Mendocino County Today: Monday 9/2/2024

Sand Dune | Cool Day | Labor Day | River Warnings | Coast Guard | Homeless Roundups | Sake Bar | Sandwich Machine | Ed Notes | Willits Cowboy | Hit Man | Proud Parent | Cool People | Yesterday's Catch | Pearsall Released | Bereft Commentator | Visual Dystopia | Entering Ohio | Mask Off | Capitalism Country | Scary Intersection | Polio Vaccine | Craven IDF | Digging In | Subhuman | The Psychos

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DRY WEATHER and near to slightly below normal temperatures continues today. High pressure will promote breezy to gusty northeast winds over the ridges tonight and Tuesday night. A warming trend and drier air mass is expected on Tuesday, with much hotter conditions for interior and clearer conditions at the coast on Wednesday and persist through Friday. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): On the coast this Labor Day morning I have a cooler 49F under clear skies. Mostly clear skies are forecast this week as the lovely holiday weather continues into the new week.

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TOXIC ALGAE DISCOVERED IN EAST FORK OF RUSSIAN RIVER AHEAD OF LONG HOLIDAY WEEKEND; NAVARRO RIVER, TOO

Children and dogs are most at risk of serious health effects, officials say

by Anna Armstrong

Potentially toxic algae was detected in the East Fork of the Russian River in Mendocino County just ahead of the long Labor Day weekend, officials said.

The North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board issued a statement Friday afternoon advising anyone who swims and fishes in the area to exercise caution and avoid touching “suspicious-looking algal material” in the river and along the shore.

Children and dogs are most at risk of serious health effects, officials say.

Water Board staff discovered the dense algal growth during a field training Aug. 9 and took samples from the river at the access point across from Elledge Ranch Road north of Ukiah.

Testing confirmed the growth of potentially toxic algae.

The Board will post signage warning visitors at the East Fork of the river.

The harmful algae can be found either attached to the bottom, on the riverbanks or floating in water and may appear orange, dull-green, brown or maroon in color, the release said.

Pets should not drink the river water, and it is recommended for all people and pets to avoid touching the algae, officials added. If a pet is exposed, they should be washed immediately to avoid potential health risks.

The county and Board urged anyone experiencing sickness related to ingesting the algae to seek immediate medical attention.

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

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ADAM GASKA: Saturday's clean up was a success! Thanks to those who came out and pitched in. Thanks to the County for helping to push out the people that were living in Gibson Creek and for supplying a dump truck to put the trash into.

This coming week I will walk the massive encampments along Ackerman Creek and the Russian River in Talmage with our Sheriff, Matt Kendall. The purpose is to assess the amount of garbage and to serve those camped out with an eviction notice prior to clean up. Anyone refusing to move on will be removed just ahead of the clean up. I estimate there to be at least 20 people camped out along the river. There's probably tens of yards of trash, possibly over 100 yards, to remove.

The tentative date for cleanup of Ackerman Creek will be Saturday, September 28th and the Russian River at Talmage will be October 12th. Again, I will be looking for support from the County in the form of hauling off the trash, the Sheriff’s office to evict the people camping, and volunteers from our community to physically remove the trash.

There will be more details to come, I just wanted to give people a heads up, especially since the next two clean ups will require more of an effort to remove the substantial amount of garbage.

It takes the entire community to make things clean and safe.

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COMING SOON to South Boonville! Christina Jones and her husband Satoru ‘Ru’ Christy, former operators of the popular Aquarelle restaurant in Boonville before it closed a few years ago, are in the process of opening a Sake Bar with snacks at the old Live Oak Building in Boonville called “Sobo Sake Bar.” SoBo residents have seen workers doing the prep work in the space recently vacated by Bee Hunter Wines on the south end of Boonville. (“SoBo”) Locals are already looking forward to the fare and chatting with the popular Valley couple at their new venture.

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ED NOTES

PSEUDONYMS: We try to run a reputable shop here at the cyber-ava, but fake name posts are constant and detract from our mission which, if you must ask, is to bring our readers The Truth, or at least an integrity of opinion, by which we mean opinion untethered to dogma.

IF I WERE ANON, I’d hide behind a plainer disguise, something like “Bob Jones” or “Elizabeth Forbes” rather than advertise my anonymity in see-through disguises like Zanzibar to Andalusia and Call It As I See It. With a plain disguise no one could ever know for sure you were in disguise and dismiss your opinion out of hand.

FRED GARDNER nails it: “There’s an element of self-glorification In some of these anonymous comments. As if to say, 'What I’m writing is so daring, so dangerous, I have to protect myself from retaliation.' It also enables a kind of ugly cursing, such as calling the Zionist criminals 'subhuman scum.' That’s Nazi talk.”

A RECENT CHRON posed this question to five random citizens: “Are you counting on Social Security to support you in retirement?”

The answers:

ELEANOR CHANG of Pacific Heights: “I am counting on my son, not Social Security, to support me in my old age. This practice has worked for the Chinese people for thousands of years.”

TONY MAZZA, as reality-based as Ms. Chang, said: “I am not counting on anything from the government. And retirement? What’s that? I am hoping there will be enough shopping carts to go around. I just can’t decide between a Safeway or an Albertson’s model.”

AN ELDERLY WOMAN named Claire Jarkovsky of the Western Addition: “As one who is receiving Social Security, let me be brutally honest: There is no way you can count on it to support you in retirement. It is a joke to even contemplate, and I feel very sorry for those about to retire, unless they have savings of some sort."

DAN SOLLIDAY, South of Market, age 40: “Absolutely not. It appalls me that the fix of this deficit is on people with already shallow pockets. What about getting some help from the deep pockets? We should demand accountability for this mismanagement of our money. Where does the buck stop? Apparently with me.”

FINALLY, a kid named Andrew Allio, Potrero Hill: “I haven’t thought that far into life yet. But sure. Why wouldn’t I?”

BECAUSE OF WARREN BUFFET, to name one reason why you wouldn’t want to factor in Social Security when you’re plotting your dependent years. Warren, a billionaire, joked recently, “If this is class warfare, my class is winning.” It always is, Warren.

RECOMMENDED READING for your Northcoast history files: 'So Late, So Soon,' a memoir by D’arcy Fallon. Ms. Fallon is a former reporter for the long gone SF Examiner. As a wild and crazy 18-year-old, and just before unescorted young women became hors d’oeuvres for serial killers, Ms. Fallon hitchhiked north where she alighted at a community of lunatic Christian fundamentalists just south of Eureka.

THESE weren't any old community of loons, they were special even by loon standards. These were murderous loons affiliated with the infamously murderous military regime of Guatemala’s Rios-Montt, who was inspired by this murderous Eureka-based Jesus cult to wipe out thousands of Guatemalan Indians, not to mention non-Indian dissidents and inconvenient journalists.

THE CONNECTION between Rios-Montt and the Christian killers of Lighthouse Ranch was seldom made by America’s dependably inattentive media, but it was very real. As is Ms. Fallon’s account of her experiences at Lighthouse where she was subjected to a regimen of exhausting labor among grim communards who slapped her around with Biblical admonitions over her every perceived deficiency. Which, Ms. Fallon admits, were many, as were those of the much older persons doing the admonishing.

THE AUTHOR falls in love with another youthful Christer, they marry, she comes to her senses in New York where they’d been dispatched to do the work of the Lord and bring home the bacon, the two tasks being seen as co-equal, but finds her way back to sanity in the San Francisco Bay Area, national home of the anti-Christ.

THERE ARE LOTS of very funny stories in this fascinating account of youthful folly, one of the funniest is about how the enterprising cultists raised money by selling donuts door-to-door in Eureka. They even founded a newspaper in whose pages Ms. Fallon got her start as a journalist. A very good journalist, I should say, and here’s where we’ll veer off into true confessions. I happened to know Ms. Fallon from her days at the old Examiner. The poor thing once was assigned to write a story about me. Her story made me out better than I am, but of course endeared Ms. Fallon to me. So, when I got the review copy of her book in the mail I felt obligated to read it.

I SIGHED and began, muttering to myself, “A young girl hitchhiking around California is the last goddamned thing I want to read. Hells bells, I’m getting old, and I haven’t even read Anna Karenina yet. The clock ticks, the Reaper chuckles, but here I am late in the only life I’ll ever have on an achingly beautiful day when any normal person would be outside rolling around in the sunshine….

INSTANTLY HOOKED. (1) I realized Ms. Fallon was talking about what became the Rios-Montt cult, (2) She is such a good writer I kept on turning the pages to see what would happen to her next. Would she free herself of the cult brains? Would she dump her doofus of a first love? Would some perv-o Eureka Rotarian snag her when she appeared at his door selling jelly donuts? (The author cleaned houses, worked in the garden, cooked, wrote for the paper, sold ads, irritated the pious. The jelly donuts were men’s work.)

A COUPLE of hours later I was through the whole saga, all of it interesting, all of it ending well. Except for Rios-Montt who lived swinishly on, prospering even, the kind of man who makes the godless wish for hell so he could go there. The Lighthouse crackpots are apparently still up there in Eureka, snagging lost souls and making fascists out of them. It’s an interesting account by a very smart, very funny young woman temporarily at loose ends in a country wackier and more frightening by the day.

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WHEN A HITMAN IS THE ONLY SOLUTION

by Tommy Wayne Kramer

TIME: Mid-afternoon, mid-May, 2025

LOCATION: Long-abandoned jail cell in former county jail (top floor, Mendocino County Courthouse.)

PRESENT: A high-ranking, unnamed Mendocino County Deputy District Attorney, an unnamed Superior Court Judge, an unnamed court reporter.

DA: Alright, everyone’s here that needs to be here, so we might as well get to the business at hand. Judge, do we all agree that every method and strategy we have enacted concerning these two individuals has failed? And that after 16 years of incarceration, probation, parole, fines and other punishments in Mendocino County, this pair has proven beyond the reach of the justice system? And do we acknowledge some, ahh, extreme measures might be in order?

JUDGE: We do. We agree. I’ve spoken with each of my colleagues both individually and as a body, and there is not a dissenting voice, nor an opinion that contradicts the gravity of the situation and our powerlessness in addressing it. We are unanimous.

DA: And I am proceeding with the support and confidence of my superiors. We are united in our sense of duty, and in our commitment to confidentiality in this plan. No alternative has been suggested.

JUDGE: And have you available today the individual who is capable and willing to carry out our plans?

DA: I do.

JUDGE: And…?

DA: One moment. If you’ll excuse me.

(At which point Deputy DA exits cell/location)

(And returns)

DA: May I introduce the man whose history and experience I have submitted in written form to those involved in this program?

JUDGE: Please.

DA: With us today is (deleted) who, as I have said, is familiar to us at least on paper. He is here to answer questions and to outline actions to bring about the desired results.

WITNESS: Thank you. I believe I understand the mission and I believe myself fully capable of carrying it out with extreme prejudice. Questions?

JUDGE: I, we, are familiar with your background both with the Marine Corps in the Afghanistan campaign, and your more recent work with criminal operations including the so-called Mafia and two separate motorcycle groups.

WITNESS: Correct.

JUDGE: And you understand we are requesting you to undergo what is technically an illegal operation, but which you may undertake with complete and utter immunity from prosecution at the county, state or federal level. And that your compensation will be, in addition to immunity, the sum of two million dollars ($2,000,000) upon completion of the campaign.

WITNESS: Correct.

DA: Explain, briefly, how you plan to carry out this assignment.

WITNESS: Yes. I understand the two intended targets, one male and one female, have proven they are resistant to and immune from rehabilitation efforts whether incarceration, levied fines, intra-nation deportation. That they have proven a menace to civilized people and that they are known to abuse public facilities, including libraries, hospital staff, shelter workers and their clients, nonprofit agencies, social services facilities and average local citizens That they…”

JUDGE: …I think your grasp is sufficient. And to address the problem?

WITNESS: I prefer not disclosing details. I can assure you with confidence the pair will be eliminated within five days, beginning the moment I am provided the go-ahead signal.

DA: And cleanup? Disposal of the bodies?

WITNESS: Not my job. I will nullify the targeted pair and move on.

Participants exchange glances, nod, and advise hired security agent to proceed as needed, payment delivered as previously agreed.

JUDGE: I think that’s all then.

Looks at court reporter, says meeting is complete, gives curt thank you and nods toward door. Court reporter exits.

JUDGE: And she is Target Number Three. (Glances, nods toward closed door). No witnesses.

WITNESS: Understood. Order of elimination to be determined.

Exits.

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COOLNESS & BURNING MAN

by Paul Modic

Burning Man is for the people who like to party, have always partied, and were the people around here who always knew where the good parties were. I never got invited to the cool parties, with all the girls and drugs, so I wasn’t a partier and therefore had no urge to up my game and graduate to the biggest party of them all, Burning Man.

I wasn’t cool enough to be invited to the cool parties, twenty, thirty, and forty years ago, and I wonder if they’re still happening today. Are there still all those “happening” private parties or did all the insiders get old, boring, grow up, die off, or just graduate to Burning Man? (By definition, if I had been cool enough to figure out where the cool parties were then I could have, would have, gone, right? Not cool enough to know, not cool enough to go.)

The key to getting invited to parties was probably who you knew, how many friends you had, and if they were willing to invite you. (I once asked a good friend why he never invited me along to parties he went to and he said he’d be worried I’d say some provocative thing and embarrass him. Hmm, okay, well there is that.)

I probably didn’t deserve to be invited, my un-coolness preceding me, and if I had actually been invited to a cool party I wouldn’t have known what to say or do, and would have depended on weed and booze to change me into a temporary party animal, ie, pathetic drunk. (I finally broke through when someone invited me to a Tim and Jenny party back in 2009: my date and I got drunk, took over the stage singing and Darryl Cherney, that rat bastard, tried to make us tone it down and stop having fun.)

Finally I woke up and learned the art of conversation: you say something, then ask a question, listen to the response, then react to what was said with actual interest. Yet my hermit life, by definition, limits the amount of friends, connection to events, and other social activities, and I still feel relatively isolated and uncool because I say what I think and don’t tell white lies. (Though I can now pause half a second before saying, or not saying, something hurtfully honest, unlike my previously unfiltered persona.)

I still believe honesty is always the best policy but if all the cool people, as well as all the rest of the people, tell white lies does that make me uncool for not telling them?

My old line has always been “I’m waiting for uncool to be cool again” which brings me to the question: Are there any cool people around anymore and how would we know?

Oh right, they all went to Burning Man.

(On my 70th birthday last month I realized that I might finally be cool, the best present of all.)

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Sunday, September 1, 2024

CHRISTOPHER BAUGHMAN, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

ELECTRA BEARD, Fort Bragg. Vandalism.

JAMES CLAUSEN, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

DEREK DAVIS, Covelo. Failure to appear.

THOMAS DAVIS, Willits. DUI.

CELINE DUMONT, Redwood Valley. Failure to appear.

ORLANDO ESQUIVEL JR., Covelo. Battery.

CARMINE FUDGE, Eureka/Ukiah. Shopping cart, disorderly conduct-alcohol.

ANAISEL MARIN-JUAREZ, Ukiah. Stolen property.

KYLE MASON, Ukiah. Disobying court order.

WILLIAM OWENS, Ukiah. Parole violation. (Frequent flyer.)

MARK RAY, Ukiah. Controlled substance, probation revocation.

DANIEL RICH, Arcata/Ukiah. Taking vehicle without owner’s consent, reckless evasion, suspended license for reckless driving, probation denial.

AMAHNI SCHLEPER, Ukiah. Domestic abuse, battery on peace officer, resisting.

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HERE’S HOW AN SFPD SERGEANT MAY HAVE SAVED 49ER RICKY PEARSALL’S LIFE

by St. John Barned-Smith

Sgt. Joelle Harrell was standing near the corner of Grant and Post just before 4 p.m. on Saturday when she heard three pops about a block south of her. For a moment, she wondered if it was the skateboarders who often frequent Maiden Lane — but the noise was too loud.

She started running south, toward Geary, and called out over the radio that she was going to investigate possible gunshots nearby.

As she passed Maiden Lane, she looked left, and right.

No skateboarders.

“Those are gunshots,” she thought.

She ran past a shop where shoppers standing in front seemed to not have registered what was happening. When they saw her running, they scattered.

It took her less than a minute to reach the end of the block and dart around a Muni bus idling at the corner. Then she saw him: the shirtless man crouched by a U.S. Post Office box, with blood covering his scalp and seeping from a chest wound.

“There was so much blood,” she said.

The situation was moving so fast she didn’t even ask his name. She grabbed him by his shoulders and fired off some questions: What happened? What did the shooter look like? Where had he gone? And were those sandals lying on the ground the shooter’s?

The victim, San Francisco 49ers first-round draft pick Ricky Pearsall, had been walking back to his Tesla after shopping at Rimowa and Louis Vuitton, when a 17-year-old boy from Tracy had accosted him and tried to rob him. 

At that moment, though, Harrell didn’t know all that.

“He tried to rob me!” Harrell recalled the man telling her.

He told her the shooter looked like a young man with dark curly hair, who’d been wearing all black. He’d headed east down Geary, running barefoot because his black and white slip-on sandals had fallen off.

She yelled to a motorcycle officer, who had just arrived, to put the news of the robbery out on the radio.

She turned to another sergeant who’d arrived at the scene and told them to call an ambulance.

By that time, she’d grabbed Pearsall’s shirt, pressing it into his chest to create pressure on the wound. She pressed her baseball cap against the exit wound in his back.

“I was using my hand for the front just to create a suction so the air wouldn’t enter the wound,” she said.

She said she could feel him getting tense, the anxiety and fear filling him as he realized the extent of his injuries. He was a football player, he said, for the 49ers. 

Harrell was just trying to keep pressure on his wounds and slow the bleeding. Stay calm, she told him. 

Pearsall asked if he was going to die.

No, she reassured him. It wasn’t his time. Harrell, a devout Catholic, started praying. 

“You’re strong,” she said she kept telling him. “Just focus on the breathing."

"And he listened," Harell recalled. "He calmed down, and that’s what I wanted him to do.”

Within minutes, more sirens filled the air.

“That siren is the ambulance,” she told him. “It’s here for you. … It’s just a matter of time before we get you in there.”

Another officer arrived. Was the guy they’d detained down the street the shooter?

“Go look at him,” the officer told her.

About 200 feet east, she found a young man, wearing all black — with no shoes. Police later said he’d suffered a gunshot wound to his arm — apparently incurred during the altercation.

He looked exactly as Pearsall had described. 

“Keep that guy there!”

(sfchronicle.com)

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HOW 49ERS’ RICKY PEARSALL SURVIVED A GUNSHOT WOUND TO THE CHEST

by Aidin Vazir & Catherine Ho

San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Ricky Pearsall was released from San Francisco General Hospital less than 24 hours after being shot in the chest during an attempted robbery in Union Square on Saturday afternoon.

It’s a lucky outcome for people shot in the chest, doctors say — and a reflection, in part, on the course of the bullet, which avoided major organs.

The bullet went through his chest and out the back, according to a since-deleted Facebook post by the athlete’s mother Erin Pearsall. “Thanks be to GOD it missed his vital organs,” she wrote.

It appears Pearsall managed to escape injury to the heart and spine, two of the most serious injuries from gunshot wounds to the chest. In a video from the scene on Saturday, he was seen clutching a large bandage on the right side of his chest as he walked to the ambulance. He was in serious but stable condition when admitted, according to the 49ers.

Surviving a gunshot wound to the chest involves several critical factors. These include the bullet’s trajectory, the firearm used, the speed of medical response, and the victim’s overall health. Injuries to the chest can damage crucial structures such as the heart, lungs, or major blood vessels, making timely and effective trauma care essential.

With gunshot wounds to the chest, doctors are most concerned with three major categories of life-threatening injuries, said UCSF emergency physician Dr. Jahan Fahimi, who did not treat Pearsall and was speaking about gunshot wounds in general. Those are: injury to the heart or major arteries, which is often immediately fatal; injury to the spine, which can result in nerve damage or paralysis; and injury to the lungs, which can be fatal if not immediately treated.

“If you’ve managed to avoid those three major anatomical areas, there are some more minor muscular or skeletal injuries that can occur that can cause significant damage,” Fahimi said. “But that’d be considered extremely lucky. If you’re shot in the chest and you walk away without injury to those big three structures, I’d consider that patient very fortunate.”

The National Trauma Data Bank indicates that patients who receive treatment within the “golden hour” — the first hour following a traumatic injury — experience significantly better outcomes.

Dr. David Turay, a trauma surgeon at Mayo Clinic, emphasizes that immediate care during this period can drastically enhance survival chances.

Indeed, surviving long enough to make it to the hospital, as Pearsall did, is a good prognostic indicator.

Pearsall, the 49ers’ first-round draft pick this year, was attacked around 3:30 p.m. near Geary Street and Grant Avenue while carrying shopping bags. The suspected assailant, a 17-year-old from Tracy, allegedly attempted to rob Pearsall, leading to a violent struggle.

The suspect, who was also injured by his own weapon, was apprehended by nearby officers and taken to San Francisco General Hospital for treatment alongside Pearsall.

California’s firearm violence statistics highlight the gravity of shooting incidents. In 2020, the state reported 3,449 firearm deaths, with half classified as homicides, according to the California Department of Public Health.

Recovery time from gunshot wounds can vary greatly, and is difficult to predict without knowing details about Pearsall’s case. In general, being a young person who is physically fit and has cardiopulmonary reserve is more likely to make for a speedy recovery, said Fahimi, the UCSF emergency doctor.

“Youth is probably the biggest factor,” he said. “My hope would be he has minor injuries and he’ll be able to make a full recovery. It’s certainly possible someone could make a complete recovery with no long-term damage.”

Most gunshot injury victims who survive experience mental health impacts, which can include an acute stress reaction or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Fahimi said.

“Probably the biggest thing most patients will experience is the psychological impact of having been gun-injured and surviving,” he said. “The recovery process requires really good psychological care. It may require counseling and medications and lifestyle behaviors to try to mitigate the impacts of PTSD.”

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Get Well Soon Ricky Pearsall, To Play For 49ers, Not Be A Political Football

by Scott Ostler

As Ricky Pearsall recovers from a bullet wound, the young man who just wants to suit up and catch passes for the San Francisco 49ers finds himself a political football.

The hope here is that the rookie wide receiver is able to ignore the outside noise and heal in peace. My wish is that he kicks back and lets the rest of us fight and squabble about the deeper meaning of the failed robbery attempt that sent Pearsall and his assailant to the hospital Saturday afternoon with bullet wounds.

Outside of what I hope is Pearsall’s bubble, the squabbling, blaming and finger pointing will not cease. San Francisco was already ground zero among American cities in the battle of political ideologies, an argument that gets hotter as the Presidential election nears. The shooting risks jacking up that hate debate.

I apologize to you, Ricky, on behalf of all of us, for those who use you as a stepping stone onto higher and higher soap boxes. The wish here is that very soon we can get back to writing about you and talking about you as a football player.

But sometimes reality sucks, and the attempted robbery of a big-name athlete in Union Square has focused the nation’s attention back on San Francisco. If he hasn’t already, I expect Donald Trump will surely mention the Pearsall shooting as a way to make political hay, the way he used Colin Kaepernick’s kneel-down protests in 2016 to boost his campaign. It’s a perfect tie-in that Kamala Harris was once a part of San Francisco’s law enforcement and political scene.

The mudslinging has begun. Mark Mulder, who pitched for the Oakland A’s from 2000-04, tweeted Sunday on X (formerly known as Twitter), “What an absolute hell hole of a city! The mentally ill Libs will still tell you how beautiful it is while they get mugged and step in s---.”

In news reports of the Pearsall shooting, the Chronicle cited statistics showing that violent crime in the city is down significantly. This sparked social-media outrage from those skeptical of the statistics. That’s fair. As we know from recent stories out of Oakland, such stats can be manipulated.

I talked to a couple of the neighborhood’s merchants, and I realize they have a vested interest in cheerleading, but that doesn’t mean they are fibbing.

“I’m here every day, I can tell you, things are getting much, much better, we’re moving in the right direction,” said John Konstin, owner of John’s Grill, on Ellis two blocks from Union Square. “The neighborhood has two (plays), ‘Wicked’ and ‘Evita,’ we had the Giants game yesterday, we were packed, we served 600 people. … We have a lot of cops, people feel safer, and the streets are a lot cleaner, especially in the last three to six months. You don’t hear about so many car break-ins, crime in general is down.”

Konstin pointed out that recent sweeps have taken many homeless camps off the streets.

“I’m telling you, it has improved drastically, and it’s moving in the right direction.”

The owner of CK Contemporary, an art gallery on Powell, a stone’s throw from the Square, said she has seen the neighborhood improve.

“The irony (of the timing of the Pearsall shooting) is that the world in Union Square looks better than ever,” said Lauren Ellis. “We’ve seen an increase in foot traffic and tourism. It has felt safer than ever. I mostly am heartbroken for (Pearsall), and thrilled that there were enough police around that they got to him right away. Impressed with the response, at the very least.”

Ellis added, “It’s been a pretty sharp improvement in the last three or four months, certainly over the summer. I’ve seen a marked difference in tourism, foot traffic, and just the general feeling of safety and cleanliness all around.”

Too hypy? Don’t believe the stats? That’s fair, but here’s what those who point to San Francisco as the root of all American evil, and the death of Union Square as Exhibit A, conveniently ignore: The Square has taken a hit in recent years, but much of the retail departure is a reflection of the nationwide decline of brick-and-mortar stores.

Also contributing to the Square’s problems was the pandemic, which may have been worsened by the tragically slow response by whomever was in charge of the country at the time, and the expanding gap between the rich and poor, which inevitably increases the crime rate.

Sports has played a small but significant role in the ongoing debate over the state of San Francisco. The recent endorsement of Kamala Harris at the Democratic National Convention by Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr and star Stephen Curry no doubt inflamed anti-SF feeling from the political right.

Last winter, San Francisco Giants execs Farhan Zaidi and Buster Posey made comments suggesting that free agents shy away from their team because of the City’s unsavory reputation. They both walked back those comments, somewhat, and statements from several players debunked that theory, but reputations are easy to get, hard to shed.

Maybe the Pearsall shooting will revive the chatter about athletes avoiding San Francisco. If so, good luck to the star who tells his agent that he will sign only with a team based in a city where nobody gets robbed or shot.

One thing we can all agree on: Get well soon, Ricky.

(SF Chronicle)

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YOU DON’T OFTEN SEE sports commentators completely lose it after a bad call. But NBC Bay Area’s sometime host Emmy-winning Carlos Ramirez’s emotional breakdown Saturday night after the Giants 4-3 loss to the Florida Marlins was one for the record books.

The second base ump had called a Marlins runner safe on a base-stealing attempt Friday night after energetically ruling that Giants shortstop Tyler Fitzgerald had blocked the runner’s sliding path to the base. The replay showed that there was a clear path for the headfirst slide after Fitzgerald moved his foot a few inches to make way for the slide which was a close play anyway.

After the game Ramirez began his commentary by complaining that the umps are unaccountable and the bad call cost the Giants the one-run game after the runner later scored. Fellow commentator and former Giants outfielder Randy Winn deadpanned that bad calls are part of the game and they can’t be reviewing every play because the game’s too slow even with the new speed up rules. This seemed to upset Ramirez even more. Then they cut away to Giants Manager Bob Melvin who told reporters that the call was questionable and that there was no obvious interference.

When the camera came back to Ramirez, he was totally bereft, sitting at his announce desk with his head in his hands, shaking his head at the Giants terrible misfortune. Winn started to ask, “Do you want to …” probably wondering if they should take a break to allow Ramirez to collect himself. Ramirez, head still in hands and nearly in tears, shook his head again and emotionally waved Winn off before he finally recovered a little to note that he admired Melvin for keeping his cool after such a horrible call — in obvious contrast with Ramirez himself. Ramirez had them show the play video several more times as Ramirez got more upset. “He was out!” cried Ramirez. “He was out!” Ramirez went on at hilarious length as Winn continued to shrug his shoulders, noting that the Giants just have to suck it up and play better and not let one bad call get in their way. Ramirez wasn’t having it. He couldn’t bear the idea that the umps could cost the Giants the game, never mind that the Giants are essentially out of the wild card race and are struggling to get above .500 this year, and the rest of the world is falling apart. As entertainment, Ramirez’s crack up was great, even though it was clearly over the top. It’s fun to see an announcer come unglued once in a while.

(Mark Scaramella)

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ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Americans hate themselves, for a lot of good reasons.

Capitalism corrupted us, and addiction, and poor health, too often taking the easy accepted path. We aren’t supposed to challenge ourselves, unless you appear in a reality tv show.

After a generation of the internet, most everyone is somehow dumber.

Hate turns to resentment and then disdain outwardly. How else can we understand how many Americans can live their lives in lies? I think this is a terrible truth, that the system was effective at becoming a visual dystopia, that programmed us to exist in a constant compartmentalized state.

What compounds it all is the constant stew of propaganda being made to gorge us with.

I heard the “joy” meme that Kamala/DNC are pushing, and it just seems another obvious signal to say to those of us who get it, that fuck you haha we do it cause we keep getting away with it. Americans don’t/can’t/won’t care.

All I could think is the og demented Ren & Stimpy cartoon, “happy happy joy joy,” they HAVE to know people would reference it… Incredible, they leave easter eggs for us to find on their way to total control.

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LIBERALISM REMOVES ITS MASK

Upper-class America pretended to care about rights, until the rabble moved too close to home

by Matt Taibbi

In the Washington Post on Sunday, under the headline, “Musk and Durov are facing the revenge of the regulators”:

While freewheeling internet companies have long clashed with authoritarian regimes — Google in China, Facebook in Russia or pre-Musk Twitter in Turkey — Western governments until recently generally did not regard social media and the vision of free speech they promoted as being fundamentally at odds with democracy… Banning entire social networks or arresting their executives simply wasn’t something liberal democracies did… Now, for better or worse, it is.

Columnist Will Oremus noted that although the Durov and Musk cases differ, both “involve democratic governments losing patience with cyberlibertarian tech moguls” who “thumbed their noses at authorities.” He highlighted a “vibe shift,” noting that “high-flying tech leaders will have to think a bit more carefully” about “whose soil they’re on when they step off a plane.”

American liberalism railed against Bush conservatives who said those who didn’t break the law had nothing to hide. Now, once-liberal voices are tripping over each other to make more extreme versions of the same argument. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich published a guide to how to “rein in” Elon Musk in The Guardian that includes a recommendation that “regulators around the world should threaten Musk with arrest,” adding cheerfully that “global regulators may be on the way to doing this, as evidenced by the 24 August arrest in France of Pavel Durov.” Following up its July article about how “The First Amendment is Out of Control,” the New York Times also has a piece titled, “The Constitution is Sacred. Is it Also Dangerous?”

My old employers at Rolling Stone described defenders of Durov as “far-right extremists” and Musk as a “grandstanding” charlatan seeking to evade “consequences.” All this is in line with views of Kamala Harris, who’s argued that “there has to be a responsibility that is placed” on social media sites to prevent misuse of speech “privileges.”

The Harris take previewed the complaint this year by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson that the First Amendment was “hamstringing the government,” despite this being its purpose.

There’s no “vibe shift.” Having written bestselling books on criminal justice for blue-leaning audiences, I can attest: American liberalism’s trumpeting of “rights” always stopped at the border of whatever tony suburb or upscale city neighborhood it inhabited. While public defenders fought rights violations at peasant wages, wealthy Democrats in the privacy of voting booths always voted in the truncheon, lapping even law-and-order Republicans in aristocratic disgust of the rabble. As podcast partner Walter Kirn put it, the mask is off…

https://www.racket.news/p/liberalism-removes-its-mask

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BILL-BORED & SHA-BOOZING

by David Yearsley

If Billboard is to believed, the sound of the summer is Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” now in its seventh week atop the pop charts. Before it climbed to No. 1 there, the song had already summited on the country charts, thus making Shaboozey the first Black musician ever to have a Number 1 hit in both categories simultaneously.

Through metrics like these the spoils of conspiracy capitalism mold themselves into a silhouette of the zeitgeist. During the ongoing reign of “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” at No. 1, Joe Biden’s swansong segued into the lightning ascent of Kamala Harris from muted back-up singer to full-throated star of the show.

New York Times polls are about as reliable as Billboard, but Harris’s entry into the race and immediate surge in the standings have found a fitting backing track in Shaboozey’s ubiquitous song. Supplanted at no. 1, tone-deaf Trump got very mad very fast. Lamenting the Gong Show treatment given his erstwhile opponent, Biden, Trump started heckling the newcomer to the stage, claiming that she had recently “happened to turn Black.”

Before this supposedly unexpected turn of events, many were the reports that Trump was rapidly expanding his share of the Black vote. His stunt of staging a campaign event in the Deep Blue Bronx was the most blatant attempt to self-proclaim his diverse appeal. In May, Trump appeared in Crotona Park with rappers Sleepy Hallow and Sheff G, both then under indictment for alleged gang crimes.

At last, The Donald had found a musical firepower that suited his violent urges and celebrity ambitions, even though he couldn’t tell you the difference between Sleepy Hallow and Ichabod Crane.

Trump began boasting that he might even win the electoral votes of the State of New York. This was nonsensical bluster that showed just how unhinged he had long been. In the birthplace of hip-hop, Trump was sure that he would ride a colorful landslide back into the White House.

But his campaign managers and everyone else knew that the election would be decided not in the Empire State, but in the Heartland.

At their recent convention, Democrats courted Middle America musically, enlisting singer-songwriter Jason Isbell, who hymned God, family, and honest work, and the Chicks (formerly of Dixie) harmonizing close and high on the National Anthem. Later, the likes of Patti LaBelle and Stevie Wonder delivered soulful, funky classics for the party faithful. Beyoncé graced the closing in absentia with “Freedom.”

But it was not by accident that the opening musical act at the DNC was a Black country singer, Mickey Guyton. Her performance was a clear indication that Democrats were sending their musical appeal for the Heartland vote across the color divide. Guyton’s “All American” was perfectly attuned to the Democratic strategy that trumpets unity over division, with plenty of church and football (branches of the same religion) holding the whole thing — song and nation — together:

With the lines on the interstate
The dust on a back road
We’re a Friday night football game
The lighters at a rock show

With the night shift, smoke break, high school heartache
Driving with the windows down
With the dance floors, church pews, suit and ties, tattoos
One big small town

Ain’t we all, ain’t we all American?

I don’t know what Shaboozey’s political inclinations are, but one could ask why the DNC fixers didn’t enlist him to try to boost their nominee further up the charts.

Black musicians, among them Kane Brown, Brittney Spencer, Jimmie Allen, and the just-mentioned Guyon have had great success in the Country ranks over the last two decades. Still more threatening to some, Beyoncé recently invaded the once-foreboding terrain. Her Country Carter album was released in early March of this year and immediately become the no. 1 album on Billboard. Shaboozey appeared twice on that record; his own album, Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going (curious that the title didn’t go for “Ain’t”) came out in May and went on to win the summer. Conspiracy theorists are surely fulminating against the Great Replacement in Country Music.

A “Bar Song (Tipsy)” and its creator/performer tell an ultra-American story. Children of Nigerian immigrants, Shaboozey grew up in northern Virginia and early on demonstrated an irrepressible love of music. He cites Dylan, Cash among many other — and more contemporary — influences, not least rap. The standard line on Shaboozey, one taken by the likes of Jon Pareles, chief pop critic at the New York Times, is that he brings “hip-hop grit to country.”

His moniker, Shaboozey, is a riffing transliteration of his family name, Chibueze. The boozy slides easily into his hit’s lyrics, a clever bit of branding. Not surprisingly, “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” is all about alcohol.

Shaboozey’s first single, “Jeff Gordon” (as in the NASCAR driver) came out a decade ago. It mashes up misogyny (“My bitch Ecuadoran / Her ass is enormous), stock cars (“Vroom!”), gun violence (“Put a 44 to ya mouth nigga”) and other Americana, all of it heard against a shattered piano ostinato and ratchet-head percussion ghosted intermittently by the complaint of high-performance engines. The song gives new meaning to the term “race track.”

Having arrived in the winner’s circle ten years later, Shaboozey still has lucrative fun conflating the color line with the finish line, the crossing of which is signaled by the checkered black-and-white flag.

The album trailer for Where I’ve Been, Is Not Where I’m Going traffics in the archetypes of racism. At a desert town, a crusty cowboy-hatted geezer rips down a poster for Shaboozey’s “Great American Road Tour.” The geezer (obviously a Trumpite) crumples up the playbill, his disgust apparently fueled by the identity of the singer, a Black man blown off course into the bleached landscape and its even more monochrome demographic. Seeking refuge on the porch of the nearby abandoned general store, the man discovers another playbill again in his newspaper.

Bent on escape from this menace, he hops into his Ford pick-up and turns on the radio (the guy is a music fan). But Shaboozey infects the airwaves too. Even the portable radio that keeps the geezer company at his fishing hole plays the blasted song. The old guy tosses the offending machine into the bass pond.

After his Ford pick-up breaks down on the way home, a bus pulls up and out steps Shaboozey, guitar case in hand. The geezer is irked and incredulous. Like gunslingers, the two enemies face each other on the sand-swept road. The old white man spits on the ground and crosses his arms in a posture of hate. A smile plays on Shaboozey’s face and he taunts his opposite with a tickling wave. Behind his sunglasses, the stranger’s eyes are presumed to twinkle with a mix of contempt and compassion. He doesn’t need those shades because it’s sundown; twilight too is for racist reactionaries. Shaboozey will win the duel, since his music will win over this sagebrush Bull Connor. Billboard soon delivered that very verdict.

The song that conquered the charts is an easy-going, unthreatening affair. As the title reveals, people don’t even get drunk in it, merely tipsy. It’s a word for pre-dinner cocktails in the burbs, not closing-time maneuvers and mayhem at rugged roadhouses.

A wistful tone is strummed to life with the opening minor chord. That melancholic air wafts through the tune, gently haunting the other more comforting major harmonies. In musical deception, indeed.

These chords traipse endlessly past like a disoriented horse and rider circling, lost in the desert. A High Plains whistle preludes and interludes on the melody from a climate-controlled studio made to echo over the great open, if virtual, spaces courtesy of electronic reverb. No buzzards circle overhead to spoil the nostalgic taste of whiskey — “Jack Daniels,” we are told.

The song’s title purports to be generic, but the song and video are saturated in name brands like this. In the video, Shaboozey dons a pristine Carhartt jacket and a Chevy t-shirt. In the soft-focus background good old boys and one good old girl drink long-neck Budweisers around and on top of the hood of an old Ford pick-up parked in front of a backlot “Saloon.”

This live-action catalog of Made-in-the-USA goodies (the working-class chic Carhartt brand is family-owned American, but much of the company’s production is outsourced to Mexico and China) cuts against Shaboozey’s opening line: “My baby wants a Birkin” — a $40,000 Hermès purse. His baby can certainly afford one thanks to him. “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” is not a Miles City, Montana saddle-bag ballad.

We’ve arrived instead in Capitalism Country saturated with product placement. Beyonce’s “Levii’s Jeans” from Country Carter boosted Levi-Strauss’s stock price by 20% directly after the hyper-sexualized song came out. The reasons are not just economic, but ethical too. We connect across color lines through consumerism.

If the Democrats are wise, they’ll allow the lessons offered by Billboard to carry through to the ballot box in November. We are what we buy.

Strangely, it might at first seem, Shaboozey sings in the video and he seems to be so utterly bored by himself and those behind him that he doesn’t even see or hear them or himself. Clear and in focus in the foreground, his voice is as expressionless as his face. He’s autotuned to the hilt, yet utterly tuned out even from his own performance.

“A Bar Song (Tipsy)” sounds and looks like it was generated by AI. Music by the numbers has, like our politics, led us to the middle of road, probably to the end of it too. At this lonely place, a white cowboy and Black singer-songwriter will, after their initial stare-down, whip out their phones, press “play,” click the embedded links and “order.” Then wait for the drones to deliver as the sun goes down.

(David Yearsley is a long-time contributor to CounterPunch and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. His latest book is Sex, Death, and Minuets: Anna Magdalena Bach and Her Musical Notebooks. He can be reached at dgyearsley@gmail.com.)

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POLIO, an on-line comment: I got the Salk vaccine in 1954. I was vaxxed at school in a double blind test to see if the vax worked. I remember going into a classroom specifically designed for mass injections. There were 2 lines in the room. One for the vax and one for the placebo. I just happened to be in the vax line. A few months later the vax people sent my mother a notice that I got the real thing. Along with that I got a note thanking me personally for being a “Polio Pioneer”, and a Polio Pioneer button. Like I had a choice. I still have them.

At that time it was the middle of the polio epidemic. The lead news on the radio began with the daily victim count: “today there were 73 new cases, etc.” It was very scary. And polio was nasty. Surviving victims often had permanent disability, like partial paralysis in the legs. A few poor children had to be encased in an iron lung because their lungs got paralyzed.

I never got polio and I assumed it was because of the vax. Maybe that’s why I got the covid vax?

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STRIPPED and held at gunpoint, the Gaza schoolboys ‘forced to be Israel’s human shields’

Caitlin Johnstone may have had something to say about this — like she did when the snipers were playing recordings of terrified babies to make anyone come out of the rubble so they could shoot ‘em from a safe distance — is anyone more cowardly and craven than the IDF?

— Bruce McEwen

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-human-shields-gaza-war-b2604589.html

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THE WEST TRULY DOESN’T SEE PALESTINIANS AS HUMAN

The message is clear: Israelis dying is a terrible tragedy, while Palestinians dying is just the normal way for things to be.

by Caitlin Johnstone

You never see the dehumanization of Palestinians in western society exhibited so clearly as when something bad happens to Israelis during the genocidal assault on Gaza.

Today western officials are publicly weeping about six dead Israeli hostages, including one Israeli-American, who the IDF says were recently killed by Hamas.

Whoever’s been writing Joe Biden’s press releases for him published a statement about how “devastated and outraged” the president is about the death of the American hostage, Hersh Goldberg-Polin.

The statement says the president knows Goldberg-Polin’s parents, saying “I admire them and grieve with them more deeply than words can express” and that “Hamas leaders will pay for these crimes.”

“I have worked tirelessly to bring their beloved Hersh safely to them and am heartbroken by the news of his death,” the statement reads, which for the record is a lie — the Biden administration has been collaborating with Benjamin Netanyahu to sabotage a hostage deal at every turn.

Similar sentiments are being expressed in statements by western officials like Vice President Kamala Harris, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

All of these statements frame the deaths of these six Israeli hostages as an earth-shakingly horrific tragedy, and all frame Hamas as a band of evil villains who must be brought to justice for their crimes.

No similar statements have ever been made by any of these officials about the far, far greater number of innocent Palestinians who have been killed in Gaza by the state of Israel with their assistance. No similar expressions of condolence have ever been uttered by these leaders for the millions of Palestinians who’ve had their lives completely ruined by Israel’s atrocities in Gaza and the West Bank over the last eleven months, or for the untold thousands of parents who’ve had to bury children who were exterminated in Israel’s genocidal onslaught.

Western government officials are making it clear that they do not see Palestinians as human in the same way they see Israelis as human, as are the mass media propaganda institutions who’ve been covering the deaths of these hostages with an intensity never seen regarding the IDF’s daily massacres of civilians in Gaza. Israeli strikes killed 47 Palestinians in Gaza in one 24-hour period between Saturday and Sunday, receiving not the tiniest fraction of the attention as those six Israeli hostages.

The message is clear: Israelis dying is a terrible tragedy, while Palestinians dying is just the normal way for things to be. An Israeli dying should matter as much to you as your own family or friends dying, while a Palestinian dying should be regarded as a routine and natural event like a drop of rain falling from the sky.

And that’s an important message for westerners to be indoctrinated with. Can you imagine if we all started caring about western bombs being dropped in the middle east as much as we would care if they were being dropped on our own country, or on a country we’ve been conditioned to sympathize with? All their carefully manufactured consent would crumble, and people would cease allowing the western empire to do what it needs to do to dominate the planet.

These people are actively working to subvert our basic sense of human empathy. To twist our psyches into being unable to recognize the same level of humanity among empire-targeted populations as empire-supported ones. To see authorized populations as worthy of care and sympathy, and to see unauthorized populations as vermin in need of extermination.

Yes, our rulers really are that evil, and so are the propagandists who run the mass media.

So today I would like to extend my deepest condolences to the millions of Palestinians who’ve lost loved ones and had their lives thrown to the winds of chaos by Israel’s western-backed campaign of extermination, ethnic cleansing, and terrorism.

And I would like to remind my readers that Israel has exponentially more hostages than Hamas has, and murders them routinely, and rapes and tortures them constantly.

And it is right that we should care deeply about that. Even if the people who rule over us do not.

(caitlinjohnstone.com.au)

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