Off the Record 11/8/2024

EARLY MENDO RETURNS (15,265 votes counted out of an estimated 53,000-plus turnout) as of Tuesday evening:

President: Harris 10,029; Trump 4782, RFK Jr. 223, Stein 122.

State Assembly: Chris Rogers 9764, Michael Greer 5125.

County Board of Education (one seat): Michelle Hutchins 1,356; Strock 922.

Fort Bragg Unified: Kathy Babcock 1567, Sage Statham 996, Cristal Munoz 859.

Mendo Unified: Michael Schaeffer 719, Jim Gagnon 580.

Fort Bragg City Council (two seats): Lindy Peters 530, Scott Hockett 373, Ryan Bushnell 285, Bethany Brewer 272, Mel Salazar 179.

Ukiah City Council (two seats): Heather Criss 1,009, Doug Crane 969, Josefina Duenas 559, John Strangio 545, Kris Mize 330.

Willits City Council (three seats): Tom Allman 490, Gerry Gonzalez 488, Robin Leler 297, Matthew Alanez 281.

Coast Hospital District (two seats): Lynn Finley 2,556, Paul Katzeff 1,630, Mikael Blaisdell 887, Gabriel Maroney 664.

Selected Local Measures:

Measure S (Albion Little River Fire Parcel Tax; 2/3 required): Yes 314 (57.61%), No 231 (42.39%).

Measure X (Point Arena sales tax increment; 2/3 required): Yes 675 (70.9%), No 277 (29.1%)

EMERGENCY LIFE SAVING MEASURES AT JAIL FAIL

On Tuesday, October 29, 2024 at approximately 8:30 PM a Corrections Deputy was performing a routine safety check on two pre-housed adult male individuals inside a holding cell inside of the Mendocino County Jail Building One (referred to as Main Jail).

At this time the Corrections Deputy noticed both individuals were laying on the floor in different areas of the holding cell and appeared to be asleep. After constant visual observation for a brief time, the Corrections Deputy became concerned about one of the individuals.

This prompted the Corrections Deputy to enter the holding cell with an additional Corrections Deputy to perform a closer physical check on the individual. The Corrections Deputy determined the individual was unresponsive to include being absent breathing and a pulse.

An immediate radio broadcast of a medical emergency was made which prompted response of additional corrections and onsite Naphcare medical personnel.

Corrections and jail medical personnel began immediate lifesaving efforts which included CPR, and use of an AED (automated external defibrillator) while outside medical services were being requested.

Personnel from the Ukiah Valley Fire Authority soon thereafter arrived and continued with additional advanced forms of lifesaving efforts. Corrections personnel continued providing CPR assistance during this time for an extended period which resulted in the individual regaining a pulse.

The individual was transported to the Adventist Health Ukiah Valley Emergency Department where further advanced lifesaving efforts were continually provided after admittance.

These ongoing advanced lifesaving efforts were ultimately unsuccessful, and the individual was pronounced deceased on 10-30-2024 at approximately 12:14 AM.

Mendocino County Sheriff's Office Detectives were contacted, and they are conducting investigations in connection with the Mendocino County Fatal Incident Protocol.

In addition to this investigation the Mendocino County Sheriff's Coroner's Unit is conducting a coroner's investigation into the cause and manner of the individual's death. A forensic autopsy on the individual was performed on 10-30-2024 and the official result of that autopsy is pending Blood-Alcohol/Toxicology analysis at this time.

The identity of the deceased individual is not available for public release at this time pending identification and notification of their Next of Kin.

A READER WRITES: I couldn’t help but notice that those SoCal lawyers who demanded that you retract some allegedly “defamatory” remarks included in their list your statement that “Despite the move and changes Ileana is thriving…and a very happy little girl.” The entire original item was a non-defamatory opinion about the court process and some of it was from the court papers on file. Are they saying the little girl’s lawyers defamed them too? Although the SoCal lawyers claim that some of the items are apparently refuted in other court papers, they don’t bother to cite them. They just claim that they are “defamation.” But by including the remarks that the girl involved is thriving and happy, they demonstrate that they have don’t know defamation from defecation. That sure says something about the lawyers and their claim.

MENDO’S UNSAFE ROADS

(from the September 2024 Mendocino County Local Road Safety/Action Plan by consultant TJKM)

“From 2020 to 2022, there were 59 fatal traffic collisions that occurred in Mendocino County with an annual traffic fatality rate of 21.47 per 100,000 populations for the County as a whole. These rates are much higher than the California average of 10.89 and the United States average of 12.52. These statistics are consistent with other rural areas. Table 5 shows the comparison of traffic fatality rates and population.”

Branscomb Road and State Street North of Ukiah listed as having the majority of fatal accidents and were by far the leading accident locations. The only part of Anderson Valley that made the accident list was Mountain View Road where there were four serioius accidents over its 15 miles over the period covered (2015-2019).

(Mark Scaramella)

‘STICKY FINGERS’ is the title of Joe Hagan’s fascinating if often sordid 2017 book about Rolling Stone Magazine and its mercurial publisher/editor Jann Wenner. Mr. Wenner, only in his 20s when he started the rollicking magazine, embodied the “sex, drugs and rock-n-roll” ethos of the era, most of it at ground zero in San Francisco. Author Hagan plumbs the extensive archive of Wenner and his magazine for lots of insider anecdotes, including many accounts of his encounters with pop culture icons of the era like John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, Joni Mitchell, the Beatles, Janis Joplin, John Denver, etc. Along the way Hagan includes mini-bios of Rolling Stone’s noteworthy contributors and writers including Hunter S. Thompson, Annie Liebovitz, Ralph Gleason, Ken Kesey, Joe Esterhas, and, later, Matt Taibbi, etc., as well as his dealings with less well-known funders and backers from business and industry.

Although married to his glamorous wife and business partner Jane Schindelheim, Wenner was a then-closeted gay man and had an active sex life with both genders, mostly fueled by a veritable cornucopia of drugs. (They were divorced in 1995 after 28 years of marriage, after which Wenner married the much younger fashion designer Matt Nye with whom they have three children from surrogate mothers.) But, we were particularly amused by Wenner’s reaction to a critical “hit piece” about him and his magazine which ran in the Columbia Journalism Review in 2015 which criticized a Rolling Stone article about a gang-rape at the University of Virginia for relying on what turned out to be a bad source and their lack of objectivity. After reading the Columbia Journalism Review article, Wenner quipped, “Well, so much for objectivity.”

(Mark Scaramella)

THE SANTA ROSA PRESS DEMOCRAT. Shall we all sigh together, or am I the last person who even bothers to be annoyed by the paper? A recent on-line edition listed the following as the top stories. (1) SR Man Arrested in Assault, Accused of Threatening to Kill His Father (2) Woman Killed in Crash (3) Man Killed in Ukiah Knife Fight(4) Tracy Diver Dies Entering Ocean (5) Man Exposes Himself to Teen (6) Woman Dies, Kids OK in Crash (7) Man Killed on Motorcycle (8) Motorcyclist Dies at Bay Bridge (9) Picking Pinot for Easter.

SHOULDN'T STORY number 9 have been “Picking Pinot to Die With”? Or maybe “Crucifixion Pinot: the Only Wine To Get Really Nailed With”? Later in the week a headline read, “SR Man Shot and Injured.” Very few shot people aren't injured, as a subsequent PD headline confirmed: “Off-Duty Cop Shoots Self With Gun.”

LAST TIME I LOOKED, Mendocino County had the greatest incidence of child abuse of any of California's counties. In that same body of allegedly pertinent statistics was one that said Mendocino County also has the greatest percentage of credentialed classroom teachers.

IS THERE A LINK? Should we reduce the number of credentialed teachers to reduce crimes against children? Seriously, though, 657 sustained child abuse out of 2,322 reports?

PEOPLE EMPLOYED at various levels of government, a third of all persons employed in the county, vote for Democrats because Democrats can be depended upon to make more government of the type that re-elects them. What the Democrats have done on the Northcoast is create an old-fashioned political machine that creates jobs for people who delude themselves that Democrats are the “progressive” alternative to Trump. Zodiac would be a ‘progressive’ alternative to Trump, but San Francisco and some other cities elect people to supervisor and even Congress who are genuinely progressive — but not in Mendocino County. In Mendocino County Democrats and Republicans are interchangeable, so alike that Republicans don't bother running anybody against the entrenched, impenetrably gerrymandered, machine-selected Democrat — Huffman, Wood, McGuire, and now some cipher out of Santa Rosa! Weep for lost Mendocino!

CONGRESSMAN THOMPSON, the wine industry's main man in Washington, was instrumental in getting the ban on ozone-destroying methyl bromide delayed for five years when he “represented” the Northcoast because that's what the wine industry wanted. Pumped down into the earth to depths of 12 feet, methyl bromide sterilized the earth for new vines. Immigrant Mexicans, upon whom the entire industry depends for their hard work at starvation wages, clad in hazmat suits, applied not only this particular poison to the earth, but year round poisons that kill weeds and insects. The poisons get into the water — cf the dead Navarro — and everything around these vineyards is soon dead. (When's the last time you saw a frog anywhere near a vineyard?) The wine industry, thanks to Democrats, is basically exempt from industrial safety standards, and the industry's use of pesticides and herbicides is pretty much unregulated because Mendocino County is wine country.

WITH CIVIL WAR commencing Wednesday I regret being too old and decrepit to participate, but I invite one or more of you many partisans from the correct side to heave my carcass onto the barricades, one more sandbag in the cause of righteousness!

EXCITED TALK of ultra-vi from the Magas aside, we still seem pretty far from shooting at each other. In lieu of street battles we're more likely to get several months of electoral purgatory as Trump disputes Harris's narrower win in the swing states to claim the vote was rigged. Of course if he wins by some cosmic sadism visited on US by the sky gods, Trump will claim he won despite Democrat dirty tricks.

WHATEVER TURMOIL occurs, I remain astounded that this incoherent buffoon has singlehandedly subverted whatever imaginary unity we'd clung to as Americans.

I'VE HEARD lots of people say that Trump is the fault of public education, that too many of us don't learn to tell truth from untruth, that we can't read well enough to know when we're being lied to. Deficient as the schools are in many ways, Trump isn't their fault. The most fervent Nazis were highly educated, with teachers and university faculties being the most fervent among millions of German fascists.

GOING DEEP HERE, I'd say it's obvious that Trumpian fascism, same as Hitler's, arises from economic insecurity combined with revulsion at what millions of people see as the anything goes decadence encouraged by Democrats, just as millions of Germans were economically insecure and unhappy with Weimar social hijinks. We should remember that Bernie was running strong until the Democrats shafted him, and he was running strong because his economic arguments resonated with Magas, latent and overt.

RECOMMENDED VIEWING: The Martha Stewart documentary on Netflix. The remarkable woman who parlayed housekeeping into a billion dollar fortune, the first woman to manage that dubious feat, Martha's candor in this riveting doc is highly affecting, at least my febrile emotions were twanging. Martha is on record as being unhappy with the film because she thinks she comes across as “a pathetic old lady.” She came across to me as brilliant and brave, very brave, especially given that the jive FBI sent her to jail for no real reason other than director Comey enjoyed the media spotlight. “Hey! Look at me. I put this powerful person in jail. Lights, camera, action!”

WHAT actually happened? The media put it out that Martha was guilty of "insider trading," an unprosecuted crime engaged in by lots of elected officials including Nancy Pelosi. During the FBI's initial interview with the hostess with the mostest, an FBI agent asked Martha why she had sold her shares. She replied, truthfully, that she had a prior agreement with her broker to sell certain stock if the share price dropped below a certain point, and the price had dropped.

BUT BASED on that statement to that federal sleuth, a statement made with Martha's attorney present, the FBI concluded that she had broken federal law by lying to an FBI officer. Specifically, the accusation was that she had lied about why she had done something that happens to be legal. But the FBI concluded that Martha had obstructed their investigation by giving false information that protected her broker! And it was off to federal prison for five months, a post release ankle bracelet and probation.

THE MOST DEPRESSING segment of Martha's tell-all, was her appearance on Saturday Night Live, the relentlessly unfunny television show faithfully viewed by millions of howler monkeys. But there she is yukking it up with Snoop Dog, Justin Bieber and several other repellant figures. Why, Martha, why?

ISRAELI bombardment damaged an already crippled major hospital in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday, injuring medical staff and patients, local officials said, a week after Israeli forces withdrew from the complex and detained dozens of people, including medical workers.

The Israelis “continue to bomb and destroy Kamal Adwan Hospital” in Jabaliya, a densely populated city just north of Gaza City, the Gazan health ministry said on Monday, in a statement it titled “a distress call that may be the last.” The bombardment affected all the hospital facilities, caused “many” injuries among medical staff and patients and prevented medical staff from moving between departments to treat their injured colleagues, it said.

The director of Kamal Adwan, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiyeh, said in an interview with the Al Jazeera that the hospital had come under continuous shelling for at least three hours on Monday. “I can’t leave the floor I am in,” he said. “I was told a few of our medical teams have been injured on other floors but no one can reach them,” he added.

Both he and the health ministry said the hospital was targeted directly. It was not clear what kinds of munitions were used.

(NY Times)

THE WHOLE THING IS A JOKE, really. All the body armor these guys wear at the plate these days. Even if you hit them, it doesn’t hurt.

— Goose Gossage

ON LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

[1] We need to have Singapore like punishments for drug dealers. No questions asked, mandatory and swiftly executed death penalty upon conviction! It will solve the drug problems in America without having to fight expensive drug wars.

[2] Vermont has just gone crazy, the whole state …. nasty, drug addled homeless people have taken over my "cute" little old village (Town Manager "doesn't know what to do!") and they don't even have laws on the books to shift the homeless tent city down the road -- so the homeless bums refuse to go to the shelter and urinate and defecate on the back steps of the library, and expose themselves to the librarians through the window…("We don't know what to dooo! We can't punish people for not having a hoouussee!") Town business leaders and real estate brokers are BEGGING the town to DO SOMETHING, but alas -- the answer, it seems, is Federal money…..but never enough of that…

[3] I love your eternal optimism, tainted with realism! I don't have any faith that things will work out well anytime soon, but I'm here to watch the show. It never fails to be entertaining. I've already accepted that a large portion of our citizens have gone bonkers and that deep state denizens are numerous and busy trying to wreck anything we can do.

I work on keeping to the straight and narrow myself. As our society gets more neurotic and suicidal, I counter by continuing to put my faith in God. It absolutely works wonders: Keeps me sane and unafraid of whatever's coming down the pike.

[4] America stands for decay, imbecility, and tastelessness. And it’s not all on “the Party of Chaos” either. The “official” pretend-opposition party pachyderms is part of the awful gaming and hoaxing of America, too. It’s all pretense: theater (of the absurd). “Saving Democracy” … “Make America Great Again” … “Drain the Swamp”—a sick joke; all of it.

In the words of Col. Douglas Machregor, “We need to understand how we got where we are today. [And] I don’t see anybody talking about that.” The country is schizophrenic, hopelessly broken, and can’t go on any longer. Soon, the big banks that resell government IOUs (the “primary dealers” of government notes) will not be able to sell any of it, and then the music will stop .

[5] Once heard a man speak. His mother was raped. He was conceived. He asked if he deserved to live. Did his life however begin not matter. He did nothing to deserve death.

There went my neat package of being staunchly (I thought) pro-life & against abortion except for cases of “rape, incest, life of the mother.”

Isn’t it interesting it’s said “life of the MOTHER.”

So a pregnant woman is already a mother before giving birth, but we treat that baby as a thing. A tumor basically.

[6] TRAIN TALK

On-line comment 1:

Is there any possibility of this railroad being repaired so a real train can go from Fort Bragg to Willits? What is the status of the tunnel repair? Ive seen the track in a few places and it looks to be in very bad shape with most ties rotten. Likely bridges are in bad shape and need replacing as well. I`m guessing several hundred million dollars for this project.

If the railroad were repaired, to what does it connect? Is the old NWP line to Willits ever going to be repaired/rebuilt so it can be used?

Is this whole thing simply a scam to get public money as well as steal through condemnation valuable property along the right of way?

By the way, Im a big fan of trains & railroads.

On-line comment 2:

I suspect the reality is people were tired of the heavy exhaust from the old engines. The “tier” designation refers to that. Since the state can’t just shut them down, they probably figured money to reduce emissions was the next best thing. The skunk folks just spun this the way businesses do.

And, no, nobody’s throwing the kind of money at this that would be required to make the rail safe or efficient, and there’s no reason to ship lumber between Ft. Bragg & Willits.

I watched a solo engine tip over, while going about 2mph, in Willits a few years ago. That’s how rotten the ties & ballast are.

Chris Hart (of Mendocino Railways, aka Skunk Train):

Mendocino Railway uses 39 of 40 miles of its line. Like most old railroads, the line could use improvement but it isn’t as bad as you make it out.

The former NWP line between Cloverdale to Willits has been out of service for 2 decades and needs significantly more work to get it back in service. Mendocino is trying to see this happen but they face trail advocates that want to bury the line, and have rebuffed the railroads request to have a trail & rail approach.