a tightly contested battleground state.
So could Whitmer. But don’t hold your breath waiting to see an all-female ticket.
“Kamala probably has to do what Obama had to do, which was to calm people’s fears by choosing a moderate, reassuring white guy,” Phillips said.
Meanwhile, Smooth, a professor of Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies and Political Science, hoped voters will call out the tropes that are following Harris. And just for political reasons.
“We have got to really think about how we reject those notions,” Smooth said. “Because we don’t want our sisters and our daughters who are rising in their professions to be thought of as only rising in their professions based on a hyper-sexualized notion of who they are.”
(SF Chronicle)
The Importance of Nap Time
In the 1950s, nap time was a crucial part of the kindergarten experience. Educational philosophies of the time emphasized the importance of rest for young children to support their growth and development. A typical kindergarten schedule included a dedicated nap time, usually after lunch, when children would lie down on mats or cots brought from home or provided by the school.
Setting the Scene
Classrooms were often arranged with mats or small cots spaced evenly apart, ensuring each child had a comfortable and personal space to rest. Teachers would dim the lights and create a calm, quiet environment conducive to relaxation and sleep. The atmosphere was one of tranquility, designed to help children recharge for the remainder of the school day.
Music for Nap Time
Music played a significant role in setting the tone for nap time. In the 1950s, the selections often included soft, soothing melodies to help children drift off to sleep. Here are some types of music and specific examples that might have been played during nap time:
- Classical Music: Pieces like Claude Debussy's "Clair de Lune" or Ludwig van Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" were popular choices. The gentle and flowing melodies of these compositions created a peaceful ambiance.
- Lullabies: Traditional lullabies such as "Brahms' Lullaby" or "Hush, Little Baby" were common. These songs had been used for generations to soothe children to sleep and were a staple in many households and classrooms.
- Nature Sounds: Some teachers might have used recordings of nature sounds, like the gentle flow of a stream or the soft rustling of leaves. These sounds were believed to have a calming effect, helping children relax and feel at ease.
- Popular Music: Occasionally, more contemporary tunes from the 1950s that had a soothing quality might be used. Songs like Nat King Cole's "Mona Lisa" or Bing Crosby's "Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ral (That's an Irish Lullaby)" provided a comforting and familiar backdrop for nap time.
The Experience
For many children, nap time was a cherished part of their day. It offered a moment of respite and a break from the structured activities and learning. Teachers played a crucial role in ensuring that this time was both restful and beneficial. They often walked softly around the room, gently patting a back or offering a comforting word to any child struggling to settle down.
In summary, nap time in the 1950s was more than just a break; it was an essential component of early childhood education. The careful selection of music and the nurturing environment created by teachers contributed to a restful and rejuvenating experience for young children, laying the foundation for a productive and enjoyable school day.
TED DACE:
Imagine if Hitler addressed a joint session of Congress bemoaning the plight of persecuted Aryans at the hands of bloodthirsty Jews determined to destroy Germany. With a few changes in the names, this is what we are seeing Thursday in Washington. Netanyahu will tell many lies, starting with the claim that the October 7th Hamas attack was motivated by hatred of Jews. Granted, oppressed people often hate their oppressors, but the real reason for the attack was resistance to the decades-long Israeli onslaught against the Palestinian people and their right to live in peace on land that the UN never granted to Israel. This is a battle between moral values and international law on the one hand and might-makes-right and the law of the jungle on the other hand. It's nothing less than a battle for the soul of America. Who are we exactly? Time to decide, folks.
BILL KIMBERLIN
Donald Trump is 78 years old. “As president, Donald Trump released a report that experts said showed he had heart disease and was obese. …he has refused to release bloodwork results, his weight or other key information.
Trump’s coronary calcium score was 133, up from 34 in 2009. Trump’s doctors revealed that his weight had increased to 243 and then 244 pounds, making him obese under government standards.” (Washington Post)
JD VANCE, PURR-FECTLY DREADFUL
by Maureen Dowd
Suddenly, Donald Trump looks enlightened about women.
Sure, he’s in a 1959 time warp, like some spray-tanned, comb-over swinger in a Vegas lounge, talking about skirts and broads.
Sure, he filled the Supreme Court with religious zealots ending women’s rights.
Sure, he has been held liable for sexual abuse, accused of groping and caught talking about his right to grab women by their lady parts. He cheated on his first wife with the woman who became his second wife and then had flings when he was married to his third wife. He betrayed Melania with a porn star while she was home nursing their son and humiliated her again when the Stormy Daniels case went to trial. (See: Why Melania did not give a convention speech.)
Sure, his convention beatification was a dated homage to machismo, with Hulk Hogan tearing his shirt off and the U.F.C.’s Dana White introducing Trump as a fighter.
And yet, somehow, Trump managed to choose a vice-presidential pick whose views on women are even more draconian and meanspirited than his own.
JD Vance, he of many names, is off to a thudding start. He went on Megyn Kelly’s podcast Friday for cleanup on Aisle Feline. She sympathetically asked him about his 2021 rant to Tucker Carlson that top Democrats — Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg and A.O.C. — were “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”
Vance explained to Kelly: “Obviously, it was a sarcastic comment. I’ve got nothing against cats.”
Ha. Ha. Ha. He’s the Republican Party’s biggest wit since that laugh riot Sarah Palin.
He doubled down on the substance of his earlier argument, that only women who are in a traditional marriage, using their uteruses in a way JD Vance deems proper, can have “a direct stake” in America.
I grew up in a family brimming with military uniforms, police uniforms, altar boy outfits, Girl Scout uniforms, Catholic school uniforms and presidential medals for bravery. We were religious and patriotic and unbelievably proud to be Americans.
And now comes this ridiculous faux-billy, tailoring his beliefs to match his ambition, telling me I have no stake in America?
Unless women are fulfilling their duties as breeders and helpmates, they’re not fully Americans? It’s an un-American stance that’s beneath contempt.
Phony. Vance has a lovely wife, Usha, the daughter of Indian immigrants, a star of Yale Law School and a litigator at a top law firm. She clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts at the Supreme Court and Brett Kavanaugh on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Their marriage is clearly a modern one. He donned an Indian robe for one of their wedding ceremonies, which irked white supremacists supportive of Trump.
Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist who dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2022, said, “Do you really expect that the guy who has an Indian wife and named their kid Vivek is going to support white identity?”
(The Vivek news surprised some MAGA delegates in Milwaukee.)
Vance replied Friday simply that he loves his wife. But on the campaign trail, he projects an archaic image nurtured by Heritage Foundation-Project 2025 fanatics and Vance’s fellow superconservative Catholics. You get the impression that they would love nothing more than to dispatch women back to the kitchen and bedroom, turning them into what Hilary Mantel called “breeding stock, collections of organs.”
Vance also said in a speech three years ago that parents should “absolutely” get a bigger say in how a democracy functions and more voting power; in different remarks, he said that childless Americans should pay higher taxes. Turns out, JD is as undemocratic as his running mate.
In 2022, Vance said he wanted abortion to be illegal nationally, though now he has amended his position to be more in line with Trump’s, giving states the power to decide. (Until they’re in the Oval Office, cave to the Christian right and get a national ban.)
Vance was so adamant on the issue when he was running for Senate that he said there should be a federal “response” to block women from traveling to other states to get abortions. He was worried that George Soros would send a jumbo jet to pick up “disproportionately Black women” and take them to California to “go have abortions.”
Vance wrote the foreword for the upcoming book by Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation. Project 2025 wants to put on a full-court press to ban abortion and products like mifepristone and wants to restrict access to Plan B. This is the same wing of the party, cultural reactionaries, that targeted I.V.F. treatments.
And last month, Vance voted against a Democratic bill to protect I.V.F.
Trump chose Vance to stir up cultural resentment in rural areas and small towns against elites and cosmopolitan types. Down with Carrie Bradshaw!
As a cat-loving, cosmopolitan type myself, I do not want Trump and Vance making intimate decisions for American women or judging us or disparaging us for our lives — all nine of them.
(nytimes.com)
SAVING OUR DEMOCRACY
by James Kunstler
“Being insane is the new normal.” — Aimee Terese on “X”
However it happened this week, “Joe Biden” passed the blowtorch to a new generation and got himself gone from the political battlefield. Delegates to the coming Democratic National Convention (August 19) were duly notified of the selected replacement, Veep Kamala Harris, and ordered to line up behind her. Not a peep of disagreement was heard among them. Amazing that no one had a different idea. Thus, is democracy saved.
The curious details around this event remain shrouded in mystery. Reporters for The New York Times and the WashPo could not be bothered to inquire, and their readers are not inclined to ask how all this came to be. It just is. In a culture with no sense of consequence, things just happen or un-happen. It is your duty to recognize that the wind now blows from another direction and bend with it.
One thing was obvious: the long-running prank of pretending that President “Joe Biden” is sound-of-mind fell apart after his mortifying appearance on the debate stage June 27th. Apparently, every last captain and foot-soldier in the Democratic Party ranks was taken completely by surprise to see their champion flicker out in real time, like a forty-watt bulb that has done years of duty on the front porch and suddenly leaves you in the dark. Three weeks followed with “Joe Biden” boldly campaigning as if nothing had happened. (Perhaps his mind did not register that things had changed.)
And then there was the weird tweet on “X” Sunday afternoon when the whole country was outside waterskiing, grilling weiners, carjacking, and yelling at ballparks, and the deed was done. Someone, possibly even “Joe Biden” himself, wrote a letter pasted into the tweet that declared he was bowing out of the race. The White House staff didn’t even know until it was up-and-posted. Rumor had it that Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama read the riot act to “JB”, who was refusing to follow the script. There were plenty of carrots-and-sticks to finally lever his obdurate ass into motion: not least must have involved any pending legal outcome of the family’s influence-peddling operations, whispers of new whistleblower accusations about offshore bank accounts, perhaps with sweeteners in the deal as to how much schwag the clan could still hold onto in the end.
Then, the valedictory speech on Wednesday, sort of a proof-of-life exhibition, to verify that Sunday’s janky tweet to the nation was for real. You heard a Homeric recitation of “JB’s” signal achievements in office, every one of them demonstrably false. He did not keep our country out of war, or grow the economy, or keep inflation down, or beat Big Pharma, or build anything, or defend personal freedoms, or “make it clear there is no place, no place in America for political violence or any violence ever.” (In fact, the very next day, Thursday, pro-Hamas mobs attacked US Park police and vandalized federal property at Washington’s Union Station, and on Friday all charges were dropped against them — while scores of J6 Capitol trespassers rotted for years in the DC jail.)
What “Joe Biden” actually accomplished in office was the near-total wrecking of the USA. He torpedoed the authority and legitimacy of just about every federal agency, turned the Department of Justice into a Gestapo, seeded the federal court benches with Woke lunatics, allowed an invasion of perhaps 20-million border-jumpers (including many thousands of professional terrorists), coerced injections of an ineffective and injurious vaccine into millions of citizens afraid of losing their livelihoods, promoted gross medical experiments on sexually troubled children, invited drag queens and mentally-ill degenerates to cavort in the White House, spent borrowed money at a rate that propelled the national debt past the event horizon into a black hole, made the seeking of incompetence the number one priority of the Pentagon, provoked a war in Ukraine that now teeters on the hazard of a nuclear exchange, and allowed the CIA to complete its takeover of the US government. “Joe Biden” will go down in history as the worst of all 46 US presidents.
And, of course, in the rush of cascading events the past several weeks came the attempted assassination of the Democratic Party’s nemesis, Mr. Trump, an operation festooned with loose threads, suspicious agency failures, and intimations of Deep State blob engineering. You’ll have to stand by on any of that resolving soon. But many Democrats expressed disappointment that Mr. Trump was not killed, since that would be saving our democracy.
Also not quite resolved is the case of who the Democratic Party truly intends to run for president this year as the days dwindle down to Nov. 5. The current delirium over Kamala Harris is like a relief rally in the financial markets when a crisis has been averted — or, at least, stalled. You have reason to doubt that the Democratic Party’s leadership crisis has actually been averted. Despite sedulous efforts to wipe her record, too many Americans know Kamala Harris as a hee-hawing ninny with a predilection for hapless Marxist fantasies. I’m not persuaded that she is at all comfortable in her sudden role as the party’s avatar. She is rumored to hit the bottle in moments of stress.
The Party of Chaos will supposedly run a “virtual roll call” of delegates August 1st in order to meet the requirements to get on the ballot in several states. But then comes the actual convention with live bodies in murmuration on the floor of the arena, and in the back rooms and hallways, and there are more than three weeks between now and then for Kamala Harris to remind the world what a cackling lightweight she is. A lot can happen between now and then.
THE SPIRIT OF JEZEBEL
by Jeffrey St. Clair
- Before Biden revealed his incompetence at the debate with Trump, he’d already lost his reelection bid by showing his gross immorality in arming the genocide in Gaza. Biden had been trailing Trump in the polls since last October and deservedly so. His withdrawal won’t redeem his reputation, which will forever be stained by the mounds of dead Palestinian children he helped kill and showed no remorse for.
- As of last Saturday night, Biden remained firm that he wasn’t leaving the race, fuming to aides and family members that Pelosi was behind the plot to evict him from the ticket. Then Sunday morning his staff finally presented him with the internal polling he’d been shielded from for weeks showing the President losing in every swing state and collapsing in Virginia and New Mexico.
- Biden, true to character (or his lack thereof), didn’t even tell his staff he was withdrawing. They found on Social Media: “We’re all finding out by tweet. None of us understand what’s happening.”
- It proved a fatal mistake for Biden to RSVP this invite…
- For the last three years, Biden has been so befuddled and inarticulate that his staff has kept him from meeting with the House Democratic Caucus about legislative issues. The president’s deteriorated condition became obvious to House Democratic leaders in October 2021, when Pelosi invited Biden to the HIll to make the pitch for his infrastructure bill. But, according to reporting by the Wall Street Journal, “in 30 minutes of remarks on Capitol Hill, Biden had spoken disjointedly and failed to make a concrete ask of lawmakers…After he left, a visibly frustrated Pelosi told the group she would articulate what Biden had been trying to say.”
- In his resignation letter, Biden brags about having led the nation to “overcome Covid” … while having Covid.
- Adam Tooze: “So monarchical is American conception of Presidency that Biden is feted as a ruler who ‘gave up power’ in favor of anointed successor, rather than a vain politician who misjudged his sell by date & has been belatedly persuaded to spare himself humiliation & give Dems a chance.”
- The Biden team circulated memes this week saying that he was retiring from politics without ever having lost an election. True, if you don’t count his failed presidential runs in 1984, 1988, 2008 and the first three primaries of the 2020 campaign, until Obama cleared the field for him…
- Ken Burns: “History recognizes actions that are bigger than self. Joe Biden will go down as one of the great ones, having led the country out of the disastrous term of his predecessor and quietly doing good things for all Americans, red state as well as blue, accomplishments that put him up there, in terms of legislative action, with LBJ and FDR. Joe, I can’t imagine where we’d be without your selfless service.”
- This is precisely why Ken Burns should never have been given $$ to make documentaries, especially about baseball and jazz…
- Eileen Curtright: “We’re 0 for 2 on second term Catholic presidents.”
- Apparently, it wasn’t an “elite” coup after all…
- Nikki Haley: “If Donald Trump becomes the Republican nominee, we will get a President Kamala Harris. You mark my words. He cannot win a general election…He can’t get independents. He can’t get suburban women.” (Jan. 2024)
- Biden in his adios address: “I’m the first president this century to report to the American people that the United States is not at war anywhere in the world.”
- What world was he talking about? Only hours before Biden spoke, the Pentagon announced airstrikes in Yemen.
- This will be the first US presidential election since 1976 without a Biden, Bush, or Clinton on the ticket. But we’re not an oligarchy, honest!
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- Without saying a word (and maybe she shouldn’t), Harris is going to bring the latent racism and misogyny of the GOP into a full-scale abreaction (sorry for the Freudianisms). Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI): “A lot of Democrats feel they have to stick with her because of her ethnic background.”
- Christian nationalist Lance Wallnau warns that Kamala Harris represents “the spirit of Jezebel in a way that will be even more ominous than Hillary because she’ll bring a racial component and she’s younger.”
- Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick: “Donald Trump’s going to win in November, and we will be rid of all this DEI woke culture BS nonsense. I won’t use the word that America’s been subjected to.” What’s the word you’re alluding to, Lt. Gov.?
- Brian Kilmeade on Fox and Friends this morning: “She [Harris] will not show up for the Prime Minister’s speech at the Joint Session of Congress. She’d rather address in the summer, a sorority, a COLORED sorority, like she can’t get out of that!” (Somehow escaped Kilmeade’s attention that JD Vance also skipped Bibi’s speech, perhaps to address a white frat.)
- Kellyanne Conway on Harris: “She doesn’t speak well and doesn’t work hard.” “Doesn’t work hard” is FoxNews speak for the “lazy n-word.”
- Trump couldn’t resist jumping into the fray, calling Harris: “Laughing Kamala,” “Crazy,” “Nuts,” “Real Garbage” and “Dumb as a Rock”…
- Here’s how Alex Lace described Kamala Harris on Fox Business News: “There’s the DEI press secretary [Katrine Jean-Pierre] telling us the DEI Vice President is the future of the party here. The future looks kind of dim for the Democrats here. But this is no shocker either. Kamala Harris is the original ‘Hawk Tuah’ girl. That’s the way she got where she is and the party’s going downhill if it’s in her hands.”
- For those of you who don’t follow what’s trending on TikTok, Hawk Tuah is a street euphemism for fellatio. The original “Hawk Tuah girl” was a blonde woman with a southern accent who after being asked in a street interview: “What’s the one move in bed that makes a man go crazy every time?” responded, “Oh, you gotta give him that hawk tuah and spit on that thang.”
- According to Kitty Kelly, this Hollywood backlot skill is how Nancy Davis hooked Ronnie Reagan.
- JD Vance told Tucker Carlson that Kamala Harris is a “childless cat lady” who is “miserable” because she didn’t have children and not having children means that she doesn’t have “a direct stake” in America. George Washington didn’t have any children of his own either, at least none that he admitted to, though there were persistent rumors that like Jefferson he fathered at least one son after raping one of the women he and Martha enslaved at Mt. Vernon…
- Does Vance have any idea how many “cat ladies” there are in the US? And that they vote…
- One of them might well be Jennifer Aniston, who I’ve never heard make a single notable political statement. This week Aniston lashed out at JD Vance for his assertion that the Democratic Party is led by “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives.” “I truly can’t believe this is coming from a potential VP of The United States. All I can say is…Mr. Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day. I hope she will not need to turn to IVF as a second option. Because you are trying to take that away from her, too.”
- Vance even got a rise out of Meghan McCain: I have been trying to warn every conservative man I know – these JD comments are activating women across all sides, including my most conservative Trump-supporting friends. These comments have caused real pain and are just innately unchristian. This is not who we are.”
- When they tell you who they are, you should listen, Meghan.
- In an interview on Thursday with Megyn Kelly, Vance tried to explain his “cat-lady” rant by saying, “Obviously it was a sarcastic comment. I’ve got nothing against cats. … People are focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the substance … and the substance of what I said, Megyn — I’m sorry, it is true.” To be clear, he’s got nothing against cats, but still derides childless women and gays as the sinister driving forces behind the ruination of the country.
- Harris’ childlessness never seemed to bother Trump, who sent a $5,000 check to re-elect Kamala Harris as AG of California….
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- The intractable problem for the Democrats is that no level of erudition can explain away the pro-genocidal policy they’ve endorsed as a party.
- In order to be considered a legitimate candidate for ruling the Empire, Harris will be required to publicly pledge her willingness to kill on demand, which I assume she is more than willing to do. The big question is: Will her primary target be Russians or Palestinians?
- Looks like we got the answer on Thursday, when Harris sent out this harsh condemnation of the anti-genocide protests in DC that took place when Netanyahu, a soon-to-be indicted war criminal, gave his lie-littered speech to an obsequious Congress…
- This is no surprise, really. Harris was asked during an AIPAC conference in 2018, why she supports Israel. “It is just something that has always been a part of me. It’s almost like saying when did you first realize you loved your family, or love your country, it just was always there. It was always there.”
- Harris has her own considerable baggage to carry in this campaign, compounded by carrying Biden’s as well. Hard to see her pulling this off, unless she’s willing to leave Biden’s behind at Union Station–which she’s just shown us she’s unwilling & likely doesn’t even want to do.
- It was always a political fantasy that Harris would deviate too far from the AIPAC-approved policies on Israel and Palestine. But a more gifted politician would have fed the fantasy a little longer. As a friend told me, the honeymoon is over before the wedding.
- Josh Shapiro, who is said to be considered for the VP spot, compared student protesters for Gaza to the KKK: “We have to query whether or not we would tolerate this if this were people dressed up in KKK outfits or KKK regalia making comments about people who are African American in our communities.”
- House Speaker Mike Johnson on Harris’s decision not to preside over Netanyahu’s speech: “I think it’s inexcusable. She professes to want to be the leader of the free world and our commander-in-chief and yet she can’t bring herself to sit on the rostrum behind arguably our most strategic ally in this moment at its most desperate time. So I think … these questions need to be asked of her and I don’t think she’s going to have acceptable answers.”
- In fact, Harris met separately with Netanyahu on Thursday.
- Harris emerged from her face-to-face with Netanyahu reiterating her “unwavering support” for Israel and its “right to defend itself” with the caveat that “how it does so matters.” Reading cautiously from a prepared text, Harris said: I just had a frank and constructive meeting with PM Netanyahu. I told him that I will always ensure that Israel is able to defend itself, including from Iran and Iran-backed militias. From when I was a young girl, collecting funds to plant trees for Israel, to my time in the United States Senate and now at the White House, I’ve had an unwavering commitment to the existence of the State of Israel, to its security and to the people of Israel. I’ve said it many times, but it bears repeating: Israel has a right to defend itself, and how it does so matters. On October 7, Hamas triggered this war when it massacred 1200 innocent people, including 44 Americans. Hamas has committed horrific acts of sexual violence and took 250 hostages. There are American citizens who remain captive in Gaza. I have met with the families of these American hostages multiple times now. I have told them each time they are not alone and that I stand with them. And President Biden and I working every day to bring them home. I also expressed to the Prime Minister my serious concern about the scale of human suffering in Gaza, including the deaths of far too many innocent civilians. As I made clear my serious concern about the dire humanitarian situation there with over 2 million people facing high levels of food insecurity and half a million people facing catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity. What has happened in Gaza over the last nine months is devastating. The images of dead children and desperate hunger people fleeing for safety, sometimes for the second, third or fourth time. We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering and I will not be silent. Thanks to the leadership of our President Joe Biden, there’s a deal on the table for a ceasefire and a hostage deal. And it is important that we recall what the deal involves. The first phase of the deal would bring about a full ceasefire, including a withdrawal of the Israeli military from population centers in Gaza. In the second phase, the Israeli military will withdraw from Gaza entirely and it would lead to a permanent end to the hostilities. It is time for this war to end, and in a way where Israel is secure, all the hostages are released; the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can exercise their right to freedom, dignity and self-determination. There has been hopeful movement in the talks to secure an agreement on this deal. And as I just told Prime Minister Netanyahu, it is time to get this deal done. So to everyone who has been calling for a ceasefire, and to everyone who yearns for peace, I see you and I hear you. Let’s get the deal done. So we can get a ceasefire to end the war. Let’s bring the hostages home. And let’s provide much-needed relief to the Palestinian people. And ultimately, I remain committed to a path forward that can lead to a two-state solution. And I know right now, it is hard to conceive of that prospect. But a two state solution is the only path that ensures Israel remains a secure Jewish and democratic state and one that ensures Palestinians can finally realize the freedom, security and prosperity that they rightly deserve. And I will close with this then. It is important for the American people to remember, the war in Gaza is not a binary issue. However, too often, the conversation is binary, when the reality is anything but. So I ask my fellow Americans to help encourage efforts to acknowledge the complexity, the nuance, and the history of the region. Let us all condemn terrorism and violence. Let us all do what we can to prevent the suffering of innocent civilians. And let us condemn anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and hate of any kind. And let us unite our country.
- This pretty much follows the faux-humanitarian script the White House has been deploying for months now, public expressions of concern as the body count mounts, while the arms packages continue to flow unimpeded even as Netanyahu ignores every call for a ceasefire, even the one he supposedly told Biden and Harris he supported.
- The only words Harris should have spoken to Netanyahu were these: “Stop your killing, withdraw your troops, return the detainees or the arms shipments will stop and I will back the ICC’s arrest warrants for you and your regime.”
- Presumably, Harris is a more skilled politician today than she was when she called it quits in the 2020 primaries, after polling behind Andrew Yang in her home state.
- The problem with Harris, if she’s elected, won’t be her incompetence to enact good things but, like Clinton and Obama, her competence to jam through bad policies that less persuasive or coherent politicians couldn’t.
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- Ohio state Sen. George Lang at JD Vance’s rally: “I’m afraid if we lose this one, it’s going to take a civil war to save the country.” Young Republican snipers will have to improve their accuracy if they expect to win the next civil war…
- JD Vance in his first major post-convention speech: “It is the weirdest thing to me, Democrats say that it is racist to believe–well, they say it’s racist to do anything. I had a Diet Mountain Dew yesterday. And one today. They’ll probably call that racist too.” Does he write his own material?
- JD Vance in Virginia to Kamala Harris: “What the hell have you done other than collect a government check for the past 20 years?” This is, of course, a line that’s been regularly invoked by GOP politicians since Reagan, often by people, like Vance, who are currently “collecting” a government check.
- Kamala Harris on the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025: “Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda… Can you believe they put that thing in writing? Read it. It’s 900 pages. When you read it, you will see Donald Trump intends to cut Social Security and Medicare, give tax breaks to billionaires, end the Affordable Care Act, and more.”
- Trump advisor Chris LaCivita to the Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey on Project 2025: “It makes no sense to put all the crazy things you’ll be attacked for down on paper while you’re running. Who thinks, let’s put it all down on paper so we can get attacked in advance, even though we haven’t run it by the president?”
- John Kenneth Galbraith: “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
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- On Tuesday, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) introduced impeachment articles against Vice President Kamala Harris. Being impeached & convicted may be the only way to free Harris from Biden’s genocidal policies, assuming she wants to be free of them…
- In other performative legislative maneuvers, the House voted 220-196 to condemn Vice President Kamala Harris’ handling of the border, even though she wasn’t the “Border Tsar.”
- Six Democrats joined Republicans in a theatrical condemnation of their own presidential candidate. They are: Perez (WA)
Golden (ME)
Cueller (TX)
Peltola (AK)
Caraveo (CO)
Davis (NC) - In a couple of speeches she’s given this week, Harris seems intent on playing up her years as a former prosecutor, the same way Kerry emphasized his years as a Swiftboat gunner and with similar results, since tough-on-crime rhetoric will turn off her own base and be viewed with ridicule by the Trump-weary right voters she wants to win over.
- Democratic Silicon Valley billionaire Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn) gave $7 million to Harris, then went on CNN to demand that she fire FTC Chair Lina Khan, who’s investigating the monopolistic predations of Big Tech. But more than a million small donors gave Harris $10 or more in the days after Biden’s withdrawal. Who do you think she’ll listen to?
- According to the NYT, “[Harris] has expressed skepticism of Ms. Khan’s expansive view of antitrust powers, according to a donor who has spoken privately with the vice president.”
- Eric Holder, who helped get Chiquita Banana off the hook for hiring death squads to kill union organizers in Colombia, is leading the search for Kamala’s Vice-Presidential nominee, hardly a reassuring choice for labor activists and human rights advocates.
- Another of the leading candidates for the Veep slot is Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, who has opposed organized labor’s top legislative priority, the PRO Act.
- Harris is apparently also considering Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg for VP. Mayor PeteBot is good at debating, but not so good at stopping train derailments, airport closures, doors blowing off Boeing jetliners, bridge collapses or cloud infrastructure mega-crashes…
- Colorado Governor Jared Polis asked if he’d accept an offer to serve as VP for Harris: “Look, if they do the polling and it turns out that they need a 49-year-old, bald and gay Jew from Boulder, Colorado, they got my number.”
- Marist/NPR just released a poll conducted Monday… —Trump 46%-Harris 45%
—In the broader field, Harris and Trump tied at 42%
—Harris favorability: 40/44
—Trump favorability: 43/49
—87% say Biden made the right decision - Does the GOP really think this will alienate voters?
- Meanwhile, Harris will be the first Democratic nominee from the West in the history of the party. She was the party’s first VP from beyond the 100th meridian, as well. Before Harris, the farthest-west Democrats were George McGovern from South Dakota (1972) and William Jennings Bryan from Nebraska (1896, 1900, 1908).
- Kamala’s father Donald Harris, a Marxist economist from Jamaica, was a radical. He wrote on the war economy in 1967: “The current expansion has been variously described as ‘the greatest upsurge in economic well-being in the history of any nation.'” But since early 1965 “the major further impetus for expansion came with the announcement of escalation in the Viet Nam war.”
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- Christopher Hale: “JD Vance is to Appalachia what Olive Garden is to Italy.”
- According to a CNN poll, JD Vance is the least liked non-incumbent vice presidential nominee since 1980. He’s also the first to have a net negative favorable rating.
- Palin was everything Vance claims to be but actually reviles. She exuded authenticity–until she became a prop for FoxNews and a reality show caricature of herself. But it doesn’t take long to see right through Vance. Too bad Opie couldn’t…
- JD Vance’s favorability in his home region – IL, IN, MI, OH & WI – is just 28%, compared to 44% unfavorable. (CNN/SSRS poll).
- Take heart, JD. Frederic Jameson has some interesting observations on the common man’s opinions about opinion polls in his new book from Verso, The Years of Theory: What is public opinion, the object of public opinion polls? I would like to use an example which will be, for you, ancient history. In Eisenhower’s elections, his opponent was a former governor of Illinois named Adlai Stevenson, who was a very literate and very witty man. Nobody ever doubted that Eisenhower would win these elections, but the question was always raised: Stevenson’s speeches are so elegant–who’s going to understand them? Will the ‘common man’ understand them? That was a common term of the period, so please don’t blame me for using it in this form. So the pollsters went out and asked people who were precisely, on an economic definition, a common man. And the preponderance of common men said, “Well, I like his speeches, but the common man will never understand them.”
- A CNN report documented how JD Vance repeatedly said in 2016 that he believed Trump committed multiple sexual assaults, found Trump’s accusers more credible than Trump, and Tweeted, “What percentage of the American population has @realDonaldTrump sexually assaulted?”
- Vance: “Let’s give votes to all children in this country, but let’s give control over those votes to the parents of those children. When you go to the polls as a parent, you should have more power, you should have more of a chance to speak your voice in our democratic republic than people who don’t have kids. Let’s face the consequences and the reality, if you don’t have as much of an investment in the future of this country, maybe you shouldn’t get nearly the same voice.”
- Isn’t this the MAGA electoral version of the rightwing critique of so-called “welfare mothers,” who they charged were having more kids to add a few bucks to their meager government checks? Of course, Vance pathologizes the poor whites of Appalachia the same way the Gipper and Daniel Patrick Moynihan pathologized urban Blacks.
- Adam Johnson: “Vance was a great pick, every day some old video of him giving a speech in a basement surfaces where it sounds like he’s reading the manifesto of a school shooter.”
- Blake Masters: “Political leaders should have children. Certainly, they should at least be married. If you aren’t running or can’t run a household of your own, how can you relate to a constituency of families, or govern wisely with respect to future generations? Skin in the game matters.”
- The father (alleged) of the country had no (known) children of his own & neither did the primary author of the Constitution. But one of the worst presidents, John Tyler, had at least 15 he claimed as his own and probably one or two more he didn’t.
- This makes me long for the days when Ralph Nader was asked about gay marriage during the 2004 elections and responded definitively: “I don’t do gonadal politics.”
- Move over, Kim Jong-Un!
- In his new memoir, Trump’s nephew, Fred Trump III, said that following a White House meeting with disability advocates, Trump told his nephew, whose son is disabled, “Maybe those kinds of people should die” given “the shape they’re in, all the expenses.” Later, Trump told his nephew about his son: “He doesn’t recognize you. Maybe just let him die.”
- FBI Director Christopher Wray testifying before Congress on the shooting at the Trump rally: “With respect to former president Trump, there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel [from the teleprompter] that hit his ear.” Close-ups of Trump’s post-shooting ear don’t show any hole that a doubting Thomas might poke his pinky finger in.
- Since Monday, Trump and pro-Trump PACs have outspent Harris’ campaign on television and radio advertising, with the Republicans shelling out more than $68 million compared to just $2.6 million for the Democrats. Then on Thursday, Trump’s team suddenly announced he’s backing out of the scheduled debate with the “Marxist” Harris.
- What a wimp. Does Trump really think Harris is a skilled debater or a “Marxist”? Gabbard destroyed her in the 2020 Democratic debates and set the template for how to do it. HRC was a more formidable debater, though she oozed off-putting arrogance with almost every line.
- Laura Bassett: “Calling a woman ‘dumb as a rock’ and then being afraid to debate her is pretty funny.”
- In an interview with Fox News Trump doubled down on his pledge to bomb Mexico, saying cross-border “strikes” against drug cartels are “absolutely” on the table. His running mate JD Vance chimed in: “It’s funny that people accuse of being bombastic for saying, the cartels, we need to go after them.” Vance blamed Mexico for his mother’s addiction to opioids, prescription drugs she acquired by stealing them from the hospital where she worked.
- Trump on flag burning: “You should get a one-year jail sentence if you do anything to desecrate the American flag. Now, people will say, ‘Oh, it’s unconstitutional.’ Those are stupid people. Those are stupid people that say that. We have to work in Congress to get a one-year jail sentence. When they’re allowed to stomp on the flag and put lighter fluid on the flag and set it afire, when you’re allowed to do that — you get a one-year jail sentence, and you’ll never see it again.”
- Has he seen the way people dress at his rallies? Talk about desecrating the flag.
- Burning the American flag is one of the most American things an American can do. Even the Supreme Court agreed in the 1989 case of Texas v. Johnson. Martha-Ann Alito has even hung it upside down as a fuck you to her neighbors.
+++
- A right that applies everywhere except on American college campuses, eh Chuck?
- Jeff Stein at the Washington Post has written a very important piece about the US’s quiet warfare on nations it doesn’t like through the imposition of economic sanctions. According to Stein’s report, “The US is imposing sanctions at a record-setting pace again this year, with more than 60% of all low-income countries now under some form of financial penalty, according to a WaPo analysis.”
- Here’s a list of countries under US sanctions ranked by the severity of the sanctions and the year they began: High Severity North Korea–1950 (Truman)
Cuba–1962 (JFK)
Iran–1979 (Carter)
Syria–1979 (Carter) Medium Severity Afghanistan–1999 (Clinton)
Yemen–2012 (Obama)
Russia–2014 (Obama) Medium-low Severity Libya–1986 (Reagan)
Sudan–1997 (Clinton)
Burma–2003 (Bush 2)
Belarus–2006 (Bush 2)
China–2014 (Obama) Low Severity Zimbabwe–2002 (Bush 2)
DR of Congo–2006 (Bush 2)
Lebanon–2007 (Bush 2)
Somalia–2010 (Obama)
Nicaragua–2018 (Trump)
Mali 2019 (Trump)
Ethiopia–2021 (Biden) - According to the Post story, “60% of all poor countries are under US sanctions of some kind.”
+++
- What an uplifting story from the NYT on the American dream in action. Most couples their age come to Manhattan, if they can afford the bus fare, with a combined $800,000 in debt from student loans and credit cards…
- Since the wretched Grants Pass decision by the Supreme Court gave the green light for states and cities to criminalize the houseless, the Democrats, from Portland to NYC to the entire State of California, have moved the most swiftly and ruthlessly to “ethnically cleanse” homeless people from their encampments …
- Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said that most recent immigrants who have come across the U.S.-Mexico border are “garbage. They come from jails and prisons in other countries.”
- On the other hand, Human Rights Watch just released a report documenting how thousands of people in the United States are being deported every year for drug offenses that in many cases no longer exist under state laws.
- The U.S. Department of Labor found 10 Blaze Fast Fire’d Pizza locations in Las Vegas and Henderson had employed 23 children, ages 15-17, to operate industrial pizza dough mixers as late as 10:30 PM on school nights.
- Nearly half of Amazon’s warehouse workers are injured during Prime Day.
- The Ohio Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that chicken wings advertised as ‘boneless’ can contain bones. The case, which constitutes yet another body blow to consumer rights, was brought by Michael Berkheimer, who had ordered his favorite dish, boneless wings with parmesan garlic sauce, at a wing place in Hamilton, Ohio. Three days after the meal, Berkheimer, who’d been unable to keep any food down, went to the emergency, after developing a fever, where the doctor found that a thin bone from the “boneless” wing had lodged in Berkheimer’s throw, ripping his esophagus and causing a dangerous infection.
- USA as Failed State Update…1 out of 4 cancer patients in America either declared bankruptcy or lost their homes to eviction or foreclosure as a result of medical debt in 2022.
- JW Mason: “The business case against AI: Sure, it can replace writers. But it’s not like there’s any money in writing.”
- After Tesla’s second-quarter net income tumbled 45% as the company’s global electric vehicle sales fell despite price cuts, Elon Musk said he was reconsidering his pledge to donate $45 million a month to the Trump campaign, apparently realizing that a reelected Trump, whose hostility to electric vehicles has become a cornerstone of his campaign, would kill off Tesla once and for all.
- Already among the highest-paid cops in the country (world), San Francisco police could soon see their pay get bumped again with the average officer getting nearly $500,000 a year (not counting overtime).
- James Baldwin: “A cop is a cop. And he may be a very nice man, but I haven’t got the time to figure that out. All I know is he’s got a uniform and a gun. And I have to relate to him that way. That’s the only way to relate to him at all.”
- Sue Mi Terry, the wife of the Washington Post’s neocon national security columnist, Max Boot, was just arrested as a foreign agent…(“Sue Mi Terry” is a name right off the pages of a Tom Robbins novel.)
+++
- Last Sunday was the hottest day ever recorded on Earth. Monday was even hotter.
- Bidenmentalism in Action: “No country in history has extracted as much oil as the US has in each of the past six years.” Will Harris stop the drilling?
- Oil production in the US has more than doubled in less than a decade.
- Since the world started to get “serious” about global warming, coal demand has only increased–rising by 75% since the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 and by nearly 15% since the Paris Agreement in 2015.
- Every six hours the world burns enough coal to build a new replica of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
- On July 15, Chicago issued 16 tornado warnings, the most sent on a single day since 2004. In an average year, Illinois only experiences 50 tornadoes. This year it’s been hit more than 100, already.
- The Park Fire outside Chico grew by 100,000 acres in a mere 24 hours. It ignited when someone lit a car on fire and rolled it into a forested ravine, but it blew up because the forest is parched bone-dry by year after year of searing summer heat.
- Here in Oregon’s Willamette Valley we tied a record for the most consecutive 100F-degree days, which, sandwiched between an even longer string of 90+ days, prompted a “flash drought,” pushing the wildfire danger from “low” to “high” in the span of a few days. Oregon has effectively dried out. There are currently at least 27 wildfires burning in Oregon across more than 256,500 acres of land.
+A map of occupied bald eagle nests in Wisconsin in 1974 and 2019, largely a consequence of the implementation of the Endangered Species Act and Clean Water Act, both of which are on the hit list from Project 2025.
- A new study in Nature on Brazil’s Amazon found that “Indigenous territories reduced deforestation more between 2000 and 2010 relative to all other land uses, including strict protected areas and sustainable-use protected areas.”
- This winter was the third deadliest yet for Yellowstone wolves in the decades since the wild canids were reintroduced to the park in 1995. Overall, at least 13 Yellowstone wolves were shot by legal hunters, caught by trappers, killed by poachers or died of suspected hunting-related injuries.
- Oxygen levels in the midwaters of the Pacific off the California coast have dropped by a stunning 40 percent since 1960.
+++
- Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) was duped by a fake letter announcing Jimmy Carter’s death, which quoted the former president as calling his late wife a “baddie” and the “original Brat” who “throat goat Nancy Reagan had nothing on.”
- According to a report in the Washington Post, RFK Jr. conferred with Trump only hours after the failed assassination attempt about endorsing his campaign and taking a position overseeing health and medical issues in a Trump administration. The Trump team declined the offer. Even they don’t want Bobby….
- During a fundraising speech Minnesota State Sen. Calvin Bahr (R-East Bethel) blamed women for their own unwanted pregnancies: “If you’re going to party, you got to pay the consequences.”
- The late, great Bob Newhart: Newhart: “At a Xmas gathering, my sister M.J. was seated next to my Mom. Mom’s memory was beginning to fade. My Mom said, ‘Is Dad with us?’ M.J. said, ‘No, Mom, Dad died a few months ago.’ Mom said, ‘There were times I could have killed him…I didn’t, did I?'”
- Hey, kids, you still have a chance to indulge some pagan deities, buy a few graven idols, blow off the sabbath, and say, goddammit without getting any demerits!
- The great Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki (Howl’s Moving Castle, Spirited Away, Boy and the Heron): “I strongly feel that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an insult to life itself.”
- The late Shelley Duvall planted her hook in me as Millie in Robert Altman’s neglected masterpiece 3 Women.
- Pauline Kael on Shelley Duvall: “Shelley Duvall melts indifference. You’re unable to repress your response; you go right to her in delight, saying ‘I’m yours.'” (1976) And later: ‘There are no forebears or influences that would help to explain Shelley Duvall’s acting; she doesn’t seem to owe anything to anyone. She’s an original who has her own limpid way of doing things—a simplicity that isn’t marred by conventional acting technique.” (1980)
Booked Up
Lifehouse: Taking Care of Ourselves in a World on Fire
Adam Greenfield
(Verso)
A Body Made of Glass: a History of Hypochondria
Caroline Crampton
(Ecce)
Blacksound: Making Race and Popular Music in the United States
Matthew D. Morrison
(UC Press)
Sound Grammar
Across the River of Stars
Beachwood Sparks
(Curation Records)
Can’t Seem to Come Down: American Sounds of 1968
Various Artists
(Grapefruit)
Caracoles
Orquesta Akokán
(Daptone)
RIP John Mayall…
And Then You Read…
“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people. An artist is sort of an emotional or spiritual historian. His role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are. He has to tell, because nobody else in the world •can• tell, what it is like to be alive.” – James Baldwin
(counterpunch.org)
ONLY A FAILING US EMPIRE WOULD BE SO BLIND AS TO CHEER NETANYAHU AND HIS GENOCIDE
Every empire falls. Its collapse becomes inevitable once its rulers lose all sense of how absurd and abhorrent they have become
by Jonathan Cook
There is only one country in the world right now, in the midst of Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is guaranteed dozens of standing ovations from the vast majority of its elected representatives.
That country is not Israel, where he has been a hugely divisive figure for many years. It is the United States.
On Wednesday, Netanyahu was back-slapped, glad-handed, whooped and cheered as he slowly made his way – hailed at every step as a conquering hero – to the podium of the US Congress.
This was the same Netanyahu who has overseen during the past 10 months the slaughter - so far - of some 40,000 Palestinians, around half of them women and children. More than 21,000 other children are reported missing, most of them likely dead under rubble.
It was the same Netanyahu who levelled a strip of territory – originally home to 2.3 million Palestinians – that is expected to take 80 years to rebuild, at a cost of at least $50bn.
It was the same Netanyahu who has destroyed every hospital and university in Gaza, and bombed almost all of its schools that were serving as shelters for families made homeless by other Israeli bombs.
It was the same Netanyahu whose arrest is being sought by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, accused of using starvation as a weapon of war by imposing an aid blockade that has engineered a famine across Gaza.
It was the same Netanyahu whose government was found last week by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to have been intensifying Israel’s apartheid rule over the Palestinian people in an act of long-term aggression.
It was the same Netanyahu whose government is standing trial for committing what the ICJ, the world’s highest judicial body, has termed a “plausible genocide”.
And yet, there was just one visible protester in the congressional chamber. Rashida Tlaib, the only US legislator of Palestinian heritage, sat silently grasping a small black sign. On one side it said: “War criminal”. On the other: “Guilty of genocide”.
One person among hundreds mutely trying to point out that the emperor was naked.
Cocooned from horror
Indeed, the optics were stark.
This looked less like a visit by a foreign leader than a decorated elder general being welcomed back to the Senate in ancient Rome, or a grey-haired British viceroy from India embraced in the motherland’s parliament, after brutally subduing the “barbarians” on the fringes of empire.
This was a scene familiar from history books: of imperial brutality and colonial savagery, recast by the seat of the imperium as valour, honour, civilisation. And it looked every bit as absurd, and abhorrent, as it does when we look back on what happened 200 or 2,000 years ago.
It was a reminder that, despite our self-serving claims of progress and humanitarianism, our world is not very different from the way it has been for thousands of years.
It was a reminder that power elites like to celebrate the demonstration of their power, cocooned both from the horrors faced by those crushed by their might, and from the clamour of protest of those horrified by the infliction of so much suffering.
It was a reminder that this is not a “war” between Israel and Hamas – let alone, as Netanyahu would have us believe, a battle for civilisation between the Judeo-Christian world and the Islamic world.
This is a US imperial war – part of its military campaign for “global, full-spectrum dominance” – carried out by Washington’s most favoured client state.
The genocide is fully a US genocide, armed by Washington, paid for by Washington, given diplomatic cover by Washington, and – as the scenes in Congress underlined – cheered on by Washington.
Or as Netanyahu stated in a moment of unintentional candour to Congress: “Our enemies are your enemy, our fight is your fight, and our victory will be your victory.”
Israel is Washington’s largest military outpost in the oil-rich Middle East. The Israeli army is the Pentagon’s main battalion in that strategically important region. And Netanyahu is the outpost’s commander in chief.
What is vital to Washington elites is that the outpost is supported at all costs; that it doesn’t fall to the “barbarians”.
Outpouring of lies
There was another small moment of inadvertent truth amid Netanyahu’s outpouring of lies. The Israeli prime minister stated that what was happening in Gaza was “a clash between barbarism and civilisation”. He was not wrong.
On the one side, there is the barbarism of the current joint Israeli-US genocide against the people of Gaza, a dramatic escalation of the 17-year Israeli siege of the enclave that preceded it, and the decades of belligerent rule under an Israeli system of apartheid before that.
And on the other side, there are the embattled few desperately trying to safeguard the West’s professed values of “civilisation”, of international humanitarian law, of the protection of the weak and vulnerable, of the rights of children.
The US Congress decisively showed where it stood: with barbarism.
Netanyahu has become the most feted foreign leader in US history, invited to speak to Congress four times, surpassing even Britain’s wartime leader, Winston Churchill.
He is fully Washington’s creature. His savagery, his monstrousness is entirely made in America. As he implored his US handlers: “Give us the tools faster and we’ll finish the job faster.”
Finish the job of genocide.
Performative dissent
Some Democrats preferred to stay away, including party power broker Nancy Pelosi. Instead, she met families of Israeli hostages held in Gaza – not, of course, Palestinian families whose loved ones in Gaza had been slaughtered by Israel.
Vice President Kamala Harris explained her own absence as a scheduling conflict. She met the Israeli prime minister, as did President Joe Biden, on Thursday.
Afterwards, she claimed to have pressed Netanyahu on the “dire” humanitarian situation in Gaza, but stressed too that Israel "had a right to defend itself – a right that Israel specifically does not have, as the ICJ pointed out last week, because Israel is the one permanently violating the rights of the Palestinians through its prolonged occupation, apartheid rule and ethnic cleansing.
But the dissent of Pelosi – and of Harris, if that is what it was – was purely performative. True, they have no personal love for Netanyahu, who has so closely allied himself and his government with the US Republican right and former president Donald Trump.
But Netanyahu simply serves as an alibi. Both Pelosi and Harris are stalwart supporters of Israel – a state that, according to the ICJ’s judgment last week, decades ago instituted apartheid rule in the Palestinian territories, using an illegal occupation as cover to ethnically cleanse the population there.
Their political agenda is not about ending the annihilation of the people of Gaza. It is acting as a safety valve for popular dissatisfaction among traditional Democratic voters shocked by the scenes from Gaza.
It is to deceive them into imagining that behind closed doors, there is some sort of policy fight over Israel’s handling of the Palestinian issue. That voting Democrat will one day – one very distant day – lead to an undefined “peace”, a fabled “two-state solution” where Palestinian children won’t keep dying in the interests of preserving the security of Israel’s illegal settler-militias.
US policy towards Israel has not changed in any meaningful sense for decades, whether the president has been red or blue, whether Trump has been in the White House or Barack Obama.
And if Harris becomes president – admittedly, a big if – US arms and money will continue flowing to Israel, while Israel will get to decide if US aid to Gaza is ever allowed in.
Why? Because Israel is the lynchpin in a US imperial project for global full-spectrum dominance. Because for Washington to change course on Israel, it would also have to do other unthinkable things.
It would have to begin dismantling its 800 military bases around the planet, just as Israel was told by the ICJ last week to dismantle its many dozens of illegal settlements on Palestinian territory.
The US would need to agree a shared global security architecture with China and Russia, rather than seek to bully and batter these great powers into submission with bloody proxy wars, such as the one in Ukraine.
The coming fall
Pelosi, remember, smeared students on US campuses protesting Israel’s plausible genocide in Gaza as being linked to Russia. She urged the FBI to investigate them for pressuring the Biden administration to support a ceasefire.
Netanyahu, in his address to Congress, similarly demonised the demonstrators – in his case, by accusing them of being “useful idiots” of Israel’s main foe, Iran.
Neither can afford to recognise that millions of ordinary people across the US think it is wrong to bomb and starve children – and to use a war with an unachievable aim as the cover story.
Hamas cannot be “eliminated” through Israel’s current bout of horrifying violence for a very obvious reason: The group is a product, a symptom, of earlier bouts of horrifying Israeli violence.
As even western counter-terrorism experts have had to concede, Israel’s genocidal policies in Gaza are strengthening Hamas, not weakening it. Young men and boys who lose their family to Israeli bombs are Hamas’s most fervent new recruits.
That’s why Netanyahu insisted Israel’s military offensive – the genocide – in Gaza could not end soon. He demanded weapons and money to keep his soldiers in the enclave indefinitely, in an operation he termed as “demilitarisation and deradicalisation”.
Decoded, that means a continuing horror show for the Palestinians there, as they are forced to continue living and dying with an Israeli aid blockade, starvation, bombs and unmarked “kill zones”.
It means, too, an indefinite risk of Israel’s war on Gaza spilling over into a regional war, and potentially a global one, as tripwires towards escalation continue to grow in number.
The US Congress, however, is too blinded by championing its small fortressed state in the Middle East to think about such complexities. Its members roared “USA!” to their satrap from Israel, just as Roman senators once roared “Glory!” to generals whose victories they assumed would continue forever.
The rulers of the Roman empire no more saw the coming fall than their modern counterparts in Washington can. But every empire falls. And its collapse becomes inevitable once its rulers lose all sense of how absurd and abhorrent they have become.
(jonathancook.substack.com)
RE SHACKMAN”S BUMBLING BURGLARY’S
Ms Shackman is fifty shades of fucked up between mental illness, meth, and street living. When I showed up to the house to assess the damage caused by the breaking, I found her talking to my boss who was repairing the door. She was telling him how the homeowner had drove her there, dropping her off and saying she could live at the house if she took care of the place. I stepped away to call the sheriff. My boss kept chatting her up until the sheriff came and arrested her. Looking around the property, we also found a bunch of stolen items she had squirreled away into the garage. Phones, laptops, and mail.
I researched her on the internet. She has a FB profile, LinkedIn. Looks like she had it together and was renting a place on Boonville Road until 2021-2022. Then she went off the rails. She drove off the road and into the bushes on Norgard Lane 2022. September 2023, she was shoplifting at Questmart in Ukiah. When confronted by the shop owner, she assaulted them. Now this.
I did reach out to and connected with a friend of her from her FB page. Sounds like she has suffered from mental illness that requires medication for quite awhile. Covid and losing a few people close to her sent her off the rails and to abusing drugs. Her friend appreciated to hear about her whereabouts as she had been trying to connect with her for the last 2 years. She doesn’t have much in the way of family or friends to support her and the friend I talked to lives out of state.
Adam;
Out of curiosity how do you know it is meth? Could be any drug or none! Nice of you to contact her friend. ..
mm 💕
I have a lot of first hand experience with meth and it’s effects short and long term.
As they say, looks like a duck, quacks like a duck.
Adam,
Interesting and I usually agree with the duck sentiment……However…. Serious Mental Illness such as Schizophrenia/Bipolar states of psychosis symptoms can look like person is on meth but it may not be could be booze, or Cannabis or shrooms or even … oh no…. coffee and cigarettes….
mm 💕
I have a lot of experience with BP/PS as well. Many members of my mom’s side of the family suffer from it.
The amount of things she had stolen point to drug abuse. It wasn’t random items or things for survival. It was mostly high value items, likely that she would try to sell for money. Her friend had mentioned that she had drug abuse issues when they were in contact years ago and things would get worse when she stopped taking her prescribed medication.
Hope she gets some of the behavioral health help they intend to start handing out once the new wing of the jail is finished before being tossed back onto the streets into our ‘Continuum of Care’. Assaulting people means nothing anymore, unless you do it. Another brick in the wall we are losing.
The anti-Trump rag continues known as the AVA.
Four years of disaster under Biden/Harris.
Even the editor starts his Ed Notes with a slur at Trump followers. But yet he will tell you there is balanced reporting, indicating there are just as many negative stories against the other side. Like a true liberal he is trying to tell me what I see just isn’t true. My eyes are apparently lying to me. Next he will tell me that the border is closed, gas isn’t up 51%, inflation was 9.2% when Biden/Harris took over, groceries aren’t up nearly 30%, Afghanistan was a success, there are no new wars, no military have died on Biden/Harris watch, illegals don’t receive Medi-Care and Social Security, illegals were vetted and haven’t murdered Americans. Rioting was a peaceful protest and those crazy MAGA’s are a bunch of insurrectionist. WOW, I could go on and on but I’m tired.
Just own the fact that your paper is not fair and balanced. That’s what is great about America, you have the right to be a Socialist Editor.
A new day to attack our editor, once again. How about taking a break–go out and weed the garden, take a walk, pet your dog. You’ll feel better then.
Chuck, that’s good advice. In the past, what we wistfully call normal times, I enjoyed the living hell out of an election year. Not this time around. Nope. Not this one.
Yes, Bob. We are not in normal times, for sure. I go out into the garden every day and try work off all the worries that have come along for this election year. That helps me get to a more even keel…..
I think garden work is a form of meditation and getting in touch with our physical selves Taking a walk: ditto. It also gets us outside and into nature, which can be cheering and relaxing. When you are feeling down gardening or even walking sound unappealing, so it takes quite a bit of effort to actually follow through. But those are wise words, as is petting the dog, practicing kindness. These are hard times and we all need to try to settle down and take care of ourselves.
Everytime a devotee of the Beloved Messiah starts talking it is time to take out the violin!
Yesterday the Messiah told Christians that they were needing to vote just this one more time: they wouldn’t need to in four years.
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1817007890496102490
Above is clip of His remarks.
Bless you, Call It, for your generosity in permitting me to be me.
Your welcome. Just love all your trolls who come to your defense. They must be your village.
But every village needs an idiot. You available?
You already have that job, hence my comment.
I know I’m not the only one who wonders why CATs (Cowardly Anonymous Trolls) are allowed to spew their nonsense and insults here. These guys (all guys, most likely) embarrass themselves daily but also drag the whole MCT forum into the gutter. They’re like adolescents spraying graffiti, something they likely otherwise disdain. Why not make people stand behind their words.?
In defense of their editor
The good trolls rush forward
Dissing that poor guy who
Sees things all backward.
Bruce the “true liberal?”
No way, missed the mark—
We know the real Bruce
Who worships Karl Marx.
Nope, more a Herzen, Kropotkin worshipper than the great sociologist.
No matter Kropotkin
Or Messrs. Herzen or Marx.
You’re the esteemed one—
The dog that barks!
You know him so well that he had to correct you! You guys crack me up. Keep it coming trolls,?I’ll be here all week.
My bad, I had forgotten some of the details of Bruce’s radical beliefs–too far back in history for this old man. Glad we made you laugh a bit, if that’s what you mean. Peace, CIAISI. (Hope this moniker is not a subtle clue that you are a CIA spy, that would be a bad thing.)
Fanning the flames of discontent. Most of his readers are day trading their profits from the Ronald Reagan days, how can they see negatives when they are lending at 11%
Reminds me
Is the AVA still sitting on any surplus masthead t- shirts? Mine’s fanned its share of flames.
Hey Todd, the rock from under which you emerged is impatiently waiting for you to return.
Apparently several of us do not see it as you call it… Poor little feller.
And to think, I was gonna attack Bruce for being too hard on the Dems, what with democracy itself being at stake and all that. Thx for setting me straight Call It! Does your love of Trump have anything to do with his promise that if he wins you’ll never have to vote again?
I haven’t heard of a single County employee who thinks the BOS deserve the raise they voted themselves. The BOS defended it by saying every employee got a raise. Well, they are somewhat right if you want to consider a 1% COLA a raise, which is what many County employees got. The employee retirement contribution just increased which, by the way, no one bothered to tell employees. It just showed up on their pay stubs this week. And now the County is trying to increase the health insurance premiums. People are tired of abuse at the hands of County administration. Many employees are either quitting, looking for other work, or trying to stick it out until they can retire. The BOS claims they care about the employees, but none of us are buying it.
Hell, I haven’t heard of a single County RESIDENT who thinks the BOS deserve the raise they voted themselves
The Importance of Nap Time
We slept, each on his or her personal rug (mine was crocheted by my mom) on the floor, Never once did I even come close to falling asleep. Sometimes I wish I had started school in the first grade. Never learned a damned thing in kindergarten… Just a bunch of kids, some of whom (those from other towns with their own elementary schools) I did not see again until high school. Such was the Calaveras County “unified” school district in which I lived (the Bret Harte district served Angels Camp and Altaville and had its own high school), from kindergarten until high school graduation.
Haha, I remember having trouble falling asleep, too! But nap time was one of the only experiences from kindergarten I remember that well. There was the time we made raisins by drying out grapes, and we all got to try some, which we all gamely tried to follow though with.
My advice to Kamala; Take off those spike heels and put on boots along with a cowboy hat – And meet Trump’s ridiculousness aggressively, daily with laughter and wit, not anger. Work hard at making even his supporters laugh.
After all it is all so absurd which happens to be the foundation of humor and laughter has always been the best medicine.
I may be remembering incorrectly, but the teacher, a Mrs. Squalatti (lots of Italian surnames in Calaveras County then), an older woman, would read us fairy tales. And, again if memory serves, we also had a snack break of graham crackers, with milk? which, if I recall correctly, we brought from home.
I am sure snack time was important, as it still is for kindergartners! Yes, kindergarten was a bit traumatic but it did have its good points! Now 1st grade, that was a different story as I had a mean teacher who didn’t like me. I started 1st grade younger than the other kids and was small for my age anyway, so I may have appeared a bit behind the others. In 1st grade kids are changing so fast that just a few months can make a big difference. School is weird, in that for some reason it doesn’t take these things into consideration, even though they are so obvious.
Anyone get to see the parade of Porsche buttholes rallying through the valley today?
One annoyed motorist got out and started yelling at them as they passed her on Mtn View road in front of the high school.
Total bag of dildos. I wish them nothing but gridlock in the afterlife.
Hmmm that’s a bit harsh. Some people appreciate beautiful cars and have the money to indulge their tastes. I would not be one of them, BTW, but I can see their point. I don’t even like car shows but seeing a beautiful car, driven the right speed and lawfully, is an experience I enjoy. Trouble is, it seems it is tempting to speed and show off, which is when, for others, the irritation kicks in.
I agree with the sentiment, but RV’s and 18 wheelers are more frequent, dangerous and illegal.
I took my kids out a preschool when my five year old told me the Preschool Teacher, or helper had spanked her for not falling asleep.
“Two frontrunners have emerged in the race to be presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’s second in command: Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly.”
One of my preschoolers, mentioned above, was Gov. Josh Shapiro’s preschool daughter’s teacher.
I hope the pick is Senator Kelly, a solid, experienced guy. Would make a strong team to take on Trump
Bruce, William Blake, who wrote the book about Marxism that didn’t make you (or me) fog over, was the husband of Christina Stead, the great Australian-born novelist. Characters who resemble Blake appear in many of her books. He had been a very successful grain trader and banker but after the mid-1930s was strictly a writer — historical novels, heavy political analysis, a wonderful almanac produced during WW2 called “An Intelligent American’s Guide to the Peace.” He wrote a biography of Garibaldi that never got published and a manuscript called “Imperialism.” (Blake was a Communist, BTW.) I was mad for Christina Stead (still am). At some point I tried to track down Blake’s unpublished material but I didn’t try very hard. (Regret #74.) . There’s a terrific biography of Stead by a woman named Hazel Rowley.