Off the Record 9/1/2024

LOUISE NEEDS A PLACE

The wonderful Louise Mariana needs a place to live.

Louise Mariana was a nurse in the military during the American war in Vietnam. She's traveled all over the world helping people. She worked in the hospital in Fort Bragg for decades. She advocated for animals at the Humane Society. She wrote countless helpful, interesting letters and stories for all the local papers, including, of course, the Anderson Valley Advertiser, which is where I just read this:

Louise Mariana wrote:

Two years ago it was a threat, now it's for real. I must give up my home of 42 years. Do you have a rental anywhere between Albion and Fort Bragg? I'm used to living small so I don't need alot of room. A tiny home, secondary unit, accessory dwelling unit (ADU), mobile home park. I'll consider everything. I prefer a country/forest setting but in-town would be o.k. too. Please call me at 707-937-4837 or leave an e-mail.

Thanks a lot.

Louise416@gmail.com louise416@gmail.com

PS. I have impeccable references.

Marco McClean

HOMELESSNESS. We once had a homeless program in America. It was called The State Hospital. Persons unable or unwilling to care for themselves were sequestered and helped back to sanity and/or sobriety. There were, of course, some spectacular abuses in the back wards housing the criminally insane, but they were a minority of the hospital population. And abuses occurred because of incompetent and/or indifferent administration. (A Mendo DA once sued the superintendent at the Talmage hospital for general dereliction.)

MENDOCINO COUNTY also once funded a “county farm” on Low Gap Road west of Ukiah where habitual drunks and miscellaneous incompetents were housed in simple, safe but firmly supervised conditions where they helped feed themselves by raising what they ate. When the State Hospital at Talmage was established in 1889, the County Farm was abandoned and, I suppose, the local incorrigibles were transferred to the hospital.

THE OLD STATE HOSPITAL, grounds and buildings, was a minor architectural masterpiece, as we can see today in its latest incarnation as a Buddhist center of learning.

THE MENDOCINO COUNTY Sheriff’s Department now acts as county psych techs of first and last resort, housing the mentally ill who typically rotate through custody while making their homes on the streets of Ukiah or on the banks of the Russian River or Gibson Creek where former Supervisor John McCowen functions as volunteer monitor and janitor.

THE TASK of caring for the halt and the lame being completely beyond the abilities of Mendocino County’s battalion of well-funded helping professionals, the Sheriff is the county's chief therapist. Which, ironically, is a good thing because he and his staff are more experienced and certainly more humane in working with disturbed persons than… Uh… Well… You know… the paradigm people.

PERSONS assigned to the old County Farm helped pay for their dependence, which was always presumed to be temporary, by laboring on a small farm whose produce was partly consumed by them and partly sold to fund the farm. So why not revive it? If quonset huts and tent camps are good enough for the Marines, why aren’t they good enough for today’s permanent homeless population?

A COUNTY FARM for Mendocino County’s relatively small population of homegrown bush drunks, drug addicts and professional mooches, would be much less expensive and undoubtedly much more effective than incompetent therapists whose solution to all social problems is increasing doses of bullshit and heavy medication. And why not revive “The State Hospital” for dangerously crazy people instead of locking them up in county jails and state and federal prisons, which is the current practice?

THE BIGGEST OBSTACLE to clarity on the subject of homelessness, let alone doing something about it, is the people who make their livings off public misery, i.e., the aforementioned helping professionals. The aggregate number of well-paid helping pros has grown as fast or faster than America’s population of dopers, drunks, nuts, and the more ubiquitous transients, formerly bums.

ARE THERE 300 homeless and/or intractable outpatients in greater Ukiah? Figures vary. But there are at least that many well-paid helping professionals based in Ukiah, and that’s without factoring in clerical staff and the rest of their support apparatuses. We find a much smaller population of homeless persons on the Mendocino Coast because Fort Bragg, as civic policy, addresses each one and refuses to allow any and all to live out of doors, much less engage in publicly aberrant behavior.

UKIAH? Our county seat, unfortunately, has no coherent homeless policy, other than the unstated one to keep “undesirables” out of the Westside where its lushly compensated headquarters is located.

THE HOMELESS have got to be compelled to help themselves. They’ve got to be put in one or more central locations they can’t depart until they’re able to cope. The helping pros should come to the homeless, not the homeless to the helping pros in their warm, waterproof offices festooned with shelves of huggy bears and death-gray pots of dying ivy.

UNDER A REVIVED County Farm Plan the drunks go to one village of quonsets; the dopers to another; intact families, at least those whose parent or parents are more or less capable, to another; bums to another, the vulnerably incompetent to another. The whole place would be fenced, a kind of gated community, if you prefer. And these being sensitive times, and no one being more sensitive than your average helping pro, and to avoid any possible insult to anybody’s self-esteem, we wouldn’t have to call the mandatory sequestration of the walking wounded, The County Farm, we could call it “Paradigm Pines.”

HISTORY, an on-line comment: Marijuana was the surprise ingredient added to the economy of the backwoods in the mid-seventies, and made a lot of twenty-something dirty hippies, slackers, and university-educated back-to-the-landers rich overnight, when awareness of sinsemilla arrived. (The high was instant like snorting coke, but without the nasty hundred dollar bills or grimy straws, and the need to have more right away. It was also an aphrodisiac, often leading to dancing, and was creatively inspiring, although those stoned ideas rarely seemed so brilliant the next morning.)

NOT to be too much of a churl, but I'd like to ban the Little League World Series, as one more example of the professionalization of what should be child's play, not the occupation of adult joy killers. My grandchildren are heavy into sports, and the amount of expensive gear that comes with their participation is, is, is… shocking, especially to us old guys who grew up nailing broken bats back together and wrapping old baseballs in black electrical tape. (I didn't see a new baseball until I got to high school.) More shocking is the behavior of some of the coaches and fans, which is a cliche by now but it's still reprehensible and doubly reprehensible because it's so widely tolerated. And prevalent. I overheard one obese cretin of a LL coach gather his team after a win to tell them, “They came into our house and we kicked their ass!” At a softball tournament for ten-year-old girls, the air was blue with F-bombs directed at the teenage umpires and even by parents at their daughters! I understand we’re on the skids as a society, but… jeez.

MARIN'S WATER AGENCY is exploring whether to connect pipelines in Petaluma and Cotati to its reservoirs in order to fortify its supply. The pipelines would transport treated Russian River water into Marin reservoirs through a 9-mile aqueduct along the Highway 101 corridor from Petaluma to the North Marin Water District in Novato. The district would send the water to the Marin Municipal Water District’s distribution system. Marin already gets water from Lake Mendocino which, itself, exists from the Eel River Diversion at Potter Valley. Marin's water “exploration” is one more sign that we're headed for water wars, and rapidly, given population growth everywhere up and down the 101 corridor.

RECOMMENDED READING, especially as a history of America's hippie beginnings circa middle 1960s, “Kesey’s Jail Journal,” introduction by Ed McClanahan.

MEMORY of this great American writer suffers from a hippie tag because Kesey should be remembered for his wonderful fiction. “Sometimes A Great Notion” is truly a great book, although it’s not nearly as well known as “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest,” also a great book. Unfortunately, both are better known as movies than as novels.

“SOMETIMES” is the only high art I can think of sympathetic to loggers and logging as a way of life, probably because Kesey, who was born and raised in the logging country of Oregon's Willamette Valley, wasn't one of these bloodless writer’s workshop log rollers (sic) who dominate creative lit today with their perfect little sensitive sentences adding up to no story of any interest to anybody except other workshop stars. (cf Rick Moody, most New Yorker fiction…)

CUCKOO'S NEST is drawn from Kesey’s government-sanctioned experiences with LSD and in lock-up mental wards that first put him in the public’s lethal eye. Then, as a very public advocate of mind-altering chemicals, the writer zoomed to the top of J. Edgar Hoover’s insanely lengthy enemies list. The Hoovers viewed Kesey as a kind of Pied Piper of Pot, then as point man for all drugs.

KESEY'S jail journals are not only very, very funny — “This is crazier here than the nuthouse ever was” — they’re absolutely true to the daily life in your basic county jail, an experience one in four Americans can look forward to if national rates of incarceration remain constant.

THE BOOK is illustrated with Kesey's drawings of his fellow jail birds, their keepers and their cages, as is the book cover. And count me among the many admirers of his fiction who hadn’t known that Kesey was also a gifted caricaturist; he draws better than a lot of people who get paid to draw, and his art is a lot more imaginative than lots of people who get paid for imaginative art.

THE JAIL JOURNALS were written back in the Summer of Love during Kesey’s stay in the San Mateo County Jail for possession of pot. Having gone on the run to Mexico after his conviction for varieties of marijuana possession, Kesey subsequently appeared in public places all over the Bay Area as the media merrily reported each “Kesey sighting” and millions of people enjoyed the writer’s insouciance.

THE COPS fumed and vowed to bring “the damn beatnik or whatever he is” to justice. A car pool load of commuting FBI agents spotted Kesey one morning on the Bayshore Freeway. Kesey, a former college wrestler, jumped out of his car and sprinted off, but the Hoovers gang tackled him and he was packed off to the San Mateo County Jail.

TWO YEARS after Kesey’s premature death at 67, his old friend McClanahan steered Kesey’s extemporaneous, illustrated account of his jail tour into book form and publication. Kesey had smuggled pages of his jail diary out of the jail to his wife, Faye. Not all of the pages made it home, but enough did to make a terrific book all these years after the Year of the Hippie.

IF YOU only buy one book this year, buy this one, a true bargain at $34.95 and a perfect Christmas gift for that old hippie uncle or anyone else curious about The Summer of Love. Another big bloc of potential readers is the one-in-four of you yet to be locked up. “Kesey’s Jail Journals” is the truest account of what it’s like to do county jail time you’ll read.

MALCOLM MACDONALD

Ken Kesey worked at a veteran’s hospital, not a state hospital. There are some interesting aspects to the story above, but too much jumping around in time (from a brutal attack in 1913 to somewhat subjective takes on state hospitals during the 1960s in the next paragraph). As the son of a UC Berkeley educated, psychiatric social worker who worked at the Talmage State Hospital in the 1960s, I can say from first hand observation that this article needs to dig deeper. The snake pit realities of the 1940s in mental institutions was dramatically changed for the better by the 1960s, if not the late 1950s. More is needed here to provide a thorough examination.

RON PARKER

THE SUGGESTION that Talmage State Hospital employees stole everything is absolutely wrong. There were bad actors but few and far between. Why would we? The hospital supplied everything we needed at a very reasonable price. My rent was $18 a month for a studio apartment including all utilities! 30 full meal tickets cost $15 and the meals were enormous! Main course steaks, chops, roast, fruit and fresh vegetables from the farm all the milk you could drink and icecream. Free laundry services for bedding and uniforms. Free movies twice a week, usually before the Ukiah theater had them. You are ill informed.

Ronald Parker, Psychiatric Technician, 1962 – 1967

MENDOCINO VOICE JOINS KZYX

We're excited to announce that we've launched a new partnership with KZYX - Mendocino County Public Broadcasting to expand local news coverage in Mendocino County! This includes bringing on our new team member Sydney Fishman, who will be reporting for us and KZYX!

WAYNE CORNELIUS of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at UC San Diego: “The US-Mexican border has been ten times deadlier to Mexican immigrants in the last ten years than was the whole 28-year history of the Berlin Wall to East Germans. Over the entire history of the Berlin Wall, 287 persons died trying to cross it. Since the Clinton Administration implemented the current, stepped-up border interdiction, more than 2,500 Mexicans have died at the border. In the year 2000, only 178 American employers were fined for hiring illegal immigrants, and only an even 1,000 undocumented workers were apprehended at their jobs. There are an estimated 8-to-12 million undocumented immigrants working and living in the US.”

URBAN MYTHS

We’re informed that this Neil Armstrong moon-landing anecdote is one: “On July 20, 1969, as commander of the Apollo Lunar Module, Neil Armstrong was the first person to set foot on the moon. His first words after stepping on the moon were, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” The event was televised to earth and heard by millions. But just before he re-entered the lander Armstrong made the enigmatic remark, “Good luck, Mr. Gorsky.” Many people at NASA thought it was a casual remark concerning some rival soviet cosmonaut. However, upon checking, there was no Gorsky in either the Russian or American space programs. Over the years, many people questioned Armstrong as to what the “Good luck, Mr. Gorsky” statement meant. But Armstrong always just smiled.

ON July 5, 1995, in Tampa Bay, Florida, while answering questions following a speech, a reporter brought up the 26-year old question to Armstrong. This time he finally responded. Mr. Gorsky had died, so Armstrong felt he could answer the question. In 1938, when he was a kid in a small midwestern town, Armstrong was playing baseball with a friend in the backyard. His friend hit the ball, which landed in his neighbor’s yard by the bedroom windows. His neighbors were Mr. and Mrs. Gorsky. As he leaned down to pick up the ball, young Armstrong heard Mrs. Gorsky shouting at Mr. Gorsky. “‘Sex! You want sex? You’ll get sex … When the kid next door walks on the moon!” True story.” (Never happened.)

A READER WRITES: I suppose Ms. Harris would be a better president than Mr. Trump. But that’s not saying much. Reportedly, she has received over $500 million in donations since Biden named her as his designated successor. That probably includes some small donations, but one assumes that most of that money came from large donations from the very wealthy people she implies she will tax to benefit the middle class she says is so important to her. I doubt that will happen because most if not all of her big donors would not keep donating if she did, and the Republicans in Congress would oppose it at every turn. Given the Clintonian cynicism of the DNC Democrats (including Biden) who call the shots for the “party,” I wonder if Ms. Harris was the third choice in the Woman Of Color Sweepstakes after Michelle Obama and Oprah turned them down? And I worry that her reference to America having “the most lethal military on Earth” will translate into an attempt on her part to prove she can be at least as tough as a male Republican when it comes to questions about the use of the military overseas that will inevitably arise.

…TIM WALZ originally decided to run for office as a Democrat after being denied entry to a George W. Bush rally in 2004. He flipped a longtime red Congressional District in 2006, and then proceeded to be one of the most conservative Democrats in the U.S. Congress, ironically aligning himself with many of the Bush Administration policies. He had an ‘A’ rating from the NRA, voted for the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline, supported the big agriculture industry, and was obviously pro-military after serving in the Minnesota National Guard for 24 years. …

(Science for the People-Twin Cities/CounterPunch.)

JODY MARTINEZ’S always informative “This Was News” column in Sunday’s Ukiah Daily Journal, recalls the following two dispatches from the Friday, December 25th editions of the 1903 Ukiah Dispatch-Democrat:

“PLANT SHADE TREES. While the people are agitating the propositions of beautifying and improving the town, why not try to induce every property owner to plant shade trees along the sidewalks in front of his premises? What a beautiful town this would be with nice shade trees along the sidewalks! In five years’ time the trees would be large enough to give good shade in summer time. The cost would be very little and in a short time the trees would add much to the value of the property. This is something that the citizens should think about. This is a good thing for the Ladies’ Improvement Club to take hold of. This is a good time to begin. Let this be one of the New Year’s resolutions. Suppose the improvement club works up a big tree-planting, with appropriate exercises, for Arbor Day. It will be worth many dollars to the town, to say nothing of the pleasure and satisfaction to be derived therefrom in the future.

A HUNDRED YEARS LATER there are no shade trees in Ukiah’s commercial district and the town is unbearable in the summer months. Ugly, too, because Ukiah obviously regards trees as nuisances east and south of town where the proles dwell, unless they're on the Westside, where trees are appreciated unto mandatory.

ERNIE PARDINI:

I am completely disheartened by the state of our once great country. A while back I watched as much of the republican national convention as I could stomach and in the last couple of days watched nauseating speeches coming from the democrats. It looks as though we are going to forever be cursed by more of the same from both parties. The speeches I heard sounded rehearsed and delivered in the manner of a preacher at an old time revival meeting. None of them telling us how they were going to help the working class of America, but rather paying lip service to the forgotten notions of freedom and prosperity once enjoyed by American citizens. None of them specifically identified the issues facing the American public, much less propose any real time solutions to our problems. Most of their time was spent making accusations and pointing fingers at their opponents, further feeding the divisiveness that exists in this country these days, ensuring that by doing so they make it impossible for us to unite in an effort to bring about change. The saddest thing of all is that in both of the last two elections there were candidates running who were sincere in their desire to bring unity in this country through compromise, and taking power away from the corrupt corporate powers who have enslaved the middle class and give that power back to the people. Both were shut out of any possibility of being elected by the corporate owned mainstream press and the DNC. First it was Bernie Sanders and now RFK Jr. RFK Jr. , as a result of being non existent in the eyes of the press, was unable to get his message out to enough Americans, relying on social media to reach as many as possible and refusing to sell out to corporate America to receive their financial backing is out of money and forced to end his bid for the presidency. And I say this to the citizenry of this once great country, in both of the last two presidential elections, you have squandered the chance to have an honest president, one who would fight to give you back the rights and prosperity that you have willingly given up as a result of the fear mongering by our public officials and all I can say in the way of a consoling gesture, is you get what you ask for and when your lives end up in the sewer, don't look for any sympathy from me.

---

JOHN TOOHEY

Do not dare compre a man with the integrity of Bernie with a self serving ignoramus like RFK who is trying to sell his endorsement to both parties.

Bernie has been in full and total support of Harris and Walz, and while I think Bernie was the superior choice in the last two elections, his influence is trending America in the right way - the pick of Walz and the message of the democrats is proof positive that the direction has improved. Political change in this county moves incredibly slow for good reason, it limits volatility, it was designed that way, and with the dissolution of the GOP and the progressive nudge to the exceedingly popular Democratic Party, I am super optimistic about America and humanity for the first time in a long time.

Now, when it comes to specific policies reference during conventions, the Republicans offered none and were not judged for or called out but the Democrats are held to a higher standard than Republicans and so they are expected to detail policy, which is then this characterized and dishonestly framed for the sake of political argument so the Democrats really have no choice, but to be a little more vague and they were. That said, they did specifically talk about controlling corporate fixed price gouging for food. They talked about building 3 million new homes to reduced the housing shortage. They talked about $25,000 down payment credit for first time homebuyers. They talked about a tax cut for the middle class. They talked about straightening their ties with NATO, and yeah, they spent a decent amount of time standing on the achievements of Biden over the last four years which have been many and powerful and return this nation to the top of the food chain on planet earth. The selection of Tim Walz shows the progressive trend of the party. He has secured free school lunches and breakfasts for the children in his state. He’s instituted family and medical leave. He’s banished conversion therapy and then so many other great things. You should check his record because when Kamala was faced with the decision between corporate friendly Shapiro and redneck Tim Walz, she chose Coach Walz.

ANYBODY serious about changing the death-bound direction of this country, and I speak here as a patriot, has got to help kill the Democratic Party. I don’t mean that you have to hunt down Rachel Binah or Val Muchowski and stone them to death. No, nothing that cathartic. All you have to do is vote for third party alternatives until the Democrats move back to FDR territory. Since the Democratic candidates, like their enablers, the Republians, are all beholden to big money and Netanyahu's Old Testament notion of Greater Israel, the rich will get richer and there will be war in the Middle East until Armageddon, which seems to be scheduled for some time after this year’s election. The Democratic Party must die. Nothing good can happen in this country until it’s six feet under in an escape proof, reinforced steel casket.

ON THE SUBJECT of cruel and unnatural punishment, i.e., American prisons, consider the case of John Wesley Hardin, the famous 19th century outlaw. Regarded at the time as “the meanest man that ever lived,” Hardin killed a consensus 44 men, one of whom he dispatched for snoring too loud. Hardin was finally arrested and put away in the Huntsville, Texas prison in 1877 to serve 25 years for various episodes of mayhem. He was out in 15, pardoned by the governor. Hardin then opened a law office in El Paso and never again violated the law from its unsanctioned side. So, how come our half million or so John Wesleys get put away forever with no hope for starting over?

ON THE OFF CHANCE you’re unaware how far to the political right this country has moved over the last 50 years, please accept this reminder: Richard Nixon was for national health insurance; he founded the Environmental Protection Agency; Nixon was for much higher taxes on unearned income, i.e., stock dividends etc. He influenced the 1972 Republican platform opposition to corporate relocation overseas, which he rightly described as large-scale tax evasion, but now known as savvy fiscal management. The great malefactors of wealth excoriated by Republicans from Lincoln on up through the first Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Eisenhower, and Nixon? Both parties today are not only funded by them, they celebrate them.

FROM THE CHRON’S garden section: “…A poinsettia will survive in a sunny, sheltered spot in mid-winter areas, but they typically look scrawny, so you may want to toss the plant.” Resist that temptation. If you can get past its scrawny period and keep it alive for a full year, you’ll get almost as much multi-hued beauty from an ongoing poinsettia as you will from any variety of Japanese Maple. I had a poinsettia I’d nursed along for four years to a height of about four feet. I loved that plant, and was darn near suicidal when a sudden frost carried it off. My own carelessness was the culprit; I’d put off carrying my poinsettia inside where it safely spent its winters. But they’re easy to keep going. Not too much water, keep ‘em warm and, in my experience, out of direct sunlight (leaves are too sensitive for hot day suns), and you’ll have yourself a plant you’ll really, really like. I’ve got a three year poinsettia going that’s already looking good year-round.

A READER WRITES: Speaking of nuclear weapons, as the Biden administration goosesteps us towards WW3, rest assured that we have an expert on queer theory in the National Nuclear Security Administration.

From an article she co-wrote last year (her co-author was a man, for the haters):

”Discrimination against queer people can undermine nuclear security and increase nuclear risk.”

“Such workplace cultures also create enormous psychological stress for minority staff, including queer people, who spend lots of time and energy adapting to role expectations, rather than focusing on bringing their full, authentic potential to the policy-making process.”

“Exclusion and unfair treatment of queer individuals and other minorities by a homogenous, cis-heteronormative community of practitioners also creates vulnerabilities in nuclear decision making.”

“An example of this is the threat posed by some white supremacist groups with plans to acquire nuclear weapons or material, which can go undetected when a white-majority workforce does not perceive these groups and their ideological motivation as a relevant threat to their nuclear security mission. Individuals targeted by these kinds of groups—including women, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ community—are more likely to identify these types of behaviors and attitudes as security risks and can play a crucial role in identifying a potential insider threat.”

I, for one, feel much better knowing that Biden appointed someone who is more worried about “white supremacists” getting ahold of a nuclear weapon than the actual risk taken by using US weapons, ISR, and “mercenaries” (sheep-dipped soldiers), into Russia, where they make Tik-Tok videos of themselves hanging pregnant Russian women from trees.

We wouldn’t want someone who feels pressure to adapt to ”role expectations” (i.e. doing their job), instead of flourishing as their authentic self, to make decisions about nuclear war, would we?

Remember the end of Dr. Strangelove, when a straight white male rode the nuclear bomb to destroy Russia?

In the Biden White House, that will be a queer something-or-other person, maybe wearing women’s clothes stolen from airports, with thickly applied makeup and lipstick. The bomb will be painted in joyous rainbow colors by a diverse group of neuro-divergent employees.

We’ll all be so proud!

CHAD SWIMMER, KZYX program host and guest on the TKO show hosted by Karen Ottoboni, Wednesday, August 14, 2024:

“MRC is owned by the Fisher Family in San Francisco. They would like to re-open the old LP mill site on the Coast on Gibney Lane. They would like to use it for log storage. But it looks pretty clear that they would like to open a mill on the coast down the line. There are many problems with this. MRC has been blatant with their violations, even on the mill site recently including having an illegal camp of people living there with no sewage or water. And they are constructing buildings that have been contracted out, leased out to CalFire, unpermitted construction. The buildings are being used for fire training in the middle of a neighborhood. If they get to use this as a log deck they will probably have 50 to 100 truck trips per day. The volume will be really loud, 85 to over 100 decibels. 95 decibels is the law in California. We would like people to at least write to the County if you are able to if you are concerned. Email Russell Ford [Planning and Building] at fordr@mendocinocounty.gov. (It might be fordr@mendocinocounty.org.) Just say, We would not like more log storage on the Coast that’s noisy and causing lots of damage to our roads. MRC has polluted that neighborhood. I spoke to John Anderson (MRC President) about it and he said it might create 5-10 jobs.” (Mr. Swimmer was cut off at this point as the show was winding down.)

SURELY EVERYONE is anticipating a packed agenda for the long-awaited Tuesday, September 10 Board of Supervisors meeting. The Board members have had more than six weeks to prepare for this meeting having taken their seven-week long “August recess.” So we are looking forward to some major Supervisor-sponsored agenda items appearing on that Septemer 10 Board meeting agenda. (Mark Scaramella)

ON-LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

[1] Night 2 of the DNC was interesting. The true believers were in their element. I started watching PBS at about 9:45. Top impressions were these: Bernie Sanders and his free stuff rant. 60% of Americans live pay check to paycheck with no savings. So…. free stuff paid for by government is the answer. Government can work well….how? Don’t know if that was explained. But you have to hand it to Bernie, at least he’s consistent. That was about all that passed for any economic policy on the Dems part. No mention about anything so substantive as our 2 trillion $$$ yearly deficits.. That would be such a downer!

In fact there really wasn’t any substance anywhere the whole night. But feelings? That there was lots of. Conveyed very passionately and skillfully by the Obama’s. In fact so much so that one of the PBS commentators broke down in tears at the end of the night. Saying he had felt “seen”. I would list all the commentators in the True Believer camp. We live in a very emotional age not tempered by much reason or reality. This is what the Democratic party is. Reasoned statements of reality will have no effect on them, in fact will be perceived as attacks and lies. Michelle prepared them for this exposure.. Will this work for the Dems? Very possibly so, at least till November.

Trump is going to have to up his game to win. He too is a man of not too much reasoned discourse, which is probably for the good these days. Barack said Trump’s name calling and rhetoric were stale. Have to admit that resonated with me a little bit. Worked in 2016 when it was a novelty and gave hope that there would be what…. ? Justice? Comeuppance? But that’s just so mean. They’re pulling off Kamala as something shiny and new. God help us.

[2] I hope there isn’t any American over 30 who thinks that a real third party is possible in this country. At most, you could have a party disappear and reappear with a new name, like the Whig/Republican rebranding. There will only ever be one party with two branches. The Evil Party and the Stupid Party. Sometimes they get together and do something that is both evil and stupid. This is called “bipartisanship.”

[3] Re: Ed Note: “ARE THERE 300 homeless and/or intractable outpatients in greater Ukiah? Figures vary. But there are at least that many well-paid helping professionals based in Ukiah, and that’s without factoring in clerical staff and the rest of their support apparatuses.”

Armstrong: “I came late (after Kamala) to today’s fray. Those numbers seem pretty high to me. Where do they come from? 300 well-paid professionals (or unprofessionals for that matter) would make a nice economic sector.”

Mark Scaramella replies: The Schraeders and their subcontractors alone get around $30 million a year for various helping professional services contracts. Assuming generously that maybe a quarter of that goes for facilities, overhead and private profit, that leaves maybe $23 million for salaries, Assuming they make (with generous benefits) around $100k per year, that would be 230 staffers, more if the salaries are lower). Add Dr. Miller’s mental health staff and the jail’s mental health staff (maybe 50 more) and you’re up to 280. Then add in the psych staffers at the local hospitals, and the crisis outreach and your probably over 300 give or take. If the salaries are lower than $100k per year as many of them probably are, the number goes over 300 proportionately. So the Editor’s guess of at least 300 seems reasonable to me.

[4] My biggest complaint in all of this is I don’t know what to do other than just try my best to be the best person I know how to be. I am just one dude living in a modest home in a modest town in the Rocky Mountains. Who am I to bring about change?

So, I tackle what can control and that is myself. I strive to live a honest existence, treat my fellow man with the respect I would like to have, be a person of faith, commune with God and love my wife and children. I reject evil in all of its forms (television, porn, drugs, perversion) and I endorse and uphold righteous institutions when I can find them.

I also try to be prepared for what may come. I stay out of debt by living in a simple home and drive simple vehicles (2007 Tacoma). I refuse to play keep up with the Joneses. I live a simple life on as little income as I can. I store food so that I can feed my family as well as the hungry children that will come begging. I will never turn away a starving child because their parents didn’t prepare.

Other than that, I don’t know what else to do. I truly believe that righteous people would not tolerate a wicked government. Our government has become a house of lies and deception because the American people, by and large have become that way. If we all would right ourselves inwardly and make restitution with our God, things would change. But alas, they do not. They revel in their sin and their perversion. They mock God and all that is good, righteous and decent. They press down in their sins. And so they will be punished.

[5] Maybe in some aspects not that great anymore, but America is still pretty good. I’d say better than most other places. You can still have a pretty decent life here. I tell my nephews to avoid alcohol & drug abuse & legal problems, be careful who you marry, and find a decent paying job that you like … and you’ll do ok. Not that complicated really. As far as the USA being a ‘War Mongering Nation” we didn’t enter WW1 until it had been going on for almost 4 years, and WW2 had been raging for 2 1/2 years before we got involved, and that was only due to Pearl Harbor, and a few days later, GERMANY DECLARING WAR ON US. So, at worst, we are a reluctant “War Mongering Nation.”

[6] The idea that “daddy” or the patriarchal social organization stands against this social disintegration–this is nonsense. Men have traditionally enjoyed precisely these “freedoms.” Much of the feminist movement sprang from women’s desire to be as “free” to be as antisocial as men have always been: unchaste, vulgar, arbitrary (that is, unjust and unreasonable) in their use of power, and indifferent towards their children and families.

[7] Good News!

In a timely announcement and a nod to Governor Walz, our Commissioner of Education has indicated 95% compliance amongst our State’s High Schools in the mandate to install tampon dispensing machines in boys locker rooms in the 138 existing school districts. There are a few holdouts to be sure but they will be dealt with. One problem is vandalism, but we are assured vandalism will be severely punished … up to expulsion and arrest.

We’ve had public schools here in one form or another since about 1650; one wonders why this important matter took almost 400 years to expedite.