Mendocino County Today: Thursday 10/24/2024

Dry | Painting | Hospital Meeting | Prop 2 | Pharmacy Burglars | Thanksgiving Meals | Budget Excitement | Wooden Boat | Alley Sisters | Block Print | Marijuana McKoy | Ceramic Art | Measure S | Salmon Info | Marco Baiting | Quilt | Studio Apartment | Brooches | Open Studios | Barn Art | Dirty Cello | Pottery | Ed Notes | Not Freaks | Clyde Doggett | Yesterday's Catch | Soy Boys | Future Dating | Prop 36 | Ailing Niners | Left Shrank | Fernando Valenzuela | Other | Lead Stories | Deindividualized | Good Question | Censorship Group | First Job | Gut Feeling | Denial State | Gone Mad | Furious Funucci | Gaza & Lebanon | Free Palestine | Justification | Extermination | The Secret

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FROST ADVISORY remains in effect until 9 am PDT this morning.

DRY WEATHER and mild daytime temperatures are expected through the week. Wetter and cooler weather is expected this weekend into early next week as a series of fronts move through. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 42F with clear skies this Thursday morning on the coast. A mix of sun & clouds into the weekend then a good chance of rain on Sunday. A bit unsettled for next week currently, not sure yet?

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AN IMPORTANT COAST HOSPITAL MEETING

Dear Good Neighbors of the North Coast:

My name is Dr Richard Louis Miller.

This letter is a call to action to citizens of the north coast to get involved with urgent issues taking place at the hospital. The future of our hospital is again being renegotiated. Please attend an important meeting of the Mendocino County HealthCare District on Thursday October 24th at 6PM. You can attend in person, at the hospital, or via Zoom.

Please stay involved. Your well being depends on it.

If you believe it is important to have a competent functioning hospital here on the coast this is a critical time for you to speak your piece.

Once again the very future of our hospital services is up for negotiations.

I am an 85 years old, practicing Doctor of Clinical Psychology and have been a part time and full time north coast resident since 1975. My wife Jolee, and I live on a small animal farm just north of Fort Bragg. If you walk the Haul Road you may have seen our two steer, Brownie CowSanova and Chuck Steak aka Check Roast, both of whom we rescued from the dinner table. Brownie will come if you call him loud enough. He also kisses and hugs. You may also see our 3 dogs, Sasha, Grishka and Misha. All friendly. In our yard we fly flags of Freedom and Love which we alternate with the American flag.

I’ve been involved with some combination of the services, administration and politics, of our local hospital years since 1975 when I stood silently for 15 hours and watched Drs Peter Barg and Jacque Denzel perform a pancreatoduodenectomy aka Whipple, whereby they removed cancer from the patient’s pancreas.

Twenty years ago, George Reinhardt made a strong pitch for me to attend a special Hospital Board meeting. What I saw was astonishing. It was immediately obvious that the CEO was a shady character.

I organised with a few local citizens, including Mike Dell’ Ara and Tom Birdsell, founded the Hospital Resource Council, hired an outside auditing firm and the rest is history. The CEO, Brian Ballard, caught in embezzlement, was literally run out of town. The hospital Board changed and with Dell’Ara and Birdsell on the Board the hospital functioned in the black. As soon as they left the Board the hospital went down hill until bankruptcy was followed by affiliation with Adventist Hospital a subsidiary of the Adventist Church.

Many locals had questions about our affiliating with Adventists, a large corporation which was part of a religious organisation. Since Adventist took over they have closed ob/gyn (the Adventist Church is anti abortion) and we lost certain doctors, including my own oncologist, Dr Jon Rochat, who were not comfortable working for an organisation which was anti gay.

Those were critical times in the life of our hospital. This is another. The very future of our hospital is about to be re negotiated.

There are specific times, and issues, in the life history of any village, town, city, state, country, planet, that that have an outsized historical influence on the inhabitants.

We are presently in one of those historical times. On the macrocosm, our national experiment in republic and democracy, these United States, is at an inflection point, and, on the microcosm, our Coastal community whose epicentre is the City of Fort Bragg is at an inflection point regarding our future.

The two Northcoast issues of potentially historical influence are:

1-The Hospital

2-The Mill Site

Most urgent is the hospital.

This public letter refrains from offering the slightest advice, but instead, is a call for public involvement, focusing, at this time, on the hospital, for it presents more urgency than the Mill Site.

The Adventist Hospital Group, who lease and operate our citizen owned District Hospital, have asked to renegotiate the lease. The outcome of the negotiations could change our area dramatically in that the more services we lose here in our local hospital the more difficult it is for locals to get treatment and the less attractive we are as a place to live. By contrast the more effective our hospital the better for all.

When Adventist closed our ob/gyn unit, families is maternity became forced to drive and hour to Willits or one and one half hours to Ukiah, for their care. If a Northcoast resident requires radiation to treat cancer it can require driving back and forth to Ukiah 5 days/week for six weeks.

We are being called upon to look at what medical services we want provided to us locally and what we willing to drive for. We are being called upon to make our needs heard.

If you want a say in the future of our local hospital please get involved and attend the Mendocino Coast HealthCare District meeting on Thursday October 24th at 6PM.,

Dr. Richard Miller

Fort Bragg

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ANDERSON VALLEY HIGH SCHOOL was featured in a ABC-7 news item about the pros and cons of Proposition 2 Wednesday evening. The proposition authorizes about $10 billion in school facility bonds costing about $18 million with interest. Opponents say the schools ought to be budgeting for their own facility improvements, not borrowing. But whatever the source of funding, Anderson Valley’s bond-funded improvements have been a net positive. Anderson Valley was not mentioned by name, but apparently someone thinks it’s an example of the benefits of school facility improvements.

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PHARMACY BURGLARS ARRESTED

In a significant development in an ongoing investigation, Ukiah Police Department has arrested three Southern California men believed to be linked to a series of pharmacy burglaries throughout California. Two of these burglaries occurred in Ukiah at Myers Pharmacy, one in February and a second at the same location on Tuesday, Oct. 15th.

Officers ultimately apprehended Albony Williams (Age 31, of Buena Park), Tevin Barnes (Age 32 of Anaheim), and Cedeno Wyatt (Age 42, of Buena Park).

In the early morning of 10/15/24, UPD officers responded to Myers Pharmacy for a burglary alarm. On arrival they located a broken window and evidence of a burglary that had occurred minutes earlier. No suspects were located at the scene. Utilizing Flock LPR cameras, officers located images of a Volkswagen SUV seen driving in the area at the approximate time of this incident. Officers learned that the vehicle had been rented by Albony Williams. A UPD detective recognized Williams’ name to be a person of interest in prior incidents around the state, as well as the February break in at Myers Pharmacy.

During this investigation, officers learned that Howard Memorial Medical Pharmacy in Willits had also been broken into that morning, shortly after the Ukiah location. No suspects were located at the scene in Willits; however the same method of entry was used and video surveillance showed what appeared to be the same suspect entering the business. Many medications, to include numerous opiate prescription drugs had been stolen from the Willits location. UPD issued a Be on the Look Out to neighboring agencies for the vehicle and suspects.

Later that morning, an alert MCSO deputy located the suspect vehicle parked at a Laytonville motel. UPD detectives authored a search warrant for the vehicle and suspect’s motel room. Two of the listed suspects, Barnes and Wyatt were present at the room and arrested. It was determined Williams had fled the scene prior to police securing the motel room. UPD located and arrested Williams later that afternoon, who by that time had made his way to Ukiah and was found waiting at a bus stop.

Items recovered during and following these arrests include several hundred hydrocodone, oxycodone and hydromorphone pills, as well as bottles of codeine syrup (See attached photo). These medications are frequently abused and highly sought after on the black market.

The suspects face multiple felony charges, including burglary and criminal conspiracy. They were transported to MCSO jail where they were initially held on $275,000 bond. All three suspects are now out of custody.

UPD Detectives are currently working with several other California agencies to assist in providing information and evidence for related cases likely involving these suspects.

Ukiah Police Department would like to thank Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office, Mendocino County District Attorney’s Office, and Willits Police Department for their assistance in this matter.

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AV FOOD BANK NEEDS SUPPORT

Did you know there are 190 families receiving twice monthly food supports from the Anderson Valley Food Bank?

Anderson Valley FFA is partnering with the Anderson Valley Food Bank to help supply Thanksgiving meals for our community members in need.

We can't do it without your help! Anyone can donate! You can donate items needed. You can write a check for $40 to supply a dinner for 4. You can use the QR code to donate by card. You can help us help others!

https://avhs-agriculture-deptffa.square.site

Thanks,

Beth Swehla, FFA Advisor, Anderson Valley High School

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SUPES CONGRATULATE THEMSELVES FOR NOT DOING NOTHING ANYMORE. STARTING NEXT MONTH. MAYBE.

by Mark Scaramella

It used to be said of the British aristocracy in their heyday that they did nothing, but did it very well. Official Mendo certainly qualifies for the former, but falls short of the latter.

You have to be impressed by CEO Darcy Antle’s skill at avoiding providing ordinary budget reports to the Supervisors, and the public. She has amassed a handy collection of ridiculous excuses for not doing or delaying budget reporting over the years, first as Budget Officer and for the last two years as CEO. After all, she knows that her overpaid Board is so lacking in backbone that almost any excuse will do.

The short list: People might ask questions. We were criticized. It’s too much work. The revenues don’t come in monthly but the expenses do. The software is flawed. We can give you last year’s (but never does). Covid…

And all that while acknowledging that the departments are doing their own budget tracking.

On Tuesday, Supervisor Ted Williams, the only supervisor who even seems interested in this gaping hole in County reporting, complained again about the lack of budget status reporting.

“The Board doesn’t get regular financial reporting,” said Williams stating the obvious. “We have no idea where departments are on actual vs. budget. It could be the departments or the CEO. Somehow the public and the board needs to be apprised of spending on a monthly basis. It needs to be in the CEO report. Transparency means regular financial reporting.”

Actually, in Mendo “transparency” means saying the word “transparency” a lot, but delivering the most opaque set of information possible, hiding information in layers of bureaucratese, confusing websites, obfuscating agenda packages, presenting retroactive proposals as done-deals, and sidestepping pointed questions from the public.

Acting Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector Sara Pierce replied to Williams saying that in her next report on November 5 they will present a “preliminary” budget vs. actual report.

Yippee!

Williams prematurely noted, “That seems like a milestone.” But it wasn’t clear whether he meant the announcement that they might have it next month or if he really believed, after decades of incompetence and delay, that the County would finally begin doing what every other organization routinely does.

CEO Antle grudgingly acknowledged that budget vs, actual reporting “has been requested.” The last time the “request” came up Antle told the Board that although they had the info, she was reluctant to provide it to the Board because a couple of years ago after providing a very simplified budget to actual report, “we were criticized.” Har-har. Not only not true, but a joke of an excuse for not providing a budget report even if it were.

On Tuesday Antle offered another excuse saying that putting the budget vs. actual report together is a “huge lift.” But now, after the huge lift, they are “excited” about starting to do budget reporting in November. But of course Antle hedged, saying that whatever she produces in November “will get better and better” over time, meaning it probably won’t be what an ordinary person would view as a true budget versus actual report and it probably won’t be monthly or even quarterly. In all likelihood it will be a time buyer to postpone monthly reporting again.

Reminder: a budget versus actual report should track revenues and expenses separately. What we should see in November is a revenue budget vs actual showing when revenues are due and in what amounts and whether they were received; and an expense budget versus actual. The odds of such a basic distinction being made, much less included in the “preliminary” report are what the mathematicians call “asymptotically zero.”

Supervisor Glenn McGourty was downright giddy to hear that the CEO might finally be getting around to doing her job. “This is an amazing body of work in a short time,” said McGourty, the “short time” being several years of delay and lame excuses. “Congratulations to Sara Pierce and CEO Antle and the IT department and the Board of Supervisors who have taken a lot of public heat about our lack of knowledge of what’s going on financially.”

“A lot of heat”? Not only does McGourty acknowledge budget ignorance, but he thinks that pointing out what Supervisor Williams and others have been saying for years is “heat”? Apparently, being periodically reminded that you are in the dark but making major budget decisions while being paid upwards of $100k per year plus generous perks is “heat.”

Outgoing Supervisor Dan Gjerde concluded with this pearl of budget wisdom: “More transparency on the budget is good.”

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AS EXPECTED, the Supervisors routinely approved the item about going through the motions to set up an ad hoc committee to expedite the turning over of a section of road outside Ukiah to the County and relieving the company from any responsibility for it without any substantive questions about why and why now? Supervisor Ted Williams asked why they wanted to add another road to the County’s list of already unmaintained roads, Supervisor Mulheren replied irrelevantly that the area tends to be a “magnet” for abandoned vehicles (hardly a reason to assume responsibility for a private road), and that the area might be annexed by Ukiah under the new one-sided tax sharing agreement (also not a reason). And that was it; approved 5-0.

But further investigation by our reader who initially noticed the questionable arrangement shows:

“It looks like Ukiah Pacific Associates (landlord for the housing development that the road services) is a pretty big player in the ‘affordable housing’ industry. They are part of the Central Valley Coalition for Affordable Housing which has built and manages 3,000+ units in California alone. CVCAH is a part of Pacific Companies based in Idaho which has built 235,000 units according to their website. Looks like their CEO Christina Alley's sister Chelsey also works for the company.

https://tpchousing.com

https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/770242399

“I have talked to a few people who live in their apartments and the reviews are not great. They get a lot of calls for service. The newest development, Millview Apartments looks nice but it is also fairly new. Their older development looks pretty run down on the outside and I don't imagine the insides of the apartments look any better. They have a complex in Fort Bragg that sounds pretty funky as well.

“So why is the County looking to take over maintenance of a road that this company was required to build for the development? And why now? This company gets more than enough public funding and tax breaks. The company got $24 million in government grants last year alone. The Alley sisters are like the Schraeders of the affordable housing world. They probably see California and its big push to build more “affordable” housing as a perfect opportunity to get more monopoly contracts. Not only does their network build them, but then they have the inside track for the lucrative maintenance/management contracts and, as savvy players in that industry, they probably know every angle for keeping their operating costs down while charging monopoly rates to government organizations.

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MARIJUANA MOVER CONVICTED BY JURY.

A Mendocino County Superior Court jury returned from its deliberations Wednesday morning to announce it had found the trial defendant guilty of a marijuana misdemeanor.

Kimanie Andre McKoy, age 38, of El Cajon, was convicted of unlawful possession of more than 28.5 grams (one ounce) of black market cannabis, a misdemeanor.

The defendant was found not guilty of a separate charge of misdemeanor transporting for purposes of sales.

The defendant was stopped by the CHP half past midnight on November 6, 2023 for speeding (75 in a 55 mph zone) and weaving southbound on Highway 101 between the Crofoot Ranch and Hopland.

During the course of a DUI investigation, it was discovered that the defendant was in possession of 13 pounds of processed but unlicensed marijuana in the trunk of his rental car.

The law enforcement agencies that provided testimony in court on Tuesday were the California Highway Patrol, along with expert marijuana testimony from the DA’s Bureau of Investigations.

District Attorney David Eyster presented the People’s evidence to the jury during the two-day trial spread over three days.

Retired Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Janet Clark presided over this week’s trial.

(DA Presser)

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WODO ON MEASURE S

My response to statement opposing Measure S, Albion’s fire tax assessment

My response to Sydelle’s statement opposing Measure S, a $600 property tax assessment to boost funding for the Albion-Little River Fire District is:

Re your your point that with paid staff “We would no longer have a volunteer fire department but a mixture of paid and volunteers,” I believe that would be a good thing in that we would get more volunteers because they’d know that they would not have to be relied on so frequently because the new paid rescuers and firefighters would carry more of the work load. Also, more might volunteer in hopes of becoming one of the paid staff, thus helping locals financially.

Most calls are for medical emergencies, and for many such calls, since we don’t have enough volunteers, our fire chief is the only responder. After all, volunteers are not required to show up. Would you like to call 911 and be told Chief Rees is at another call so we can’t help you now? I can hear the complaints: No one came to the rescue. Because our fire tax was too expensive.

Is our fire chief's salary of $90,000/year excessive? I asked Salary.com http://salary.com/: “How much does a Fire Chief make?” It answered, “as of October 1, 2024, the average annual pay of Fire Chief in CA is $106,117…, but most earn between $97,714 and $122,428.” Our chief is far from overpaid.

Lastly, if we don’t pass Measure S, the quality and reliability of our fire department's responses will deteriorate, causing its safety rating to decline, causing our insurance costs to rise much more than the $600 annual property tax assessment, if one could even get fire insurance then.

Our lives and homes depend on the Albion-Little River Fire Department to protect us from fires and accidents. Let us show them our appreciation by funding them adequately. Please vote in favor of this badly needed fire assessment: Yes on S!

Tom Wodetzki, Albion

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KZYX BUILDING FUND DRIVE SURPASSES $100,000 GOAL!

The KZYX community has answered the recent Building Fund Drive for the Ukiah Studio with a resounding “Yes We Can! ¡Si Se Puede!” The combined Quiet and On-Air Drive, stretching from late September to last Sunday, October 20, raised a grand, truly grand!, total to date of $120,700 for the Building Fund. The donations came in by phone, on kzyx.org, by mail, and hand-delivered at the Philo studio and the October 5 Site Party. With all these generous pledges and donations, supporters more than met the $100,000 challenge gift from the Dean Witter Family, thus releasing additional funds for the station.

KZYX staff and volunteers kept the energy level high in the broadcast studio and phone-answering room during the drive. But despite the general exuberance, show hosts and guests, staff members, and phone-answerers were clearly working and concentrating hard to keep the many balls in the air: making lively pitches for donations during shows, recording and reporting correct names and pledge amounts, getting this information into the database and on the air as thank-yous, calculating overall totals as we approached our ambitious goals, flowing seamlessly between recorded and live broadcast content, voicing segues between shows, updating KZYX’s Facebook and Instagram accounts,. and more. All that besides the usual, ongoing tasks involved in keeping the Philo broadcast hub connected to its satellite studios and transmitting to listeners.

Congratulations and thanks to everyone who contributed to this highly successful drive. It’s a strong sign of support and excitement about KZYX’s new Ukiah studio.

Donations to the Building Fund are always welcome!

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MARY ZEEBLE (PHILO)

We have an apartment for rent off Highway 128 in Philo.

It's an easy walk to to Lemon's Market as well as the Navarro River and Indian Creek.

Studio Apartment $800 month including utilities.

The apartment has a full bathroom and small kitchen.

It's unfurnished.

It is small - ideal for one person.

There is also shared free laundry.

Included in the rent are ALL monthly utilities: electricity, water, heat, & propane.

Move in is first month rent and $800 security for a total of $1600.

There is a large shared garden, a greenhouse and picnic area, as well as hiking trails.

Beautiful views of the redwoods nearby and killer sunsets.

There is plenty of parking on the property for you and visitors.

Looking for respectful long term tenant who is quiet and stable.

A $15 credit and background check will be done. Equal Opportunity Housing.

No drugs. No smoking. Small dogs ok. Cats ok.

PHILORENTAL@GMAIL.COM - or text 415 550 9090

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YOU ARE INVITED TWO WEEKENDS IN NOVEMBER

Art Sustains Us

1. Artists of Anderson Valley Open Studio Tour

I am one of 12 participating artists from Navarro to Boonville

Open November 9 -11

Sat & Sun & Mon

11am - 5pm

click here for Anderson Valley Studio Tour map

2. I will be Open

November 29 - 30 Fri & Sat

11am - 5pm

1200 Hwy 128, mile 15.08, Navarro, CA

Come see the New Crop of Barns 2024

Last of Spring Ranch, bas relief, made of salvaged barn wood, plaster & paint on wood panel 32x32x2 inches

Poet’s barn, bas relief, made of salvaged barn wood, plaster & paint on wood panel, 32x32x2 inches

New Sculpture: Rain Collection

We are Living in A World in Flux cast bronze and glass

Visitors always welcome also by appointment

text 707-357-3805

Rebecca Johnson rebecca@rebeccajohnsonart.com

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DIRTY CELLO AT THE ANDERSON VALLEY GRANGE IN BOONVILLE ON NOV 1

The world traveling band Dirty Cello lands at the Anderson Valley Grange on Nov 1, having played everywhere from an Icelandic cowboy festival, to a monastery in Italy. The Dirty Cello band will be bringing their high energy blues and rock to the Anderson Valley Grange for the first time.

“Some fans and friends recommended we play at Anderson Valley Grange,” says cellist/vocalist and leader of the band, Rebecca Roudman. “They described it as a friendly and comfortable place, and we’re so excited.”

The Dirty Cello band features classical cellist gone rogue, Rebecca Roudman on cello and vocals, who is backed up by a top notch rhythm section. A review from Aldora Magazine, a UK based publication, recently described them as, “Their combination of blues, rock and roll, and bluegrass is an utterly irresistible sonic cocktail, converting listeners in their droves, a fanbase that now has dedicated cult followings all around the world.”

At the Anderson Valley Grange, the Dirty Cello band will be performing a wide variety of music including favorites like Roadhouse Blues, House of the Rising Sun, Foggy Mountain Top, and lots more. Their shows include audience participation and engagement, sing-alongs, and a casual and fun environment. Additionally, Roudman reports that the band has a variable set list with song choices determined by what the audience is most into.

Tickets can be purchased at DirtyCello.com

Dirty Cello at Anderson Valley Grange

9800 California 128 Boonville, CA 95415

Nov 1 at 7 pm

Tickets: $23 at DirtyCello.com http://dirtycello.com

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ED NOTES

OUR RECENT discussion of abalone, prompted this visit to our archive, where we found,

AN ABALONE POACHER has been sentenced to jail time and also fined after he pleaded guilty to charges of felony conspiracy to take abalone for commercial purposes. Randy Lee Appleyard, 23, of Waterford (Stanislaus County not far from Modesto) was sentenced to one year in county jail and three years of supervised probation for illegally harvesting 73 red abalone near Fort Bragg this year (2007). Appleyard will also pay a $20,000 fine and be banned for life from getting a fishing license. He was arrested Jan. 15, by wardens from the California Department of Fish and Game who had received tips that Appleyard and three other suspects had been illegally harvesting abalone and selling them to restaurants in the Sacramento area. Wardens conducted surveillance on the group for a day before arresting them on Highway 20 as they were leaving Fort Bragg. The suspects were found to be in possession of 73 red abalone, well above the state limit of three abalone per person per day. Arrested with Appleyard were Alan Palmer who, along with Appleyard dove for the abalone, and Robert and Joseph Barrett, who served as lookouts. Palmer failed to appear for a court hearing and has been arrested on suspicion of failure to appear in addition to his other charges. Robert and Joseph Barrett both pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of commercial harvest of abalone and were sentenced to 90 days in county jail and three years probation and ordered to pay a $15,000 fine. Deputy District Attorney Tim Stoen, who prosecuted the case, praised Fish and Game Wardens Dennis McKiver, Gary Combes, Scott Melvin and Ronda Moore for their “solid investigation” in this case. “Our office is committed to vigorous enforcement of the abalone laws,” said Mendocino County District Attorney Meredith Lintott. “Each person who takes five abalone over the three-per-day limit now receives a jail sentence. Abalone are a public resource, which means all Californians are injured by abalone crimes.” Appleyard is scheduled to surrender to the Mendocino County Jail on January 2nd.

A YOUNG WOMAN called one day with a pitch for a “guest blog post.” I said I was just answering the phone for the owner of the paper and couldn't obligate him to additional expense. “What's yer name?” the young lady demanded. Chuck, I said. “Chuck what?” (Phone manners, like the face-to-face ones, are gone.) Chuck Manson, I said. “When will the owner be in, Chuck?” He's out when he's in and in when he's out, I said, but there's a window of opportunity Wednesday mornings, early. “Thanks, Chuck. I'll call back then. Chuck, you really rock.”

I USED TO LIKE to walk downtown to the ballpark to catch a couple of innings of Giant's baseball through the free viewing gap in the right field wall that the Giant's magnanimously designed into the park's right-center promenade. The view is surprisingly good from out there and the fans massed behind the screens looking into right field tend to be knowledgeable and fun. Of course there's always a couple of guys yelling non-stop insults at the oblivious ball players out on the field. The insults are of the uninspired “You gotta arm like a Little Leaguer” variety, but you get the bounce by security if you resort to obscenities. Always surprises me how sports bring out the child in chronological adults.

THE GIANTS were playing the Yankees that Sunday and I wanted to see the great A-Rod with my own eyes. (I think I'm reverting, too. I used to go to literary-political events, but these days I read the sports page and go to ball games, and only glance at the book reviews. Politics? Every time I hear or read the word “progressive” I zone out even faster than I do at “Harris-Walz.”)

SO OFF I WENT about noon, figuring to transfer from the 1 California to the 30 Stockton to get to PacBell in plenty of time for the first pitch. Downtown was jammed. People everywhere, many of them seemingly headed south. Surely this mob couldn't be headed for PacBell? It was so crowded that the 30 bus was running only to the Union Square end of the Stockton Tunnel. I'd walked almost to Market Street where, as I approached, a flatbed truck with a dozen or so gyrating men in leather jockstraps moved across my viewshed. Oh, yeah, the gay parade. The annual event, larger every year, had eluded my flagging notice. I didn't know it was on until I got to it.

I KNEW there would be a million voyeurs along Market Street from the Ferry Building all the way up to Castro and Market, so many of them I would have a tough time getting to the ballpark side of Market Street. Then another flatbed truck passed, this one featuring a mostly unclothed, almost comically voluptuous woman swatting the flabby bare buttocks of a middle aged man with what looked like a kitchen broom.

FOR A MASS DISPLAY of sexuality the event seemed strangely de-eroticized unless, of course, the sight of a fat guy getting his bare butt swept turns your crank. As I stood watching the sybarites pass and thinking end-of-the-world thoughts, waiting for a break in the passing parade so I could scurry across Market and on to the ballpark, it occurred to me that my sexual community didn't seem to be represented. I mean really, with a parade that included everyone from straight accountants for gays to transgendered owners of  pit bulls to gay grandmothers for peace in Iraq, how about us EPPSies, or Enlarged Prostrate Post Sexual Seniors? Maybe next year.

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SHERIFF KENDALL:

Abalone memories brought back memories for me of old Clyde Doggett. Every time my wife and I would run to the coast, I would jump in and pluck a couple of abalone. On the way home we would stop in the cemetery in Boonville. Melissa normally would bring every yard tool necessary to ensure my ancestor’s, and her grandparent’s resting places were looking well kept. Clyde was a constant icon in the cemetery and always made quick work of visiting his way up to the bed of my truck and would rapidly inspect its contents. If he saw a dive tube the conversation would rapidly turn from family and friends to the fact he hadn’t had any Abalone “since he couldn’t recall”. I could always recall when he last gleaned one off of me however that didn’t slow him down from gleaning yet another. He also would ask we spend just a minute cleaning for him as well.

Clyde passed away just about the time Abalone harvesting closed. Perhaps he timed his passing in fashion which suited him. He was a darn good fellow and I enjoyed our conversations, even if they did cost me an abalone or 10 over the years.

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Wednesday, October 23, 2024

BRIAN MARTINEZ, 31, Ukiah. DUI.

LORENZO MARTINEZ, 41, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, unspecified offense.

JOHN SULLIVAN, 34, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, county parole violation.

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I have to say, as a woman, I despise soy boys. All women do. They'll use them for whatever they need, but at the end of the day, women despise weak men.

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WHY I SUPPORT CALIFORNIA'S PROP. 36.

San Jose Democrat Mayor Matt Mahan shares the family history that is at the heart of his support for the crime policy proposal

by Matt Mahan

It is fair to say that Californians have had enough. Our well-intentioned efforts to ease prison overcrowding have given way to skyrocketing drug overdose deaths, retail theft and homelessness. While some Sacramento politicians have retreated into partisan silos, local elected officials have united to advance Proposition 36, a statewide measure that would close gaps in current law that have hampered drug courts and reduced accountability for repeat offenders.

This is not a story of political divisions between Democrats like myself and Gov. Gavin Newsom, as some have suggested. Instead, it is a reflection of the suffering that too many Californians see with their own eyes every day. They ask their mayors, city council members and county supervisors, “What are you doing about fentanyl overdoses, smash-and-grab robberies, and tent encampments?,” whether they’re at the grocery store, a restaurant or the doctor’s office.

To get it right, the answer must not be a product of cold political calculation but rather the humbling and clear-eyed lens of personal experience. Here’s mine.

When I was a kid, my older cousin sold his Mustang for drug money.

Soon thereafter, he left home, and my uncle spent his days searching the streets of Santa Cruz, where his son was rumored to be, desperately looking for him. But my cousin was too high to know what was happening and too lost in his addiction to realize he needed help.

My cousin refused to accept the care his parents offered. He remained on the streets, caught in a cycle of addiction, with no hope, no home and no will to turn his life around. Eventually, my uncle decided enough was enough. He couldn’t wake up each morning not knowing whether his child had survived the night or overdosed on the street.

He eventually found and effectively forced my cousin into addiction treatment. He saved his life. My cousin is alive today because he had a family who never gave up on him.

The epidemic of suffering on the streets of California today calls a similar question. About 45% of our over 180,000 homeless neighbors statewide struggle with substance abuse. Many have turned to a destructive cycle of stealing and dealing to support their habits. Lives are being lost and businesses are being shuttered as once-thriving urban corridors are transformed into tent cities and open-air drug markets.

Judges in California once had the latitude to require those in the criminal justice system for drug offenses to seek treatment instead of jail, and our drug court system also provided incentives to seek meaningful and court-monitored addiction treatment. When confronted with a choice between prison or treatment, many chose treatment for their benefit and for ours, because getting clean meant getting away from the cycle of stealing to fund drug or alcohol addictions.

But in 2014, with the passage of Proposition 47, California judges lost the leverage to require those found guilty of repeat drug offenses to engage in treatment.

Like most Californians, I voted for the measure, persuaded by the promise that we could end the era of mass incarceration and use the savings to fund treatment and diversion programs. While Prop. 47 did lower the prison population, the promises of a massive expansion of treatment, especially the intensive, in-patient treatment services that saved my cousin’s life and other diversion programs, were not kept.

In the years since, we’ve actually witnessed a precipitous decline in drug court participation by those who most need help. Many choose to return to the streets and continue feeding their addictions rather than detox and get on the long and difficult road to recovery.

But those aren’t the only tragic, unintended consequences of this well-meaning measure.

Since 2014, California has experienced a nearly 60% rise in homelessness, according to data submitted to Congress from annual point-in-time counts, while most other states have seen a decline. The cost is unsustainable, with local service demands draining an average of $50,000 from public budgets for every homeless individual in our state. In 2022 alone, nearly 11,000 Californians died of drug overdoses. And because of a near-total lack of consequences for many property crimes, we saw a spike in retail thefts, and we are now all paying higher bills for what is essentially a theft tax as businesses lock up items, invest in private security and raise prices to cover rising product losses.

Last March, we took an important step forward in expanding our supply of treatment beds when California voters passed Proposition 1. Now we need to take the next step. That is why so many local elected Democrats like myself along with nearly 200 Democratic and independent mayors, city council members and county supervisors across our state have broken with Newsom and united behind the commonsense and thoughtful reforms proposed by Prop. 36 on our November ballot.

Prop. 36 allows judges to mandate treatment for those with untreated addiction. It also increases accountability for those convicted of repeated retail thefts and those dealing fentanyl, which has caused drug overdose to recently become the leading cause of death for Californians ages 15 to 44.

None of us wants to criminalize homelessness or go back to the era of mass incarceration of drug addicts. That’s not what Prop. 36 does. Instead, it charts a new path forward to the era of mass treatment, utilizing cost-effective accountability tools that can save lives. Prop. 36 aims to do for Californians what my uncle did for my cousin. Not everybody has a family to give them tough love, but we can all have a state that cares enough to require treatment.

(Matt Mahan is the mayor of San Jose and one of the co-sponsors of a non-partisan committee working to pass Prop. 36 on California’s November ballot.)

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HOW THE LEFT SHRANK

by David Rovics

I was born in 1967. When I was a baby, there was an intensely musical antiwar movement so big and so very attractive, that it swept much of society off its feet, demilitarized millions of hearts and minds, and played a serious role in curtailing the imperial interests of the world’s biggest empire, for about twenty years afterwards (it was called “Vietnam Syndrome”).

When I was a baby, there was a huge and militant Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, and they all were against the war, too, and made that very clear in all kinds of ways, including by participating in those huge antiwar marches. There was the American Indian Movement, Raza Unida, the student movement, the feminist movement, and it was all self-consciously interconnected into a thing that millions of people daily and habitually referred to as “The Movement.”

In 1971 some very heroic folks broke into the FBI offices in Media, Pennsylvania while everyone inside was busy watching an epic fight (Joe Frazier vs. Muhammad Ali). They stole over a thousand classified documents that revealed some of the practices of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Program.

Locally police departments had what were commonly known as Red Squads. What the FBI dubbed Cointelpro for short was a national-level Red Squad. The liberated documents revealed a stunning array of really underhanded methods the FBI used to systematically keep the left as disoriented, distracted, and divided as possible.

There’s your background. Apologies to those who already know all that history, but I increasingly meet people who have absolutely no idea any of this stuff ever happened, and it’s very necessary history for understanding everything that’s happened since then that I’ll be mentioning.

Growing up in the 1980’s me and my friends tended to think the left was really small and insignificant in the US, which it certainly was compared to twenty years earlier. But there were independent book stores, infoshops, indy record labels, cooperatives of various sorts, in cities across the US. Like other young people in the 80’s hanging out at places like that, me and my punk friends all learned about Cointelpro, learned about how cool the Black Panthers and AIM and SDS had been, discovered Utah Phillips and the history of the IWW, and read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States.

In the 90’s I was at least peripherally involved with what we called the radical environmental movement at the time. Then at the end of the 90’s, in a much more intense way, with the much larger and more pervasive global justice movement. And then the massive, global antiwar movement that rose up immediately following September 11th, 2001. And I’ve involved myself in many other movements that have sprung up since then.

With the movement that back in the 60’s they called The Movement, intersectionality was fundamentally important. With the global justice movement in the 90’s it was the same. In Europe they were calling it the red-green alliance. In the US context, where red is blue, it was “Teamsters and turtles.”

Since the days of the global justice movement, and especially since the rise of the antiwar movement after 9/11, I have watched as what we might historically have called the left — that is, the various elements of society who stand for the welfare of the working class, the health of the environment, the rights of women, those seeking to end militarism and imperialism, etc. — tear itself apart, one chunk of flesh at a time.

Cointelpro has continued since long after the raid on the FBI offices — of that there is no serious doubt. And at the same time, we don’t necessarily need the FBI’s help to arrive at such a divided and conquered state. Social media algorithms alone could do that for us pretty well, I suspect. And we probably don’t even need either the FBI or the algorithms, with all the other good reasons we have to disagree with each other.

For almost two decades I toured most of the time, mostly in the US, so I got to see the country as it evolved over time, a snapshot every few months of many different parts of the world. In the past decade or so, much less touring in the US, and far fewer snapshots. So when I get them, they can be much more of a shock.

It becomes much clearer, when you get the snapshot less often, how fast the left is disintegrating itself, excluding one group after another. People who would have been organizing, or at least coming to, my shows in a given city now don’t, because they don’t agree with something they now think I stand for, or because they suspect there will be other people in the room they don’t want to see — former comrades who now think they are fascists, or abusers, or transphobes, or racists, antisemites, or all kinds of other things.

In the 90’s I saw the left essentially drive out a Christian group called the Bruderhof. The Bruderhof have long been very supportive of political prisoners such as Mumia Abu-Jamal, and sought to build alliances for a while, but they were rebuffed, in many different ways, by leftists who couldn’t stomach working with people they perceived as sexist and homophobic.

After September 11th, 2001, there were many people who participated in antiwar movement activities whose general focus was on getting to the bottom of what really happened — what was the involvement of Saudi Arabia, of Israel, of the CIA, in cultivating Al-Qaeda in the first place? Were there people inside US intelligence agencies who knew something was about to happen?

This element of the antiwar movement was increasingly over time isolated from the rest of the movement. Conspiracy theories seemed to get wilder over time. There are all kinds of explanations for this phenomenon, which can operate simultaneously. But whatever was determining the development of this phenomenon, that’s what happened, and now if I ever see or hear about folks who were in that camp of the antiwar movement, it’s because I’m watching them on Fox.

It was once the case, at least by my possibly rose-tinted recollections, that the left tended to be a big enough tent that it included a spectrum of views on free speech as a concept, from free speech “absolutists” to those who engaged in actions like shutting down events and got accused in the press as people who were opposed to free speech, for what they themselves considered to be an opposition to hate speech, or dangerously far right views.

I have watched as the free speech absolutists have been alienated from the left, and many of those that would once have been considered part of the fabric of the progressive scene now consider themselves to be on the right, or at least libertarian, or, as they often call themselves, “politically homeless.”

I watched as those who didn’t subscribe to tactics like burning dumpsters or throwing projectiles got denounced as opponents of “diversity of tactics,” and I watched as demonstrations shrank precipitously with each new dumpster burnt.

I heard with horror of the end of the Michigan Women’s Festival in 2015. I was at the last London Anarchist Book Fair in 2017, and saw how the organizers were attacked as transphobes for daring to think that the book fair could still be a forum that included different perspectives on many issues, all in one large building, including women who would once have just been called feminists, but we are now told they are TERFs.

I witnessed one person after another get accused and broadly shunned allegedly for being abusers, or sympathetic to one, for questioning the story of someone claiming to be a victim, for not always, unquestioningly “believing her” in every case.

I watched elements of the environmental movement sabotage itself by spreading the notion within its ranks that white people wearing dreadlocks is cultural appropriation, and therefore racist. An environmental movement where around a third of the participants were white people with dreadlocks was suddenly anti-dreadlock.

I saw people get kicked out of venues because their professed belief in Nordic mythology was judged to be too sympathetic to Adolf Hitler. This is a widespread thing in Germany, where they excel at this sort of splitting, too.

I watched one after another Marxist or anarchist intellectual join the list of the shunned and denounced, for their attachment to the notion that we exist in the context of a capitalist system. I was personally kicked out of the Anarchist subreddit for being a “class reductionist.” Those of us involved with Occupy Wall Street in 2011 were told we weren’t paying enough attention to things like race and gender, with our obsession with the rich owning everything.

In 2020 I saw as one after another natural living yoga practitioner sort started drifting from a soft left kind of orbit to a more and more conspiratorial orientation, as they were increasingly shunned by those telling them if they were hesitant about the emergency vaccines, they were causing harm, being selfish, and probably supported Trump.

I watched one new group after another attempt to join the movement that was on the streets in 2020, and heard the accusations made about each of them, about how they fell short of what was expected of good allies these days, for insufficiently centering the right people, generally.

By my recollection, the left once included people who believed in voting for the Democrats, those who rejected the whole charade of elections in this corrupt system, and those that campaigned for third party candidates. Today if you support the Green Party you will be denounced as a stooge of Putin by some fairly prominent people long known as anarchists and socialists.

Opponents of NATO expansionism and all the billions in military aid sent to Ukraine are also denounced as Putin stooges.

As the antiwar movement shrank to nearly nothing, and people coming out of different political traditions tried to organize together, I saw how they were denounced right away, loudly and often, as some kind of closet fascist movement trying to build a mythical “red-brown alliance” in 2022.

In some places, especially Germany, we can see Arabs and Muslims in recent months being driven out of anti-racist rallies against the far right, on the basis that they are presumed to be antisemites, if they’re critical of Israel.

In England I have watched the British Labor Party eviscerate itself of all its best people, denouncing them as antisemites, an ongoing process.

And of course throughout all of this I have seen music and culture become more and more isolated from an ever-more cerebral and online left, arriving now at a juncture where across the USA you are extremely unlikely to hear live music at a protest, since now anyone with an acoustic guitar on the left seems to be associated with the perception of a failed antiwar movement that people have heard about existing, a long time ago, on TV.

You can still hear live music at political events, however. Just go to any Trump rally.

(David Rovics is a frequently-touring singer/songwriter and political pundit based out of Portland, Oregon. His website is davidrovics.com.)

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OTHER

It was perfect. He could do
Nothing about it. Its waters
Were as clear as his own eye. The grass
Was his breath. The mystery
Of the dark earth was what went on
In himself. He loved and
Hated it with a parent's
Conceit, admiring his own
Work, resenting its
Independence. There were trysts
In the greenwood at which
He was not welcome. Youths and girls,
Fondling the pages of
A strange book, awakened
His envy. The mind achieved
What the heart could not. He began planning
The destruction of the long peace
Of the place. The machine appeared
In the distance, singing to itself
Of money. Its song was the web
They were caught in, men and women
Together. The villages were as flies
To be sucked empty.
God secreted
A tear. Enough, enough,
He commanded, but the machine
Looked at him and went on singing.

— R.S. Thomas

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LEAD STORIES, NYT, THURSDAY

Harris Calls Trump a Fascist: 6 Takeaways From Her CNN Town Hall

Justice Department Warns Musk That His $1 Million Giveaway Might Be Illegal

Man Is Arrested After Shootings at Democratic Campaign Office in Arizona

U.S. Says North Korean Troops Are in Russia to Aid Fight Against Ukraine

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THESE MILLIONS of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted, still cherish “the illusion of individuality,” but in fact they have been to a great extent deindividualized. Their conformity is developing into something like uniformity.

— Aldous Huxley (1958)

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TRUMP CAMP: BRITISH CENSORSHIP GROUP TO BE "INVESTIGATED FROM ALL ANGLES"

by Matt Taibbi

The Center for Countering Digital Hate will be “investigated from all angles,” a source from the campaign of Donald Trump says, in response to documents obtained by the Disinformation Chronicle in conjunction with Racket showing “Kill Musk’s Twitter” on CCDH’s monthly agenda notes.

The Trump campaign is furious that a group with ties to the new government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer is targeting its political allies while parent organization Labour Together openly advises Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. There’s frustration in Trump’s camp after years of resultless probes over alleged foreign assistance.

“Everything is going to be investigated,” the spokesperson said. “This will be at the top of the list.”

The news comes as the Trump campaign sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission accusing the Labour Party and Kamala Harris, respectively, of “making and accepting illegal foreign national contributions.” The campaign cited a since-deleted LinkedIn post in which Labour Head of Operations Sofia Patel boasted of sending “nearly 100 Labour Party staff” to “North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Virginia” to help the Harris campaign. Patel noted she had “10 spots available for the battleground state of North Carolina” and “we will sort your housing.” Such assistance is reportedly legal if volunteers are not compensated.

Deputy General Counsel of the Trump campaign Gary Lawkowski started his letter by noting that the British surrendered at Yorktown 243 years ago this past week, but “it appears that the Labour Party and the Harris for President campaign have forgotten the message.”

Starmer, who despite electoral success appears to be one of Earth’s most humor-deprived humans and seems at times to speak first and cogitate later, said on a flight to Samoa that the Labour staffers are “volunteers” doing work “in their spare time; they’re staying I think with other volunteers.” The Spectator, reacting to that story as well as the Disinformation Chronicle/Racket piece, described Labour as a “comedy of errors.”

In the Disinformation Chronicle/Racket article yesterday, we noted that “both the CCDH and Labour Together were founded by Morgan McSweeney, a Svengali credited with piloting Starmer’s rise to Downing Street.” We added that the CCDH documents “carry particular importance because McSweeney’s Labour Together operatives have been teaching election strategy to Kamala Harris and Tim Walz,” with Politico dubbing Labour and the Democrats “sister parties.”

Today, I appeared on Times UK evening edition with host Kait Borsay, who said Times radio was able to get new comment from the “Labour Together” think-tank about CCDH. Borsay relayed a statement from Labour Together, which says it has “nothing to do” with CCDH. This was surprising for a number of reasons. McSweeney not only founded both groups, he was director of CCDH for a three-year period that overlapped with Starmer’s leadership campaign. McSweeney resigned from CCDH to become Starmer’s Chief of Staff.

Musk responded to our story by tweeting, “This is war.”

The CCDH documents are the latest development in a high-stakes battle between the American billionaire and the British advocacy group. The story began virtually from the moment Musk took over Twitter, in November of 2022, when CCDH led an effort to castigate Musk in a group letter to 20 of Twitter’s biggest advertisers complaining Musk “threatened to drastically reduce employee headcount,” opening “a new opportunity to post the most abusive, harassing, and racist language and imagery.”

That following summer, CCDH issued a report claiming Twitter failed to act on “99% of blue accounts tweeting hate.”

The CCDH group called for an advertiser boycott, claiming X/Twitter “doesn’t care about hate speech” and permits “accounts of homophobes, misogynists, self-professed neo-Nazis, and conspiracy theorists” just for profit. Musk responded by suing, claiming CCDH improperly “scraped” Twitter platform data to exaggerate the prevelance of hate on the platform. In a decision much clucked about by mainstream press and censorship proponents, a judge earlier this year threw out the suit.

Ahmed’s lawyers then boasted in a statement that Musk failed to “weaponize the courts to censor good-faith research and reporting.”

“Kill Musk’s Twitter” would seem to belie this “good faith” argument. Despite multiple requests for comment, Ahmed has failed to explain the documents, which contain many more troubling themes…

https://www.racket.news/p/trump-camp-british-censorship-group

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BREAKING: TRUST FUND KID GETS FIRST ACTUAL JOB

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WHAT MY GUT SAYS ABOUT THE ELECTION, BUT DON’T TRUST ANYONE’S GUT, EVEN MINE

by Nate Silver

In an election where the seven battleground states are all polling within a percentage point or two, 50-50 is the only responsible forecast. Since the debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, that is more or less exactly where my model has had it.

Yet when I deliver this unsatisfying news, I inevitably get a question: “C’mon, Nate, what’s your gut say?”

So OK, I’ll tell you. My gut says Donald Trump. And my guess is that it is true for many anxious Democrats.

But I don’t think you should put any value whatsoever on anyone’s gut — including mine. Instead, you should resign yourself to the fact that a 50-50 forecast really does mean 50-50. And you should be open to the possibility that those forecasts are wrong, and that could be the case equally in the direction of Mr. Trump or Ms. Harris.

It’s not that I’m inherently against intuition. In poker, for example, it plays a large role. Most of the expert players I have spoken with over the years will say it gives you a little something extra. You’re never certain, but your intuition might tilt the odds to 60-40 in your favor by picking up patterns of when a competitor is bluffing.

But poker players base that little something on thousands of hands of experience. There are presidential elections only every four years. When asked who will win, most people say Mr. Trump because of recency bias — he won in 2016, when he wasn’t expected to, and then almost won in 2020 despite being well behind in the polls. But we might not remember 2012, when Barack Obama not only won but beat his polls. It’s extremely hard to predict the direction of polling errors.

Why Trump Could Beat His Polls

The people whose gut tells them Mr. Trump will win frequently invoke the notion of shy Trump voters. The theory, adopted from the term “shy Tories” for the tendency of British polls to underestimate Conservatives, is that people do not want to admit to voting for conservative parties because of the social stigma attached to them.

But there’s not much evidence for the shy-voter theory — nor has there been any persistent tendency in elections worldwide for right-wing parties to outperform their polls. (Case in point: Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party underachieved its polls in this summer’s French legislative elections.) There’s even a certain snobbery to the theory. Many people are proud to admit their support for Mr. Trump, and if anything, there’s less stigma to voting for him than ever.

Instead, the likely problem is what pollsters call nonresponse bias. It’s not that Trump voters are lying to pollsters; it’s that in 2016 and 2020, pollsters weren’t reaching enough of them.

Nonresponse bias can be a hard problem to solve. Response rates to even the best telephone polls are in the single digits — in some sense, the people who choose to respond to polls are unusual. Trump supporters often have lower civic engagement and social trust, so they can be less inclined to complete a survey from a news organization. Pollsters are attempting to correct for this problem with increasingly aggressive data-massaging techniques, like weighting by educational attainment (college-educated voters are more likely to respond to surveys) or even by how people say they voted in the past. There’s no guarantee any of this will work.

If Mr. Trump does beat his polling, there will have been at least one clear sign of it: Democrats no longer have a consistent edge in party identification — about as many people now identify as Republicans.

There’s also the fact that Ms. Harris is running to become the first female president and the second Black one. The so-called Bradley effect — named after the former Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley, who underperformed his polls in the 1982 California governor’s race, for the supposed tendency of voters to say they’re undecided rather than admit they won’t vote for a Black candidate — wasn’t a problem for Barack Obama in 2008 or 2012. Still, the only other time a woman was her party’s nominee, undecided voters tilted heavily against her. So perhaps Ms. Harris should have some concerns about a Hillary Clinton effect.

Why Harris Could Beat Her Polls

A surprise in polling that underestimates Ms. Harris isn’t necessarily less likely than one for Mr. Trump. On average, polls miss by three or four points. If Ms. Harris does that, she will win by the largest margin in both the popular vote and the Electoral College since Mr. Obama in 2008.

How might that happen? It could be because of something like what happened in Britain in 2017, related to the shy Tories theory. Expected to be a Tory sweep, the election instead resulted in Conservatives losing their majority. There was a lot of disagreement among pollsters, and some did nail the outcome. But others made the mistake of not trusting their data, making ad hoc adjustments after years of being worried about shy Tories.

Polls are increasingly like mini-models, with pollsters facing many decision points about how to translate nonrepresentative raw data into an accurate representation of the electorate. If pollsters are terrified of missing low on Mr. Trump again, they may consciously or unconsciously make assumptions that favor him.

For instance, the new techniques that pollsters are applying could be overkill. One problem with using one of those — weighting on recalled vote, or trying to account for how voters report their pick in the last election — is that people often misremember or misstate whom they voted for and are more likely to say they voted for the winner (in 2020, Mr. Biden).

That could plausibly bias the polls against Ms. Harris because people who say they voted for Mr. Biden but actually voted for Mr. Trump will get flagged as new Trump voters when they aren’t. There’s also a credible case that 2020 polling errors were partly because of Covid restrictions: Democrats were more likely to stay at home and therefore had more time on their hands to answer phone calls. If pollsters are correcting for what was a once-in-a-century occurrence, they may be overdoing it this time.

Last, there is Democrats’ persistently strong performance over the past two years — since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade — in special elections, ballot referendums and the 2022 midterms. Democrats shouldn’t hang their hopes on this one: High-quality surveys like the New York Times/Siena College polls can replicate these results by showing Democrats polling strongly among the most motivated voters who show up in these low-turnout elections — but Mr. Trump making up for it by winning most of the marginal voters. So Democrats may be rooting for lower turnout. If those marginal voters don’t show up, Ms. Harris could overperform; if they do, Mr. Trump could.

Or Maybe Pollsters Are Herding Toward A False Consensus

Here’s another counterintuitive finding: It’s surprisingly likely that the election won’t be a photo finish.

With polling averages so close, even a small systematic polling error like the one the industry experienced in 2016 or 2020 could produce a comfortable Electoral College victory for Ms. Harris or Mr. Trump. According to my model, there’s about a 60 percent chance that one candidate will sweep at least six of seven battleground states.

Polling firms are pilloried on social media whenever they publish a result deemed an outlier — so most of them don’t, instead herding toward a consensus and matching what polling averages (and people’s instincts) show. The Times/Siena polls are one of the few regular exceptions, and they depict a much different electorate than others, with Mr. Trump making significant gains with Black and Hispanic voters but lagging in the blue-wall states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Don’t be surprised if a relatively decisive win for one of the candidates is in the cards — or if there are bigger shifts from 2020 than most people’s guts might tell them.

(Nate Silver, the founder and former editor of FiveThirtyEight and the author of “On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything,” writes the newsletter Silver Bulletin.)

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GOTHAM GONE MAD

Villainy inheres in individuals. There is certainly a far-right political space alive in the developed world, but none of its inhabitants—not Marine Le Pen or Giorgia Meloni or even Viktor Orbán—are remotely as reckless or as crazy as Donald Trump. Our self-soothing habit of imagining that what has not yet happened cannot happen is the space in which Trump lives, just as comically deranged as he seems and still more dangerous than we know.

Nothing is ever entirely new, and the space between actual events and their disassociated representation is part of modernity. We live in that disassociated space. Generations of cultural critics have warned that we are lost in a labyrinth and cannot tell real things from illusion. Yet the familiar passage from peril to parody now happens almost simultaneously. Events remain piercingly actual and threatening in their effects on real people, while also being duplicated in a fictive system that shows and spoofs them at the same time. One side of the highway is all cancer; the other side all crazy. Their confoundment is our confusion.

It is telling that the most successful entertainments of our age are the dark comic-book movies—the Batman films and the X-Men and the Avengers and the rest of those cinematic universes. This cultural leviathan was launched by the discovery that these ridiculous comic-book figures, generations old, could now land only if treated seriously, with sombre backstories and true stakes. Our heroes tend to dullness; our villains, garishly painted monsters from the id, are the ones who fuel the franchise.

During the debate last month in Philadelphia, as Trump’s madness rose to a peak of raging lunacy—“They’re eating the dogs”; “He hates her!”—ABC, in its commercial breaks, cut to ads for “Joker: Folie à Deux,” the new Joaquin Phoenix movie, in which the crazed villain swirls and grins. It is a Gotham gone mad, and a Gotham, against all the settled rules of fable-making, without a Batman to come to the rescue. Shuttling between the comic-book villain and the grimacing, red-faced, and unhinged man who may be reëlected President in a couple of weeks, one struggled to distinguish our culture’s most extravagant imagination of derangement from the real thing. The space is that strange, and the stakes that high.

— Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker

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GAZA & LEBANON

Gaza

The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place on Earth to be a child, according to UNICEF. Israel has killed around 17,000 children there since the current Gaza War began in October 2023, according to local authorities. And almost as horrific, about 26,000 kids have reportedly lost one or both parents. At least 19,000 of them are now orphans or are otherwise without a caregiver. One million children in Gaza have also been displaced from their homes since October 2023.

In addition, Israel is committing “scholasticide,” the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Palestinian education system in Gaza, according to a recent report by the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, a Palestinian advocacy group. More than 659,000 children there have been out of school since the beginning of the war. The conflict in Gaza will set children’s education back by years and risks creating a generation of permanently traumatized Palestinians, according to a new study by the University of Cambridge, the Centre for Lebanese Studies, and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East.

Even before the current war, an estimated 800,000 children in Gaza — about 75% of the kids there — were in need of mental health and psychosocial support. Now, UNICEF estimates that more than one million of them — in effect, every kid in the Gaza Strip — needs such services. In short, you can no longer be a healthy child there.

Lebanon

Over four days in late September, as Israel ramped up its war in Lebanon, about 140,000 children in that Mediterranean nation were displaced. Many arrived at shelters showing signs of deep distress, according to Save the Children staff. “Children are telling us that it feels like danger is everywhere, and they can never be safe. Every loud sound makes them jump now,” said Jennifer Moorehead, Save the Children’s country director in Lebanon. “Many children’s lives, rights and futures have already been turned upside down and now their capacity to cope with this escalating crisis has been eroded.”

All schools in that country have been closed, adversely affecting every one of its 1.5 million children. More than 890 children have also been injured in Israeli strikes over the last year, the vast majority — more than 690 — since August 20th, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health. Given that Israel has recently extended attacks from the south of the country to the Lebanese capital, Beirut, they will undoubtedly be joined by all too many others.

— Nick Turse, The Global War on Children

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PEOPLE DEFEND ISRAEL’s actions on the grounds that Israel has reasons for doing things the way it’s doing them. They have to bomb Gaza — they suffered an unprovoked attack from a bunch of evil terrorists. They have to bomb all the hospitals and schools and mosques — that’s where Hamas are hiding. They have to bomb areas that are packed full of children — Hamas are using those children as human shields. But those who commit mass atrocities always justify their actions. They always have reasons for doing them. They always frame it as a necessary act of self-preservation.

— Caitlin Johnston

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‘IT’S EXTERMINATION!’: MSNBC Guest TORCHES Israeli Genocide & MSNBC Enablers | Kyle Kulinski Show - YouTube

A reader writes: I wanted to be sure you saw Ayman Mohyeldin’s interview with Jeremy Scahill and was going to find it for you…and then Kyle ran it on Monday. Everyone should see this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lZP1n_ObNo

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