Mendocino County Today: 10/22/2024

Cool | Sunset | Frost Fans | Local Schools | Terrible Decision | Songbird Singalong | Hospital Advice | Measure S | Hopland Spooktacular | Adding Road | Art Sale | Ed Notes | Jah Musica | Cemetery Tour | Rooms Available | Mendocino | Race Dialogue | Mushroom Dinner | Candidate Greer | Tallman House | Yesterday's Catch | AIPAC Candidate | Hit Piece | Third Eye | Hetch Hetchy | True Tale | Busted | Professional Boxer | Bluebird | Mowing | Ailing Niners | Wedded Bliss | Montana Benched | Scary Signs | Panic Switch | Fascism/Fascist | Lead Stories | Votenstein | Jill Signs | Demsperation | Vietnam | Election Results | Arming Israel | Stopped Thinking | Vote No | Goodbye Lebanon | Iron Tail

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DRY WEATHER and mild daytime temperatures are expected through the week. Wetter and more unsettled weather will be possible this weekend and early next week as a series of fronts move through. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A brisk 42F with high clouds streaming by this Tuesday morning on the coast. There are enough high clouds out there to last a couple days. If you liked yesterday, you'll love the rest of the work week. The later week rains have moved into the weekend in the latest forecast runs.

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SUPERVISOR McGOURTY ON FROST FANS

Hola, Supervisor:

As you must be aware, frost fans are a major annual nuisance in the Anderson Valley, far exceeding the County's noise ordinance of 50 decibels. For a week or two every spring roughly a thousand locals are routed from their sleep by the midnight-to-dawn din of frost fans which, btw, are a fairly recent innovation thus precluding Right To Farm stipulations. I hope you will include them in your proposed ordinance.

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Hello Mr. Editor:

Thanks for checking in. Our biggest noise complaints by the numbers are loud amplified music and parties that go on late into the night. These often happen in summer when people want to have their windows open for cooling at night. Frost fans are also identified as a smaller group of complaints but also unwanted noise for those affected. The “Right to Farm” ordinance protects the use of frost fans at present. Regardless, I have asked UCCE Viticulture Farm Advisor Chris Chen to check the literature for more data on frost fan noise levels and if there are mitigation measures that can be taken to reduce noise levels that are practical. We are in the process of gathering information on how other communities regulate excessive noise so that we can learn from others what are practical solutions to have more quiet communities.

Kind regards:

Glenn McGourty

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UPDATE: JUDGE SENDS UKIAH TODDLER TO MEXICO

There has been a sudden and urgent development in this case.

Previously: https://theava.com/archives/25428#11

On Friday, the judge ruled that the 6-year-old child, whose primary caregiver has been her mother, is to be surrendered to her father and returned to Mexico Tuesday, 10/22. This decision is not in the child’s best interest for numerous reasons, which there are simply too many and too much information to try to go into via email.

We are determined to seek justice, as the system has failed this little family significantly and has not allowed for a reunification process to make this transition less traumatic for the child. We feel lost about where to turn after this setback and would be grateful for any support or visibility you could provide as we continue to fight for their well-being.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Shay Haverty

Ukiah

PS. Here are the legal documents associated with this terrible decision:

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SARAH SONGBIRD: Friends! I’ll be sharing music at River’s Bend in Philo next weekend. It’s a potent time in our country and an important time to come together in community, ground out, and lift our voices, and our spirits, in song. On Friday, I’ll be song leading and on Saturday The Real Sarahs will be sharing, by the fireside. It’ll mostly be singalong style and a fun way to enjoy this beautiful season together. Please come join us. Music Is Medicine!

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MIKAEL BLAISDELL:

Asking the right questions to get the right answers:

The Mendocino Coast Health Care District Board will meet this Thursday evening to discuss a proposal by the Chartis Group to conduct an operational assessment of the challenges faced by our coastal hospital. The Strategic & Operational Assessment provides a comprehensive review of facility Financial Performance, Costs & Charges, local Population Health dynamics, patient outmigration, Market Share, and performance profiles of local rural competitors.

MCHCD Board Chairman Paul Garza noted that he has been looking for a consulting group to produce this kind of data for the past year or more. The Chartis Group will do a presentation to the board on Thursday.

For $18,500, with a three week timeframe for delivery, the report will provide data on the key issues we are currently facing in the community, and will enable the MCHCD Board to have a better position in the ongoing negotiations with Adventist Health. I definitely think that it's a wise investment, and I hope that the MCHCD Board decides to accept the proposal.

Disclosure: I'm a candidate for the election to the MCHCD Board this November 5th. My campaign website is: https://mb4mchcd.com

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SCOTT ROAT:

My response to Sydelle on Measure S (Albion Little River Fire Department): -

I was a district firefighter for nearly 12 years, a board member for 4, local real estate broker for 19, a now a resident of this Community for 25 years. Of the time I served with fire I wasn’t paid (except I received small compensation for the Lightning Complex fires).

The primary problem for us at the end of the day is insurance. No fire department means a reduced ISO rating, or more likely, they’ll drop us altogether, which is what I think will happen. They want emergency response within 5 miles. If we don’t have companies ready to insure us, then we’ll have to go to the California Fair Plan, which is very expensive.

If Albion-Little River has this built into the costs of real estate, my estimation is that home values within our district will plummet. Just a theory at this point. Though expensive, and I also don’t much want to pay it, it’s very likely that voting YES is by far in the way the least expensive of options.

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A READER WRITES: I am looking over the BOS agenda and noticed item 4c, discussion and possible action to add another road to the County roster of roads to maintain.

Item 4c: Recommended Action: Form an Ad Hoc Committee to perform an inspection of completed street improvements of the Feed Lot Lane Buildout, extending the existing Feed Lot Lane (County Road 250B) approximately 361 feet East to Lovers Lane (County Road 222), for inclusion into County maintenance, and report their findings and recommendations to the Board (Ukiah Area); and, by order of the Chair, appoint two Supervisors from Districts other than District 5 to serve on the Committee.

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Attachment from Howard Daschiell, County Transportation Director:

“Honorable Board Members:

Ukiah Pacific Associates II, a California Limited Partnership, has developed a property along Feed Lot Lane (private), between No Name (known as Millview Road) (CR 106) and Lovers Lane (CR 222). As part of that development, Ukiah Pacific Associates has upgraded this private section of Feed Lot Lane to County Department of Transportation (DOT) standards. The County-owned portion of Feed Lot Lane extends 0.08 miles west from No Name (Mill View Lane) (CR 106) to Bush Street (CR 250C). This new section of Feed Lot Lane will add 0.07 miles from Millview Road (CR 106) to Lovers Lane (CR 222).

The improvements are complete and Ukiah Pacific Associates II has requested that the improved street be accepted into of the County Maintained Road System. DOT recommends accepting the improved street into the County Maintained Road System as this portion of the street is integral to the circulation and emergency services in the area. Acceptance will occur by future action of the Board.

County Code Section 17-78(B) requires that before such acceptance can occur, the street improvements are to be inspected by the County Engineer (or his designee) and two members of the Board, appointed by the Chair, from districts other than that in which the street lies. This committee is to report back to the full Board in writing with findings and recommendations with respect to the acceptance of the roadway improvements. Feed Lot Lane is situated in Supervisorial District No. 5. Appointment of Board members to perform the inspection is now in order.”

I looked up Ukiah Pacific Associates, who is mentioned as having developed the apartments on the north end of Lovers Lane in Ukiah.

They look to be senior housing slumlords whose CEO makes about half a million a year.

“Merced nonprofit CEO made $570K in a year. How does the ‘stunning’ salary compare to others? A Sun-Star review of several Merced County-based organizations showed what it pays to head a local nonprofit… The chief executive of an affordable housing developer based in Merced drew salary and benefits worth more than $570,000 in one year — among the highest compensation of CEOs of similar nonprofits in the state and eclipsing even the chancellor of UC Merced, public records show. As the longtime CEO of the Central Valley Coalition for Affordable Housing, Christina Alley runs a modest-sized nonprofit that helps build and manage housing developments around the state for low-income, disabled and senior residents. The organization employs about 22 people. Alley earned $441,221 in income from the nonprofit organization, as well as $129,415 in additional compensation in the one-year accounting period ending in September 2019, state records show. The nonprofit reported $7.6 million in revenue and $4.6 million in total expenses that year.

Read more at: https://www.mercedsunstar.com/news/local/article250150134.html

Seeing how much this “non-profit” pays the CEO, it seems profit is a large motive in their “non profit.” Their CEO’s salary is more than 12% of the outfit’s expenses even though she claims they reinvest a lot into the properties. The pull in about $7.6 million in revenue with $4.6 in expenses. If they are pulling that much in, it seems like they could charge less for this kind of “affordable” housing.

In addition, it appears that Ukiah Pacific Associates is affiliated with Danco Inc. which does a lot of “affordable” housing projects in NorCal. They both get substantial injections of tax dollars to build these “affordable” housing projects. And they seem to have a near-monopoly on such projects allowing them to decide how to finance them, build them, contract for them, and then turn them over to subsidiaries like UPA.

https://www.treasurer.ca.gov/ctcac/meeting/2020/20201014/staff/5/CA-20-124.pdf

https://www.hcd.ca.gov/grants-funding/active-funding/iigp/docs/small-jurisdicton-award-list.pdf

Another project, Ukiah Senior Apartments, secured $5.1 million with help from the COU.

https://cityofukiah.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/City-of-Ukiah-2019-2027-Housing-Element-Update-full-CERTIFIED-120519.pdf

https://coscda.org/projects/ukiah-senior-apartments/

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ms notes: On its face, this looks ordinary, but one does have to wonder about the timing. Is there something about this short stretch of roadway — repaving, liability, safety, etc. — that has just come to light and the “non-profit” outfit wants to get rid of? The supes will probably just rubberstamp this like everything else on Tuesday’s agenda without asking Mr. Dashiell any pesky questions.

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ED NOTES

ABALONE, A MEMORY. I remember my first and only ab experience. It was a good one, an easy one because all I had to do was watch. I went along to see how my friend Tony Summit quickly got his legal limit at Elk, but not before the two of us had rappelled down over the side of a cliff to an otherwise inaccessible little beach. Getting in and out of the access site was half the hunt, and if the poachers then prevalent had to work half as hard they wouldn’t haven't have been half as successful.

IT TOOK TONY about ten minutes to get his three mollusks, a task he made look easy but, as was obvious to me, a task that could be extremely hazardous unless you not only knew what you were doing but were good at it. Tony was very good at it. The tide wasn’t low that day; it wasn’t a matter of wading out and pulling abs off exposed rock.

TONY paddled out about thirty yards offshore on an air mattress, tied up to a partially submerged boulder, dove briefly into the treacherous surf pounding the rocks on whose sides the abs batten down with such adhesion it takes a very sharp little crowbar to pry them off, dove, reappeared with a legal one, dove again, reappeared with another legal one, and dove for a third time and emerged with a third legal one. Three for three!

THEN, Tony still in his wetsuit, me in my dry one, pulled ourselves back up the rope to head back over the Greenwood Road to Boonville, where Tony extracted the meat, the Missus pounded them and pan fried them in butter and garlic and we enjoyed as delectable a natural dinner as it’s possible to get in all of culinary California.

ABALONE POACHING, in the words of a Coast ab fisherman, was soon “out of control.” Poaching was so far outta control the entire fishery was shut down until April of 2026. It wasn't only poaching that shut it down. there were also too many licensed ab-ers. Abalone was in danger of going extinct.

ASIANS got the poacher blame. But the organized poachers were not confined to the Laotians, Vietnamese, “and some Chinese and Koreans” whose names appeared regularly in the court dockets of Coast newspapers, that caused some people to conclude that these particular ethnic groupings were doing most of the systematic looting of the delectable mussel.

THE AVA'S INFORMANT told us at the time that “the biggest ring lately is a bunch of white boys out of Citrus Heights near Sacramento.”

MUCH of the poaching, in all its multi-ethnic relentlessness, was done under the cover of regular licenses with their legal limits of three abalone each. “But ab poachers will fudge their cards and go out twice a day, sometimes three times a day, taking their legal limit of three each time.” The law says one trip a day per fisherman and an annual limit of 24 per person. “You’ll see a whole van load of guys with brand new wet suits at low tides,” our guy said. “They’re working for someone who’s pre-sold the abs.”

AND THEN “there’s the real pros who tank-dive at night,” meaning experienced divers who can stay below water for long periods of time breathing from oxygen tanks while they strip the outer rocks of the much desired mollusk. “Tank diving is illegal, but these guys can get to abalone the legal divers with their regular gear can’t get to. Fish and Game set up a checkpoint on Highway 20 near Fort Bragg one time; 40% of the ab fishermen were in violation.” There’s pending legislation to make poaching much more costly for the minority of thieves who get caught, “but with cutbacks in the number of game wardens,” our Coast Guy says, “too many of these crooks are getting away with it. Bigger fines probably won’t stop them.”

INEVITABLE ACCUSATIONS of racism accompanied the prevalent assumption among licensed recreational ab divers that Chinese and Vietnamese poachers were engaged in wholesale commercial theft of the lucratively monetized mollusk.

NO RACISM about it. Organized groups of Asian ocean thieves were stealing abalone, which was already endangered by the annual hordes of legal divers. White poachers, of course, were probably just as prevalent but they were unorganized and tended to operate alone. Every week, though, several Asians were in the dock at Ten Mile Court, Fort Bragg, charged with poaching abalone, which sold for upwards of $50 and $70 a plate in Bay Area restaurants when it was available, and it often wasn't available because the commercial taking of abalone had been banned since 1997. Scarcity made it ever more valuable, and wherever there’s value there are crooks.

THE MENDOCINO COAST is particularly vulnerable to poaching because of its sparsely settled length and its relative proximity to the San Francisco Bay Area’s six million people. Fish and Game wardens were already spread thin and, like most regulatory agencies, did the best they could with smaller budgets and fewer patrol people.

FISH AND GAME depended heavily on a snitch hotline to apprehend ab crooks, but often, by the time wardens got out to the scene of the crime, the thieves were gone. There was a large-scale gang of Vietnamese-American ab thieves who were arrested when several of them were observed on the Sonoma County Coast stripping the offshore boulders of their abalone. These arrests led to an organized ring of poachers, two of whom had been arrested before for stealing as many abalone as they could pack off to the city for sales to no-questions-asked Asian restaurants.

IN THEORY, fines for poaching abalone could range from $15,000 to $40,000 and state prison time, but Judge Lehan’s Ten Mile Court never saw a prosecution which sought fines approaching these amounts, nor was a single member of an organized poaching ring ever packed off to state prison out of Mendocino County. (Several years later one prolific poacher was prosecuted into the state pen by DA Eyster.) But so long as sanctions were light in relation to the profits that could be made, and the hordes of licensed ab hunters also proliferated, the Mendocino and Sonoma coasts were pretty much stripped of abalone.

IT TAKES an abalone 12 years to reach its legal size of 7 inches. Poachers didn't measure. They just grabbed whatever looked old enough to be edible.

IN 2017, the season was closed “due to environmental stressors that have caused the death of red abalone populations. These stressors include a marine heat wave, the decline of the kelp forest, and the proliferation of purple sea urchins.” Abalone taking will resume in April of 2026, just in time for them to be wiped out again.

For those interested in the intricacies of a typical abalone poaching case, go to Bruce McEwen’s detailed court coverage of a poaching case in the fall of 2014: https://theava.com/archives/35275

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ALL SOULS CEMETERY TOUR: Untold Stories from Reeves Canyon Saturday, November 2, 1:00-2:30 p.m. Ukiah Cemetery (Russian River Cemetery), 940 Low Gap Road, Ukiah

On November 2, in celebration of All Soul’s Day, historian Dot Brovarney will lead a special cemetery tour of the resting places of people who appear in her book, Mendocino Refuge: Reeves Canyon & Lake Leonard. The event runs from 1:00-2:30 p.m. at Russian River Cemetery, also known as the Ukiah Cemetery, 940 Low Gap Road. There is no charge for the tour, but donations of $10 or more to the Russian River Cemetery District will support QR code signage providing visitors access to information about historic Ukiahans.

“I’m excited to share stories that I discovered in my research that didn’t make it into Mendocino Refuge,” says Brovarney. “Finding the canyon characters’ graves and further ancestry studies revealed a few surprises that will add historical intrigue to this experience.”

Among those who rest at the Russian River Cemetery are the “Lady of the Lake,” Una Boyle, the enigmatic Americus Napoleon Poe, and Tapping Reeves, the canyon’s namesake.

The tour will meet at the Cemetery District office where there is limited parking. Parking also is available anywhere along the cemetery’s lanes. Please note that heavy rain cancels.

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BOONVILLE FURNISHED ROOM $950 PER MONTH UTILITIES INCLUDED

12x11 furnished room for one person in a single story 3-bedroom home. The room has a comfortable memory foam queen bed, a wooden dresser, a mini fridge, a tv and a full sized closet. The bathroom will be shared with one other person.

The ideal candidate is a mature person who is employed full time and works outside of the home. You will be required to provide a good work history, personal references & past landlord/roommate references. A full background financial and security check will be required. There is one short haired, well trained dog in this home. No animals allowed.

The best time to call is between 8-9 PM. If you call and reach the voice mailbox, Leave a voice mail! No texting!!

Stewart

415-215-4160

ED NOTE: My room at the AVA is yours for, uh, I dunno, two thousand a month? Cash. Medium-quality vibes, nice view of the east hills, access to the coolest private library in the Anderson Valley (and probably Mendocino County), feral cats seen only at feeding time, goldfish occasionally visible in fetid cattle feeder, must share premises with grumpy ex-Air Force Major with irregular hours. Boont Berry and the Redwood Drive-in within 50 feet. Quiet drunks considered. Free utilities. See Mark Scaramella or call 707 895-3016.

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RACE DIALOGUE (Coast Chatline)

1: The fact of the matter is that the towns of Mendocino/Fort Bragg have both been fundamentally challenged by the belief that black people do not belong.

I implore someone/anyone with a sound mind, or a true heart to raise one proper argument as to why this is morally okay, in any way.

Disclaimer: For any one reason given, prepare to be dealt another ten reasons as to what makes you wrong.

There are no blacks here because they are hunted for sport by mindless inbred redneck pigs, & lumber enterprise families, with nothing better to do than to engorge their primal fancy, while of course keeping our town SO safe and clean.

By the way, to whom it may concern, (You ALL know who you are and you should be ashamed of yourselves.)

Good work 'cleaning' up the headlands from the TWO local transients that have lived in those bushes for 10+ years by chopping down an entire chunk of wetland preserve. The true Mendo is dead, and sold down the river to the highest bidder with just another 'get rich quick' pipedream.

You all deserve a nice congratulatory pat on the back, better luck next life.

Didnt mean to distrupt your UTOPIA, fellow Mendonesians..

but now may be time to wake the f$%& up and smell the coffee

What is it that you stand for?

The world is a beautiful place, & I am no longer afraid to die.

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2. This is quite a statement, and I wonder, upon what basis do you make it? You are implying (stating?) that all people living in Mendo/FB are racist, don't like black people and don't want them in their communities. I strongly disagree. Can you back up these assertions?

I'll grant you that there is a correlation between cost of living and income, but I don't see a direct correlation between race and residency in these communities.

Also, your assertion that "red-neck pigs" hunt black people for sport is a bit far fetched. Yes, in the south there is a history of that, to be sure, and it's shameful. But how does that apply to Fort Bragg? Sure, there are racist people in FB, as there are everywhere. It's unfair to extrapolate and make everybody wrong for the despicable behavior of a few.

Perhaps you've had personal experience with racism, which has left you angry and hurt. If so, share it with us (on discussion list which is where this belongs).

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MIKE'S THE GUY

Editor:

In the interest of transparency, I would like to clarify a few statements that you printed about me. The voters I speak with constantly bring up the laws the state Legislature has imposed on our citizens. Prices for everything are through the roof. Housing and food insecurity are real issues. The rising cost of housing is combined with taxes and building permits that are passed on to everyone.

Two-thirds of our children cannot read at grade level. Violence at schools is on the rise. As a 25-year special education specialist and 20-year school board member I know the changes that need to take place to raise educational standards and ensure safety in the schools. Having my experience at that table when the education budget is considered is a win for our children. I understand that the priorities of our education system must be to increase children’s reading and math proficiency.

Every election, we have an opportunity to try something new and break this pattern of failure. Please take this opportunity for a change and vote for Mike Greer for state Assembly.

Mike Greer

Crescent City

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MIKE GENIELLA: Who knows? If Ukiah is lucky, maybe someday it will have a version of the acclaimed Tallman House and Blue Wing Saloon in neighboring Lake County. Owners Lynne and Bernie Butcher have transformed the 17-room boutique hotel and restaurant in Upper Lake into a spirited venue, including great food and entertainment. Local Contractor Tom Carter, the new title holder to the Palace Hotel in Ukiah, worked with the Butchers in 2005-2006 to transform the rundown historic Tallman and Blue Wing into an oasis that has helped reshape the face of Upper Lake.

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Monday, October 21, 2024

JESUS DELGADO JR., 29, Fort Bragg. Arson, probation violation.

DOMINIC FABER, 62, Ukiah. Parole violation.

ANGEL MILLER, 36, Ukiah. Parole violation.

BOBBY MILLER, 46, Fort Bragg. Failure to appear.

MIGUEL MODEK, 28, Fort Bragg. DUI, no license.

DENA MORRIS, 62, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, county parole violation, resisting. (Frequent flyer.)

ALIJANDRA ROJAS, 18, Ukiah. DUI.

BRUCE SANCHEZ, 31, Ukiah. DUI, resisting.

CRISTIAN VERACANO, 21, Ukiah. Speed contest.

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HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE AIPAC (AND THEIR MAN IN SAN ANSELMO)

Amid Israel’s current Holocaust in Jabalia, a situation that imperils US national security, shouldn’t San Anselmo Town Council candidate Yoav Schlesinger have disclosed his past work for AIPAC?

In early September, I wrote about how a group of pro-Israel Marinites linked to the SF Bay Area Jewish Community Relations Council had bullied town officials to shut down a local library presentation on Middle East history. The group falsely insisted that Professor Alex Boodrookas' presentation was somehow antisemitic and/or biased against Israel. The reactionary and Islamophobic JCRC-linked cohort of objectors included California Deputy Attorney General Roni Pomerantz; Epstein-Wexner alumnus and nonprofit director Greg Neichin; an especially dense administrative law judge (Regina DeAngelis); and two furious opponents of ethnic studies programs, Laliv Hadar and Jenny Holden, the latter now running for a local school board seat.

But among the correspondence, I should have included a complaint from one Yoav Schlesinger, a former AIPAC Director, newish resident of San Anselmo, and first-time Town Council candidate. Candidate Schlesinger has no evident civic or community involvement in Marin County, yet has rather mysteriously garnered some of the most valued endorsements in the county. These endorsements are particularly striking given that Mr. Schlesinger's work history indicates that he has consistently worked against the stated interests of most of the groups and individuals that endorsed him.…

https://marincountyconfidential.substack.com/p/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and

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THE CAPITALIST VS. THE SUPERVISOR

Mission Local:

On the morning that one of the richest men in San Francisco took to the pages of the New York Times to accuse Aaron Peskin of ruining the city, Peskin, mayoral candidate and president of the Board of Supervisors, was standing at a foggy bus stop on Mission Street in the Excelsior, engaging in the election ritual known as “morning visibility.” This entails making small talk with commuters and answering questions about political developments, like school closures, before heading into work at City Hall.

The New York Times op-ed, written by Michael Moritz, a former tech journalist turned venture capitalist turned funder of a local newspaper (the San Francisco Standard) was titled, “The Progressive Politicians Who Failed San Francisco.”

Despite the use of the plural in the title, it was accompanied by a picture of exactly one guy: An enormous Peskin playing with San Francisco’s skyline like a collection of TinkerToys.

The op-ed didn’t name any progressive politicians other than Peskin. It described him in one very long run-on sentence as the most powerful example of “a generation of local politicians who have burrowed themselves into the city and used its resources to execute their devotion to a polarizing ideology that embraces a knee-jerk opposition to progress, a deep-rooted antipathy to many forms of law enforcement and a belief that higher taxes are a cure for all evil.”

Moritz charged that Peskin was almost single-handedly destroying San Francisco by blocking the construction of new housing, levying a tax on commercial real estate to fund childcare and early education, increasing the transfer tax on real estate sales of more than $5 million, and supporting an extra payroll tax for businesses whose highest-paid managerial employees earn more than 100 times the median employee salary.…

Continues at: www.district5diary.blogspot.com

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WHAT REMAINS OF HETCH HETCHY?

by Katy Tahja

It’s not often I will travel hundreds of miles to see a place I’ve wanted to see for decades with sorrow in my heart. That’s what happened when I went to see Hetch Hetchy 20 miles north of the Yosemite Valley.

More than a century ago the Hetch Hetchy valley was a miniature version of the Yosemite valley to the south. The meandering Tuolumne River wandered through meadows on the valley floor with towering granite walls rising thousands of feet on either side. Naturalist John Muir worked hard to get this valley into Yosemite National Park but it was not included in the beginning.

This was an era when the San Francisco Bay Area was exploding with growth. San Francisco, at the end of a peninsula surrounded by salt waters, had to import water and store it in reservoirs to serve the needs of the public as they had no natural drinking water source.

Beginning in the 1880s San Francisco looked to the Sierra Nevada mountains for a year round water source. They looked at the Hetch Hetchy valley and water engineers envisioned a giant bath tub. With a narrow canyon that could be easily dammed and solid granite walls it could hold billions of gallons of water for San Francisco and the Bay Area.

While some folks favored preservation of natural beauty others saw nature as something to be subdued and exploited. Folks back then believed natural resources were renewable and never ending. The 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco added urgency and public support for finding an adequate water supply that could also produce hydroelectric power as water moved through descending aqueducts on its way to civilization.

The Raker Act of 1913 authorized the construction of a dam in the Hetch Hetchy Valley as well as a second dam at Lake Eleanor, sited north of Hetch Hetchy. Both locations are now on the very western edge and within the expanded Yosemite National Park. O’Shaughnessy Dam, named for the chief engineer of the project, was completed in 1923 and raised higher in 1938. It is now 430’ high, holds 117 billion gallons of water, is eight miles long, 1,800’ deep and covers 1200 acres of what was once valley floor. It collects water from a 459 square mile watershed and is the largest body of water in any national park in the USA.

Since Yosemite National Park has started a “reservation only” entry trying to limit tourists to 5000 a day I was worried we wouldn’t be let in because our decision to visit was spur of the moment. I discovered this reservation experiment had ended the day before we visited as “tourist season” was declared officially over, so we got in. Then I discovered the reservations system didn’t apply to Hetch Hetchy because no one wants to go there! A ranger there joked they get 1/1000th of the visitors that cover the Yosemite valley.

It’s not hard to see why: Hetch Hetchy has a paved road, parking spaces, restrooms, a campground for backpackers, and interpretative signs. That’s it. No visitor center, no food, no gas, no crowded campgrounds, just a big concrete dam and a big lake. Because it is the water source for a megalopolis you cannot walk to the shore, you can’t swim in it, and there is no boating. You can hike around one side of it.

So I walked out on the dam and found a spot to sit and pretended I was John Muir looking at the view 120 years ago. I visualized the concrete edge of the dam as a granite boulder and that I was John Muir looking at the upper half of the Hetch Hetchy valley with Tueeulala Falls and Kolana Rock in the distance. It was breathtaking. If Muir had stood up he would have seen a forested valley below him. I saw a sheet of water.

Reading signage on the dam I found out all the virgin trees on the valley floor were cut down before dam construction and used for firewood. That firewood was then used to run the steam powered engines on the equipment that tore up the valley and constructed the dam. If that wood had been used to make lumber for a great visitor center or lodge, or a spectacular wooden bridge trestle, I might not have been so sad. It would have been something you could appreciate decades later, but no, the forest from the valley floor went up in smoke.

If you are a lover of history and nature a trip to Hetch Hetchy is a worthy undertaking just to see it once. It made me sad.

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BUSTED

by Paul Modic

On November 22, 1977 I left a “Sheila and Jessie” concert at the Garberville Theatre and headed north toward Eureka to UPS a box of canning jars full of trimmed weed, the first pound I ever tried to sell, to a friend in Nevada on a front. (I had been planning to take my '65 Dodge Dart station wagon but hadn't been able to replace the regulator so instead I took this old Plymouth Valiant I had found somewhere which didn't have a muffler and only bright lights.)

I wanted to spend the night at the Salmon Creek house just off the highway with a woman I had recently met, who was also from Indiana, but at some point during our visit I made a gauche move and had to leave. What could I do but keep driving north late at night in my dilapidated Valiant powered by the popular slant six engine?

When the county cops stopped me near the Elk River exit there was a roach in the ashtray, a canning jar of weed on the seat beside me, and the backpack holding the box of canning jars was partially open on the back seat. I tried to blame some random hitchhiker but that didn't work. (I had a red patch on the knee of my old green slacks and the police claimed that a bank had been robbed in Mendocino earlier that day by someone with a similar patch.)

I was busted with the first pound I ever grew, then booked, photographed, fingerprinted, and lodged into the Humboldt County jail for fourteen hours. In the morning I was let out on my own recognizance and I called my food stamp worker who came down with her husband, took me to their home, and made me breakfast. (When they went to bed I raided the fridge and cut some nice fat slices of cheese, but it tasted weird and I soon realized I was trying to eat a butter sandwich.)

I returned to my home, Jack Glick's cabin up on what we called Fern Hill, looked inside and in my friend's mail truck up the hill, where all my weed had been hanging, and nothing was there! I immediately thought of the Tower House just down the hill where Charity had a daycare, and sure enough it was all hanging on the top floor. (Reb Barker, Richard Gienger and Mel had moved my scene after hearing I was busted.)

I thought, hmm, okay and proceeded to continue drying it there, umm, using the firewood from Charity's daycare. Very soon after that, the big mean heroin addict Ray Balliett was sent over to tell me to get my shit out of there and replace the firewood. (The enforcer!)

My court hearing was scheduled for January so I flew down to Guadalajara on New Year's Eve for a quick vacation, then headed over to Mexico City where I walked out of “The Towering Inferno” bored, just after Faye Dunaway said to Paul Newman, "Oh Doug, I'd live with you anywhere, even on the cliffs of Mendocino." (At that point I was living on some cliffs of Mendocino.)

As I walked back to the Hotel Estadio I wondered if I was anywhere near Jack Kerauac's old rooftop apartment at 212 Orizaba Street? I looked up at the street sign and it was Orizaba! I looked again and saw I was right on the 200 block, in the biggest city in the world. (That’s my best coincidence, I have seven others.)

I walked up to the top floor and told the young woman resident that a famous writer had lived there, and could I come in and see if there was any writing on the wall? She let me in to look around.

When I got back I hired noted weed lawyer Robert Cogen, who convinced Judge Thomas to throw the case out: illegal search and seizure. I paid him $2200 and he lectured me about how to transport weed: “Always drive at high noon,” he said.

(Robert died this year after an illustrious life. RIP)

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MIKE TYSON:

“I had my oldest son who was 16 telling me he wanted to become a professional boxer. But stop there, you're stup!d, you went to a private school! You can't be a boxer, you've taken trips to Europe, you've been around the world. You can't be a fighter with that. You want to fight guys like me? Animals? I don't want my kids to go through that, it's degrading. Boxing, you do it when you have nothing. It's a lot of sacrifices, pain, suffering. I took the blows so that my children wouldn't have to do it. When I look at them, I see middle-class children, who went to school, who do what they want. Boxing means wanting to be the best, to dominate everyone. I don't want to put that kind of pressure on them.”

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BLUEBIRD

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?

— Charles Bukowski

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49ERS’ AIYUK DONE FOR THE YEAR, SAMUEL HOSPITALIZED AND KITTLE AILING

by Eric Branch

San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan said Monday that wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk was out for the season with two torn knee ligaments, wideout Deebo Samuel was in the hospital with pneumonia, tight end George Kittle had a sprained foot and wide receiver Chris Conely had a sprained ankle.

And that wasn’t all when it came to his pass-catching corps. Wide receiver Jauan Jennings, who has a team-high 404 receiving yards, could miss his second straight game Sunday night with a hip injury when the 49ers host the Cowboys.

Yes, a day after a brutal game – the 49ers were drilled 28-18 by the Chiefs at Levi’s Stadium – the hits kept on coming for the defending NFC champions with a 3-4 record.

For starters, Aiyuk’s knee injury was even worse than the 49ers feared late Sunday afternoon when Shanahan acknowledged he was concerned he had a torn ACL. The second-team All-Pro who signed a four-year, $120 million contract extension in late August suffered both a torn ACL and MCL when he was sandwiched by two defenders late in the second quarter against the Chiefs.

“B.A. is a strong dude and a spiritual guy and believes everything happens for a reason, so he'll be alright,” said Shanahan, who spoke with Aiyuk on the phone Sunday night. “But he was definitely a little down last night and I was just telling him how bad I felt for him. I just let him know we're all here for him through this.”

Aiyuk reportedly could have suffered additional damage to his right knee, which makes his injury similar to that of pass rusher Nick Bosa’s four years ago. Bosa suffered a complex knee injury on Sept. 20, 2020, and was medically cleared to participate in individual drills for the start of training camp about 10 months later. Bosa played in all 17 games in 2021 after he suffered a torn ACL, torn MCL and torn lateral meniscus. Bosa’s ACL was reconstructed using a graft from his patella tendon and a piece of bone from his kneecap.

Meanwhile, Samuel went to a hospital Sunday night and had yet to be released late Monday afternoon when Shanahan spoke to reporters. Samuel has fluid in his lungs and struggled to breathe during the loss to the Chiefs, playing just four snaps before watching from the sideline in street clothes in the second half.

Shanahan said he wasn’t sure if Samuel or Jennings, who didn’t practice last week, would be able to play against the Cowboys.

“We'll see how he recovers here over these next couple days,” Shanahan said of Samuel.

Shanahan termed both Kittle and Conely “day to day,” which suggests they could play against Dallas. Still, the rash of injuries means the 49ers’ only healthy wide receivers are Ricky Pearsall, Jacob Cowing and Ronnie Bell, who have 13 career receptions. Their healthy tight ends are Eric Saubert and Jake Tonges, who have 40 career catches.

Samuel and Jennings don’t figure to be sidelined for the long-term, but the loss of Aiyuk will force Pearsall and Cowing, both rookies, into more prominent roles after each had their first NFL reception against the Chiefs.

Pearsall, a first-round pick, made his NFL debut Sunday just 50 days after he was shot in the chest on Aug. 31. He missed most of training camp with hamstring and shoulder injuries. Cowing, a fourth-round pick, played five offensive snaps in the season’s first six games before he played 12 against Kansas City.

On Sept. 25, after a Week 3 loss to the Rams, Shanahan was asked why Cowing had yet to play on offense and said that he “wasn’t ready to do that yet.”

Cowing had two catches for 50 yards against Kansas City. Pearsall, whose 48 snaps were the most among the 49ers’ wideouts, had three catches for 21 yards.

(Cowing is) “going to continue to get reps and be forced to grow up,” Kittle said Sunday. “Same with Ricky. They are going to be forced to grow up and mature really, really fast. It’s kind of on us as veterans in the system to help them along and make sure they’re ready to play in these football games. You can’t really replace … one the best wide receivers in the NFL. It’s on our vets to pull them along, whether they are ready or not.”

Shanahan acknowledged the 49ers could have interest in acquiring a wide receiver before the league trade deadline on Nov. 5. But he noted it may not be possible to land a wideout such as Emmanuel Sanders, who was acquired in deadline deal in 2019 and helped fuel the 49ers’ Super Bowl run.

“A lot of times that's just kind of living in hope,” Shanahan said. “Those answers aren't always out there. You’ve got to be ready to get people better in your building and deal with what you’ve got in your building.”

(SF Chronicle)

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IN OCTOBER 1991, an 86-year-old oil tycoon was wheeled into a Houston strip club, where he fell in love with a woman who was working the day shift. The octogenarian's name was J. Howard Marshall, and he was worth over $1 billion. And the woman was Anna Nicole Smith, a 23-year-old aspiring model. The two were reportedly smitten at first sight, and the very next day, Marshall gave Smith an envelope with $1,000 in cash and told her, "Don't go to work, my Lady Love. You don't have to ever go back to work."

The rest was history. Marshall showered Smith with expensive gifts, including a red Mercedes convertible, access to a bungalow that had once belonged to Marilyn Monroe, and over $1 million worth of jewelry. And shortly after Smith found fame as a Playboy model, the pair married in 1994 — but their wedded bliss lasted just 14 months before Marshall died.

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MICHAEL ESPOSITO:

Joe Montana was benched in a 1987 Divisional playoff game against the Vikings. He went 12 of 26 for 109 yards, including a pick-six to Reggie Rutland in the second quarter. The wild-card Vikings upset the Niners after a 13-2 strike shortened season where they were the favorite to go to the Super bowl.

And people screamed that the Joe Montana era was over.

Those people are now Brock Purdy critics.

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

These are dark and crazy times. I have to pass a house with two lawn signs for "Harris" where they obviously just cut "Biden" off the top and so, half a sign. But the worst part, on the same lawn, between the halves supporting Kamala, is a four foot sign with Franklin's statement "A republic if you can keep it." I am so tempted to stop by and find out where the disconnect lies, but honestly, whoever lives there scares me more than the many outrageous displays of yard demons for the upcoming "Trick or Treat."

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GEORGE HOLLISTER sends along a definition of fascism from the WSJ: “Fascism historically was “national socialism” — government control over much of the economy. By that definition, Democrats today are the national socialists — using regulation, mandates, law enforcement, and trillions of dollars in subsidies to coerce Americans to follow their dictates on climate and culture. Mr. Trump was a deregulator in his first term and promises to be more so in a second.”

ED NOTE: Trump is a bargain basement fascist. Emotionally, of course, he's a born and bred goose stepper. But he's not smart enough to be the real deal, and if he's elected for another four years he'll surround himself with a kindred coterie of nuts and incompetents. The lib's hysteria about the oaf is a measure of their own bankruptcy. What else do they have other than fear of this mega-clown?

A READER WRITES: I wonder if the Dems realize how much they help Trump when they overreact to his intentional provocations? Trumpers love it when the Dems go ape over the latest Trumpism. That’s the point. Who the Dems think they’re winning over when they and their allies in the media scream in reaction to every little outrage that Trump says (or dances to). Trump has them paying attention to him, dancing to his tune, and that’s all that matters to a narcissist.

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LEAD STORIES, TUESDAY'S NYT

With Election Day 2 Weeks Away, 15 Million Voters Have Already Cast a Ballot

Trump Says He Has Seen No Evidence of Cheating in the Election, but Nonetheless Sows Doubts

Hamas’s Guerrilla Tactics in North Gaza Make It Hard to Defeat

How Aleksei Navalny’s Prison Diaries Got Published

Arkansas May Have Vast Lithium Reserves, Researchers Say

Halloween’s Mutation: From Humble Holiday to Retail Monstrosity

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NEW YORK TIMES article comment:

Dr, Stein is a stalking horse for the Republican Party. A vote for Stein is a vote for Donald Trump. There are no two-ways about it. I fully appreciate and empathize with Dr. Stein's supporters, but -- let's face the bald-faced facts here -- this is a two horse race November 5th, and Dr. Stein is only in it to advantage Trump. To all of her supporters: Face the cold hard facts of political life here in America, hold your noses, and vote for Harris/Walz. Doing otherwise is -- really, let's face the facts -- simply voting for Trump. You really don't want him elected President, do you?

— Lee Edmundson, Mendocino, California

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SURPRISE, SURPRISE!

by James Kunstler

Of course, there’s no “pandemic” this time to cover for the trip that the Party of Chaos wants to lay on the country, no excuse for gross and glaring ballot fuckery, for the days of anxious uncertainty following an election. Everybody and his uncle expect a gigantic tantrum to follow November 6 if Mr. Trump somehow overcomes the tide of bogus harvested votes, illegal alien votes, phantom overseas votes, voting machine swapped votes, lost-and-found votes, last-minute rafts of votes, and other products of the Marc Elias election sabotage machine.

I am not so sure that the tantrum will materialize. Despite the orgy of Orwellian language inversions you have been subjected to in recent years, and the bending of reality it induced, you will know a real insurrection if you see it. You already know the real reason the Democratic Party went insane: its crime spree against the citizens of this land was so obvious and outrageous that a thousand Beltway bureaucrats are now going crazy in fear of prosecution. The tantrum everyone expects them to provoke would be a real insurrection and they are liable to find themselves in even deeper trouble for resorting to it.

Crime is the whole reason for the Democrats’ desperation. There was no “policy” the past four years, only crime. The Covid operation was a mass murder. The open border was not something that just happened, like a spell of bad weather. It was a colossal racketeering operation. They worked it hard. “Joe Biden” paid dozens of NGO cut-outs to systematically jam more than ten million sketchy interlopers into the country, and then support them lavishly with cash payments when they got here.

The political prosecutions of AG Merrick Garland are gauche and lawless. The pervasive censorship by DHS and other agencies is an affront to our constitution. The transgender campaign is a malicious prank against American children (and their parents). Our CIA may be a party to the fentanyl crisis. The war in Ukraine is a failed resource-grab, unbelievably stupid in inception. “Joe Biden’s” empty treasury is writing trillions in IOUs to stealthily bail out the banks and jack-up the stock market. Everything about our government has become criminal and those responsible for it know they are bound for a reckoning now.

Will the Democrats’ Antifa street-army be allowed to terrorize the cities? I expect the remaining cops not de-funded in DC, New York, Chicago, and LA won’t hold back this time, no matter what mayors Muriel Bowser, Eric Adams, Brandon Johnson, and Karen Bass tell them to do. You will instead see the return of something that has been missing for years: a sense of duty to public safety and the common good. Won’t that be surprise? And there will be nothing that the FBI can do about. It’s one thing to incite a riot among a mob of ordinary middle-aged folks moiling around the US Capitol. It’s another thing to try to subvert the police in carrying out their duties. New heroes will emerge and there will be no ambiguity about what happens.

Black Lives Matter had already been outed as a lowlife money-grubbing hustle. But the Democratic Party may no longer depend on its old “plantation” field-hands to stage mostly peaceful anarchy and arson if the election goes the wrong way for the masters. Forty years of pretending to be an oppositional culture hasn’t worked. It was just minstrelsy updated, when all was said and done. Too many black men are rising up to speak out in support of Donald Trump, and of one America, and of acting like men. They appear to be tired of self-stigmatizing as designated victims in the Woke-Jacobin DEI psychodrama. A new generation of black male leaders is emerging to replace embarrassing con artists like Al Sharpton, Michael Eric Dyson, and Ibram X. Kendi. It’s been a long time coming.

Will we ever know how Kamala Harris was put over on the Democratic Convention like the sale of a used car? How the rank-and-file delegates got swindled into nominating her by acclamation without any debate, without anyone else rising to object, anyone else offering up themselves for a vote? There wasn’t even smoke-filled room this time where the bosses actually haggled over who would front for them, not a minute of suspense, no process whatsoever. Kamala Harris was just pulled out of a hat, like a rabbit. And everybody involved knew she was a dud, a slow learner, inattentive, not well-educated, lazy, possibly high a lot of the time, self-medicating due to anxiety, insecurity, purposelessness.

It took four years for slightly more than half of America to see that our country’s fate was in the hands of villains wrecking the joint. It looks like their depredations are nearly over. The USA really does not want to gurgle down the drain of history. We’re not ready to roll over and die. We’re waking up from an induced coma, starting to remember who we are. That has been the weird lesson of 2024. Surprise, surprise!

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WHAT PROGRESSIVES ALREADY KNOW ABOUT THE 2024 ELECTION RESULTS

Bad or worse

by Norman Solomon

While the name of the next president is unknown, some outcomes of the election can be foreseen. For instance:

• President Biden’s successor will be a dangerous militarist.

Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are supporters of boosting already-huge Pentagon budgets along with continuing U.S. warfare in many forms. Trump likes to pander to voters who don’t want endless wars, but his actual policies as president kept them going. Harris’s glimmers of senatorial interest in scaling back military largesse faded into standard bellicosity. Both candidates beat cold-war drums, with Trump focusing on China rather than Russia.

• If Trump wins, corporate Democrats and mainstream media will blame the Harris campaign for not moving rightward enough.

Progressive ideas, as usual, will be convenient scapegoats for the failures of Democratic Party elites.

• If Harris wins, corporate Democrats and mainstream media will immediately warn that she must steer clear of the left.

The establishment is ever alert to the danger that progressive populism could majorly reduce income inequality and subdue corporate power.

• If Trump wins, progressives will be on the defensive for at least four years -- unable to accomplish anything of substance at the federal level and trying to mitigate the damage under an unhinged and fascistic president.

The disasters with a second Trump administration will include unleashed nativism and official bigotry. As one liberal commentator observed weeks before the election, “More than ever, Trump’s rhetoric is steeped in racism, xenophobia and dehumanization. He routinely calls immigrants ‘vermin’ and says they are ‘poisoning the blood’ of the country. He claims they are ‘stone-cold killers,’ ‘animals’ and ‘the worst people’ who will ‘cut your throat.’ . . . He called migrants from Latin America, Congo and the Middle East ‘the most violent people on Earth.’ . . . He’s even suggested that nonwhite immigrants have ‘bad genes’ that make them genetically inferior.”

• As in the past, the Green Party will again congratulate itself on the tiny percentage of votes for its latest presidential candidate (after the party’s nominee received 0.36 percent in 2012, 1.07 percent in 2016 and 0.26 percent in 2020).

In October, this year’s Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein campaigned in swing states and declared: “This is a very dire situation that will be continued under both Democrats and Republicans. So we say there is no lesser evil in this race.”

Really?

• If Harris wins despite his best efforts, Benjamin Netanyahu will be disappointed that he was unable to sufficiently help get Trump elected.

“For anyone who doubts Trump will be even worse than Biden is on Gaza,” Mehdi Hasan tweeted a mid-October video clip of Trump saying that Netanyahu “is doing a good job, Biden is trying to hold him back... and probably should be doing the opposite. I'm glad that Bibi decided to do what he had to do.’”

• Whether Trump or Harris wins, the U.S. government will continue to support Israel’s killing of Palestinian civilians under the guise of its “right to defend itself.”

If Trump wins, virtually all Republicans and many Democrats in Congress will support his unequivocal backing for whatever Israel does. If Harris wins, we can expect her policies toward Israel to be dreadful, while she’ll be subject to increasing pressure from much of her party’s base and some Democratic members of Congress for an end to arming Israel.

• In response to the climate emergency, Harris has foreshadowed that her policies would be predictably inadequate, while Trump has repeatedly denied that a climate crisis even exists.

The burden will be on activists to demand actions commensurate with the realities described in The 2024 State of the Climate Report: “We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled. We are stepping into a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis.”

• No matter whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris is inaugurated on Jan. 20, the challenges for progressives will be enormous.

A Trump presidency will push progressives back on our heels, in a dire defensive position as we fight to protect rights and programs won during many previous decades. With a Harris presidency, progressives will have some space to organize, with potential to actually move some U.S. government policies in a positive direction.

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“BUT FOR ME, the most awful thing would be to feel that I’d agree with the things I’ve already said and written — that is what would make me most uncomfortable because that would mean that I had stopped thinking.”

— Susan Sontag

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THE ISRAELI MILITARY claimed on Monday that Hezbollah was operating an underground command center beneath a major hospital just south of Beirut, prompting the facility to be evacuated as fears spread that it could be targeted.

As the Israeli military launched new waves of airstrikes near the Lebanese capital, Lebanese health officials denied its claims about Al-Sahel hospital in the Dahiya, the densely populated community adjoining Beirut where Hezbollah holds sway. The hospital was evacuated once before, a few weeks ago, transferring patients to other facilities, because of Israeli bombardment. (New York Times)

ED NOTE: Not to be too judgemental, my fellow lib-labs, but it seems the least we can do in the face of this monstrous Israeli rampage is VOTE NO on all Democrats on the ballot.

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‘GOODBYE LEBANON’

by Ralph Nader

Biden’s bombs and missiles, dropped daily on Lebanon, a U.S. ally, by his puppet master Netanyahu, is wreaking havoc in this small defenseless country. The Israeli genocidal machine is waging an incinerating assault on fleeing civilians and critical facilities. The scorched-earth Israeli strategy is the same as what we have seen in Gaza. Attack in Lebanon anyone who moves or anything that stands – whether a hospital, a dense residential area, a café, a municipal building, a market, a school, or a Mosque – and allege there was a Hezbollah commander or a Hezbollah site here or there. Two recent New York Times headlines express some of the impact of this latest Israeli war: “In Just a Week, a Million People in Lebanon Have Been Displaced” and “Lebanon’s Hospitals Buckle Amid an Onslaught: ‘Indiscriminate’ Strikes Overwhelm Health System, U.N. Says.”

Historical note: Hezbollah, also a political Party and social service organization, was created to defend impoverished Shiite Muslims in southern Lebanon in 1982 right after the Israeli army once again invaded Lebanon and badly mistreated the residents during an 18-year-long military occupation.

No matter what or who the Israeli Air Force’s American F-16 fighter aircraft bomb, no matter the deaths and injuries to thousands of Lebanese families, many of them children and women, Biden keeps unconditionally and savagely shipping weapons of mass destruction. He is violating six federal laws requiring conditions be met – such as not violating human rights or not obstructing U.S. humanitarian aid. Netanyahu is violating these and other conditions and mocking his major benefactor, the United States government.

Israel has long had designs on a slice of Lebanon going up to and including the Litani River area. Water is valuable. Over the years, Israel has routinely violated Lebanese air space, executed incursions into Lebanon and has used forbidden cluster bombs and white phosphorous. According to Aya Majzoub, Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, “It is beyond horrific that the Israeli army has indiscriminately used white phosphorous in violation of international humanitarian law.”

The White House knows all this. It doesn’t care. Wherever Israel invades, bombs, assassinates, or boobytraps pagers and walkie-talkies, Bibi-Biden continues his servility to the Israeli terror regime and its genocidal leader Netanyahu, who is despised by three out of four Israelis for his domestic policies and is under indictment by Israeli prosecutors for corruption.

Despite reports that Biden steams in private against Netanyahu, and considers him a liar and a supporter of Trump’s re-election, Biden knows that that this foreign authoritarian has the big card: CONGRESS. Most of the legislators who attended his noxious address to a joint congressional session last June gave him a record-breaking 52 standing ovations. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “Benjamin Netanyahu’s presentation in the House Chamber today was by far the worst presentation of any foreign dignitary invited and honored with the privilege of addressing the Congress of the United States.”

Biden, who is known to conduct foreign and military policy without any authorization by Congress, doesn’t want to offend the powerful “Israel government can do no wrong” Lobby in the U.S. – to which he has been indentured for his entire fifty-year political career. This includes Israel’s current destruction of Lebanon, where tens of thousands of Americans are residing. The Washington Post reports that the Biden White House “has so far given full backing to Israel’s ground operations in Lebanon, even amid a growing international outcry over the civilian toll … and Israeli clashes with United Nations peacekeepers,” who have been assigned there for decades.

Having full U.S. government backing, and now backed by U.S. warships, Marines and logistics, plus 100 U.S. soldiers arriving this week in Israel, Netanyahu knows he has a free hand to attack Iran and drag the U.S. into a regional war.

Both Netanyahu and Bibi-Biden have been briefed about the possibilities of “blowback” (the CIA’s term) against the U.S. These concerns come from U.S. intelligence agencies who study scenarios like future 9/11s or the recent inexpensive armed drones that can be constructed and deployed anywhere. Militarists and corporatists in the U.S. aren’t that concerned because whenever “blowback” occurs they can concentrate more power, with bigger military budgets and profits, in another “war on terror,” silencing dissent and subordinating or sidelining critical domestic priorities.

That is the lethal fix and fate that America has been subjected to by its cowardly, Constitution-violating politicians from both Parties. The power structure – the corporate state – or what Franklin Delano Roosevelt once called in a 1938 message to Congress “fascism,” is telling the American people: “Heads we win, Tails you lose.”

Here is how bad Biden has gotten. Recently, two letters signed by 65 American doctors and health workers back from the horrors, the killing fields of Gaza, to President Joe Biden, have gone unanswered. (See, “65 Doctors, Nurses and Paramedics: What We Saw in Gaza” by Feroze Sidhwa, New York Times Sunday, October 13, 2024). Their letters plead for a ceasefire and immediate humanitarian aid for the starving, dying people of Gaza. They request a meeting with President Biden, who has often met with the pro-Israeli lobby. Scranton Joe says no way.

These brave physicians and nurses also are requesting that Joe Biden demand that Netanyahu allow children in Gaza who are seriously burned or are amputees be air-lifted to America to be treated by compassionate specialists in ready American hospitals. Biden, a practicing Catholic, has no interest.

President George Washington warned his country about avoiding foreign entanglements in his farewell address. Were he possessed of more prescience; he would have added the word “surrenders.”

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IRON TAIL, OGLALA LAKOTA: His image was used on the Indian Head Nickel.