Mendocino County Today: Saturday 11/9/2024

By AVA News Service on November 9, 2024

AFTER A WEAK frontal passage Saturday, a more active weather pattern will begin to develop starting late Sunday with breezy southerly winds and widespread rainfall. The unsettled pattern will likely carry through next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): Another brisk 39F with increasing high clouds this Saturday morning on the coast. A 40% chance of rain on Sunday, then 100% on Monday. Looking dry on Tuesday then a couple more wet days. Not good roofing weather.

CUBBISON CASE PROSECUTION BOGS DOWN AGAIN

by Mike Geniella

District Attorney David Eyster’s year long quest to criminally prosecute Mendocino County’s elected Auditor Chamise Cubbison, whom he quarreled with over his own office’s spending, has gone off track again.

This time the derailment of the high-profile case is due to a change in the County Public Defender representing Paula June Kennedy, the former county Payroll Manager and Cubbison’s co-defendant. Eyster has accused Cubbison and Kennedy of felony misappropriation of public funds stemming from the use of an obscure county code to pay Kennedy an extra $68,000 over a three-year period during the COVID pandemic.

The new delay in a case that has zig-zagged through a year of court hearings is because Kennedy’s attorney for the past year, Public Defender Mary LeClair, recently accepted a similar attorney position in Yolo County.

New motions filed in Superior Court seek continuance of a critical hearing scheduled for Wednesday, and a long-delayed Preliminary Hearing in the case which finally had been set for mid-December.

Kennedy’s newly appointed Public Defender’s office lawyer FredRicco McCurry said in his filings that he needs to familiarize himself with details of the high-profile case.

“The discovery in this case is voluminous, and the theories underlying the prosecution of the case are complicated. I will need time to review the discovery, conduct proper research, consult with my new client, and consult with co-counsel,” wrote McCurry.

Cubbison attorney Chris Andrian of Santa Rosa said Friday that given the situation, McCurry’s requests are reasonable, and he will not oppose.

Judge Ann Moorman is scheduled to act on McCurry’s request at a hearing set for next Wednesday.

Originally, that hearing was to hear arguments in Andrian’s pending motion to dismiss the felony charge against the suspended Auditor, citing the volume of missing county emails related to the three main figures in the case: Cubbison, Kennedy, and now retired Auditor Lloyd Weer. Kennedy contends Cubbison authorized the extra pay. The suspended Auditor says the deal originated between Weer and Kennedy. Weer’s role has been fiercely debated, but he was not charged by Eyster.

Now, Moorman will decide when to hear arguments on Andrian’s motion to dismiss, and to set a new date in early 2025 for the Preliminary Hearing. Such hearings are critical to determine if there is enough evidence to move ahead with prosecution. They often provide the public with an up-close account of what is behind a criminal filing.

Eyster rocked county politics in October 2023 when he filed criminal charges against a fellow elected official who had challenged his own office spending. Eyster earlier had taken the unprecedented step of publicly blocking Cubbison’s appointment as interim Auditor at the county Board of Supervisors’ level, contending she was unqualified. Cubbison had questioned Eyster’s spending, including hosting annual staff parties at a local steakhouse under the guise of “training sessions.” Guests included employees’ wives and girlfriends.

County supervisors almost immediately suspended Cubbison after Eyster filed the criminal case without granting the elected official a public hearing. That action is now focus of a pending civil case contending the board denied Cubbison “due process.”

Eyster initially resisted stepping away from the Cubbison prosecution but then hired former Sonoma County Prosecutor Traci Carrillo to press the case. Carrillo, now in private practice, was hired under a contract providing a $10,000 retainer and an hourly rate of $400. At that rate, the 25 hours that sum covered was probably exceeded months ago and the cost to the County just keeps mounting.

Carrillo could not be reached for comment on Friday.

LOCAL EVENTS

REGISTRAR OF VOTERS Katrina Bartolomie:

The election results released so far are Election Night Only results; our Final Election Certification won’t happen until December 3rd, 2024 (see AB 3184 for information). We will post weekly updates until we are done. We have a huge amount (maybe 15,000 – 20,000) of ballots that were mailed or dropped off on Election Day to process – the turnout mentioned below is a preliminary number for the ballots that were tabulated by Election night.

BALLOTS LEFT TO COUNT

November 5, 2024 Presidential General Election

Mendocino County Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder Katrina Bartolomie announced that as with every other election, there are ballots left to be processed and counted as part of the official canvass. Mendocino County has 21,132 Vote By Mail ballots to process and 2,204 Conditional Provisional/Provisional ballots to review and process.

As of today, the outstanding ballots left to count for the “Hot” Municipal contests have the following number of ballots left to count:

City of Ukiah – 3,747
City of Willits – 1,060
City of Fort Bragg – 1,708
City of Point Arena - 116

Supervisorial District Breakdown:

1st Supervisorial District has 5,133 ballots to count
2nd Supervisorial District has 3,745 ballots to count
3rd Supervisorial District has 4,563 ballots to count
4th Supervisorial District has 5,598 ballots to count
5th Supervisorial District has 4,297 ballots to count

According to Assembly Bill (AB) 3184; we will not certify our final election results until December 3, 2024. We will be updating our website on a weekly basis until we certify the Election.

If you have received a letter to cure a mis-matched or missing signature on your ballot envelope, you have until December 1, 2024 (2 days prior to certification) to return your documents to cure your signature. If you have any additional questions, please call our office at (707) 234-6819.

(County Registrar of Voters)

HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL, WEEK 11

Cardinal Newman 33, Vintage 0
Marin Catholic 24, Windsor 21
Ukiah 28, Analy 27
San Marin 17, Rancho Cotate 16
St. Vincent 48, Maria Carrillo 21
Sonoma Valley 35, Healdsburg 7
Redwood 21, American Canyon 6
Justin-Siena 18, Novato 13
Montgomery 19, Santa Rosa 18

Saturday’s games:

Casa Grande at Petaluma, 2 p.m.
Napa at Tamalpais, 2 p.m.
Piner at Archie Williams, 2 p.m.

UKIAH 28, ANALY 27

Fighting for their playoff lives, the Analy Tigers nearly pulled off one of the biggest upsets of the season Friday night — but a failed two-point try after a last-second touchdown sent the Ukiah Wildcats home with a nail-biting victory.

Quarterback Matthew Medina scored with 13 seconds left in the fourth quarter, and instead of kicking the PAT to send the game to overtime, Analy (3-7, 2-3 REC-Bay) elected to try for the win. The Tigers nearly had it, too, even after getting backed up five yards on a false start. Medina had an open receiver right at the goal line but his pass bounced out of his arms and incomplete.

The loss knocks Analy out of contention for the playoffs.

Medina had two rushing scores on the night and a passing touchdown to Austin Bishop, while Victor Villarreal added a rushing touchdown.

Ukiah (7-3, 4-1) led 21-14 at the half and extended its lead 28-14 on a Jaecee Goekin touchdown in the third. The Tigers answered on their next possession to make it a one-score game.

Ukiah appeared to seal the game in the fourth quarter on a punt-return touchdown for Omaurie Phillips-Porter, but it was called back due to a penalty.

Phillips-Porter had a rushing touchdown in the first half while Beau David ran for a score and hit Ryan Todd for a 20-yard touchdown reception in the first half.

Ukiah is onto the NCS playoffs next week. The seedings will be released at midday Sunday.

A BAND OF POMO TAKES ON THE TASK OF RESTORING UKIAH VALLEY CREEK

by Monica Huettl

During the Ukiah Valley Russian River Cleanup on September 28, we met a crew from the Pinoleville Pomo Nation at Ackerman Creek. Ackerman Creek, (Ya-Mo-Bida in Northern Pomo) runs through Pinoleville lands, and the Nation is working to restore the riparian habitat. Terri McCartney, Pinoleville Environmental Director, invited MendoFever to come check out the work being done at Pinoleville to preserve and protect Pinoleville natural resources.

Environmental stewardship team at Pinoleville. Left to right: Marisol Tlelo, Yurok Tribe, Water Resources Intern, Tyrone Mitchell, Remote Stream Incubation Coordinator and Wildland Firefighter, Nathan Avelino, EPA Tech, Tim Bettega, EPA Tech and Wildland Firefighter, Dakota Perez, Yurok Tribe, Water Resources Specialist, Terri McCartney, Environmental Director. [Photo by Monica Huettl]

Pinoleville is prioritizing the cleanup of Ackerman Creek because it is imperative to remove the toxic waste and plastics before Ackerman Creek restoration begins a cultural burn can be done, which will eliminate invasive species, improve soil quality, and reduce fuel load.

The next steps for the clean-up effort include coordinating a task force of agencies and individuals to develop a long-term strategy for addressing the unhoused transient population living in Ackerman Creek and many of the other creek beds in the Ukiah Valley. The task force will include law enforcement, homeless services, Tribal and County substance abuse programs, Fish and Wildlife, and hopefully a broad spectrum of water agencies and social services.…

https://mendofever.com/2024/11/09/a-band-of-pomo-takes-on-the-task-of-restoring-ukiah-valley-creek/

VETERANS DAY IN BOONVILLE, Monday, November 11, 2024

At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, 2024, American Legion Post 385, Boonville, will hold a ceremony honoring Veterans at Evergreen Cemetery, Anderson Valley Way, Boonville. All are welcome. Join us Saturday, November 11th, at 11:00 A.M.

CALL IT ARMISTICE DAY

Editor:

When you find yourself about to say “Veterans Day,” please stop and think. It was not intended to be about the military. The day used to be about peace and the end to all wars, and it was called “Armistice Day.” The U.S. government changed it to honoring veterans so that you would forget the peace connection. Too often, when you honor the veteran, you honor the war, because the country couldn’t possibly send people it honors to kill and die in an unnecessary war, could it? But it can and it routinely does. Please insist on calling it Armistice Day.

Susan Collier Lamont

Santa Rosa

PARTIAL CLOSURE ON OBSERVATORY AVENUE On Tuesday, November 12 and Wednesday, November 13 For Storm Drain Work

Ukiah, CA. November 8, 2024. - Observatory Ave will be closed to through traffic east of South Avenue (between South and State Streets) on Tuesday, November 12, 2024, through Thursday November 14, 2024 in order to make storm drain improvements. Traffic control will be in effect during work hours, between 8:00 am and 5:00 pm.

Further questions regarding the project may be directed to the City of Ukiah Public Works Department by emailing publicworks@cityofukiah.com or by calling 707-467-5719. The community's patience is appreciated during these projects.

NEW NOYO THEATER OWNERS BRING NEW FILMS, COMEDY EVENTS, AND A LOT OF GUMPTION TO WILLITS

by Annie Evarts

It’s mid-September of this year, and I’m in the of ce space above the screening rooms at the Noyo Theatre with Jim Devine and Michelle Hutchins, the new owners.

The office has more of a storage closet vibe. They haven’t had the theater for long, and renovating unseen spaces is not as high a priority for them as running the business and keeping the lights on.

Michelle is seated in a chair next to me. I can tell as we chat that she’s got a good sense of humor, which probably came in handy during her time as Mendocino County Superintendent of Schools. Jim is standing, leaning against a table. Before I met them together, I ran into Jim at the Willits Hometown Festival around the beginning of the summer. He was doing security for the booze area, and I was volunteering as a bartender of sorts. We got to talking, and it was an easy flow of conversation that wandered towards his new business venture, the Noyo Theatre.

As best I could, without sounding totally rude, one of the first questions I asked Jim was, “Why?” You don’t have to be too business savvy to come to the conclusion that the Noyo Theatre might not be where the money is in 2024.

Now that I have them both in the same room and the deal is done, I repeat the question. Jim, a taller than average guy, crosses his arms and laughs a little. He tells me: “A friend of mine, he owned the Clover Theater in Cloverdale. I was following the way he was doing business, and he was doing clubs and specials and trying to make events. As I was getting closer to this getting real, I reached out to him. I told him, ‘Hey I’m getting close to closing the deal on the Noyo. I think maybe you’re in the position to talk me out of this. Tell me how bad of an idea this is.’ Come to find out, he was going out of business just at the moment I was telling him I liked how he was doing business. He said to me, ‘Jim, I’m sure it’s a bad idea, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it’.”

This could be Jim and Michelle’s new motto, their mission statement. Perhaps it is a bad idea. But hey, the adventure is in the attempt! You can’t take on owning a classic three-screen movie theater, in the small, rural town of Willits, during the online, metaverse, quantum computing, AI extravaganza, while the town itself is going through an economic “reshuffling,” let’s say, without the sly smiles of a couple of risk-takers, a little starry-eyed optimism, and a whole lot of gumption.

Jim and Michelle go over the nuances of how they came to be able to afford the Noyo. No bank would give them a loan. But the marrow of our conversation is not the numbers or their bottom line.

When I talk to them about what it means to own the Noyo, what we’re discussing essentially, is the survival of small-town America built around independent businesses.

It’s eerie and uncomfortable to see boarded-up storefronts as you drive in and out of town. As a community, it’s even more eerie and uncomfortable that we’re getting used to it. Local business matters. Main Street matters.

“We’ve never owned a business of this size,” Jim tells me. “And we’ve never worked in any kind of cinema or motion picture kind of thing, but the circumstances just kinda lined up that we felt like we needed to do this, despite the risk. Despite the fact that nobody with a good head on their shoulders said this was a good idea.

“At the heart of it,” Jim continues, “this was a project for the community. It was not that the world needs another theater. It’s just that Willits needs this theater. Willits has had enough body blows over the past decade to see this thing shuttered and changed fundamentally. It just seemed like it was gonna be too much to see the theater go down that way.”

Perhaps you’ve noticed that the Noyo is showing a better variety of films, more frequently lately? This is by design. Overall, in the short amount of time Jim and Michelle have had the theater, things feel more streamlined and intentional. On Saturday, October 26, the Noyo hosted a live comedy event with North Coast Comedy, and October 27 they kicked off the Noyo’s John Carpenter Mini-Fest in preparation for Halloween.

As someone who loves Willits for its charm and its people, I can appreciate the desire to want to help keep things alive here. I don’t know about you, Willits Weekly readers, but I want to live in a town with a pulse. I want to live in a town where there’s art, culture, places to go, and things to do! Jim and Michelle are taking a leap of faith that if they build it, you will come.

(Courtesy, the Willits Weekly)

ED NOTES

“Alleged Idaho killer’s lawyers argue he could be executed by ‘inhumane’ firing squad if he’s convicted…”

BETTER a firing squad than the midnight needle. Better life without than any kind of state-sanctioned execution because, for starters, the state shouldn't have the authority to kill people.

SOUTH CAROLINA'S AND IDAHO'S policies of execution by firing squads instead of the midnight needle is a step forward in death penalty methods. A firing squad is at least a dignified end for people who largely don't deserve much consideration, but hauling people out of their cells in the middle of the night and dispatching them via tortuous chemicals, that final needle often botched by the authorities and their medical advisors, is grotesque and negates any possible message that committing murder will get the murderer murdered.

WHAT'S THE LESSON supposedly taught to the rest of us by non-public government executions? None, and even if the executions were carried out at Super Bowl half-time, all proceeds to the victims, murderers would continue to murder. Capital punishment is not a deterrent.

TRADITIONALLY, at least in some of the executions of political people, the condemned got to make a little speech and was offered a last cigarette while the firing squad waited patiently to put a bullet in him or, rarely, her.

IN STALINIST RUSSIA you got dispatched via a bullet in the back of the head in some anonymous police basement after being tortured to confess your “crime.” Putin is offering criminals the option of frontline duty in Ukraine where they're often used in suicidal frontal attacks. I wonder how many of our lifers would volunteer for life-threatening options to their lives in small cages?

FIRING SQUADS, incidentally, spare most of the riflemen the specific knowledge that it was their bullet that killed a stranger to them. Only one or two fire live rounds, the rest fire blanks. I think Gary Gilmore of Utah is the last American executed by firing squad, and that was at his request. Gilmore was a low down punk if there ever was one, and certainly had it coming. Norman Mailer's brilliant book on Gilmore, ‘The Executioner's Song’ is highly recommended as a psycho-social portrait of the non-psycho killer as is, of course, Truman Capote's ‘In Cold Blood.’ The last stat I saw claimed at any one time there are a hundred or so serial killers roaming America.

HANGINGS are unpleasant affairs — very popular with the public audiences who used to be allowed to watch them, but, like the midnight needle, they were often botched because the rope was either too short or too long, and the condemned slowly choked to death, or had his head jerked clean off, or didn't die and had to be re-hung per adjusted rope specs.

THE SOLUTION, as all humane people know and agitate for, is life without parole. Vengeance isn't a desirable social encouragement because it rewards violence with violence, nor is giving the government the right to kill, because you just might get a midnight needle yourself.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Friday, November 8, 2024

CASANDRA GUERRA, 33, Ukiah. Failure to appear, resisting.

AARON LOPEZ, 29, Ukiah. Parole violation.

WILBER SOLARIO-VARGAS, 40, Covelo. Domestic abuse, cruelty to child-infliction of injury.

LIVING ON THE LAND

My husband and I have lived off grid since 1975. We are still off grid, though have had solar power for many years. Candles and kerosene lamps originally, with only a radio, books, weekly card games with a couple of friends who walked over from several miles away, and guitar for most entertainment. Will be 50 years on the same property on Easter Sunday of 2025. We were in our early 20's when we started, and now are in our early 70's. Inspired initially by the book written by Helen and Scott Nearing, "Living the good life", in which they constructed a stone house in Vermont, and tried to divide half of each day into working the land, the other half to more relaxing, spiritual and artistic pursuits. We spent/still spend a much greater portion of each day working, partly because we have animals to care for (which they did not). Dogs, a horse, 2 mules, and a sizable vineyard of over 100 grapevines, and a small (but huge for 2 people) orchard. We have always loved stone work, and built our home and other buildings from that material, though we have sandstone here primarily, unlike the stone in Vermont. I just took these photos of some cabbage I picked and apple juice I canned on our wood stove a couple days ago. 50 years sounds like a long time, but time flies when you are loving what you do!

WANDERING (Chapter One)

by Paul Modic

In 1973 when I was nineteen, I hitchhiked from Indiana to Cheyenne, Wyoming but in the Greyhound bus station couldn't decide whether to go on to California or down to Mexico. I remembered the Dylan song “115th Dream” when he flipped a coin to go “back to ship or back to jail” and I flipped one, it came up Mexico and I headed south, but left my money lying there on the counter in Cheyenne.

The bus rumbled down into snowy Colorado past Trinidad, the sex change capital of the world at that time, to Albuquerque where I got new travelers cheques then hitched to Juarez and across the border. With my dictionary I learned Spanish while talking to the Mexican truckers who drove me south, when one ride ended at a truck stop, or wherever, the driver found me another on his CB radio.

I got to Matehuala in three days but couldn't find Humberto's house in the dark and slept in a field. When I awoke all my belongings, stashed in Oaxacan string bags, were gone including Sometimes A Great Notion by Ken Kesey, which I never went back to. (I had met Humberto the year before when my grandfather had taken me and my sister to Mexico, along with his new wife for their honeymoon.)

Mexico! Humberto's new American girlfriend, an artist from New York, had just left to go to her mother's funeral in the States and he showed me some peyote buttons, used by the Huichol Indians as a sacrament. That night we ate tacos with Luz a very friendly girl from town who I made eyes with around the fire pit. In the morning about a hundred roosters, raised for fighting, woke me up and we were soon three on the motorcycle for the ride up to see the country people in La Jolla. Luz held onto Humberto and often turned around in her seat to kiss me. I held on to her all the way up the mountain, I was in love!

We switched to burros, walking and riding further into the mountains, till we arrived at the little village of thatch-roofed dwellings where we had lunch, some bean and meat tacos heated on a grill outside, while Humberto talked with his friends. I was very sore when we got back that night but since I was headed south the next day decided to eat the peyote. I chewed the bitter raw flesh for about an hour as I walked around the old railroad tracks behind Humberto's casa, then I threw up and went to sleep.

I hitched South through the middle of Mexico, the Altiplano, a strainer full of sprouting lentils covered by a blue bandana hung off my backpack. By the time I hit the purple mountains of Oaxaca I was feeling some stomach discomfort and found a place to stay for a few days in a little village outside Oaxaca City called San Augustine. (When I finally blew I plugged up the only toilet in town.)

Next stop in the cold mountain town of San Cristobal de las Casas I prepared whole wheat bread then knocked on doors until I found a family who let me bake it in their oven. Walking back to the five peso a night lodging at Los Banos I gave away one of the loaves in chunks to the people sitting on the street by their fires.

I hadn't seen ruins or tripped on mushrooms yet so I traveled up into the Chiapas jungle to Palenque. The stomach was rumbling again and a tourist atop the ancient Maya site spied me squatting behind the pyramid. A little old lady directed me, for ten pesos, to the white mushrooms growing in the cow dung out in a sparkling green field. In a few hours I was laughing and crying and feeling more alone and further away from home than ever, and realized you can only really laugh at yourself. In the morning I hitchhiked seven straight days to Arizona.

I traveled up the highway north searching for a bamboo flute, my drivers played along and stopped at many central markets along the way. “Flauta de bamboo!” they said. One night outside Guadalajara a car stopped, I showed the guys the four foot tall marijuana plant growing nearby, and they pulled it up roots and all and drove off. By the time I got to the little restaurant in Guaymas I was down to my last three pesos, just the price of a plate of fish I noticed.

After lunch I handed the lady the three pesos. “Trece,” she said. Right, three, tres. “Trece!” she said and pointed up at the number 13. So that's how I learned the difference between tres and trece. (They let me go without having to wash any dishes.) The next day I made it across the border and up the highway to Tucson where I ran into my sister at a food conspiracy store.

We had ten dollars between us, bought two recorders, and tooted our way to Los Angeles, riding in the back of a semi-flatbed, and hanging on to the railings. In LA we stayed at our aunt's Church of Scientology on Harvard St. (I did a Scientology exercise with her where we stared at each other for ten minutes.) While my sister worked in the backyard picking up huge Great Dane turds I went downtown looking for a job and ran into some wine-lovers down on 5th Street skid row singing “The Times They Are A Changing.”

The bums and I walked into a bank where the guitarist withdrew some money for more booze, we sang “Ain't She Sweet” in the lobby, and the tellers applauded. Back outside, the guitar, cash and wine-guzzlers went one way and I hitched back to my aunt's house just off Wilshire Blvd. We got a job painting the basement of another Scientology minister but anxious to be heading north, we left without being paid and my aunt never forwarded the money. She said I had eaten my wages at her house and my sister never forgot or forgave it.

(Next chapter: On to Mendocino…)

MEMO OF THE AIR: Good Night Radio show all night Friday night on KNYO!

Soft deadline to email your writing for tonight's (Friday night's) MOTA show is 6pm or so. If you can't make that, it's okay, send it whenever it's done and I'll read it on the radio next week.

Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio is every Friday, 9pm to 5am PST on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg and KNYO.org. The first hour of the show is simulcast on KAKX 89.3fm Mendocino.

Plus you can always go to https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com and hear last week's MOTA show. By Saturday night I'll put up the recording of tonight's show. Also there you'll find an assortment of cultural-educational amusements to occupy you until showtime, or any time, such as:

Something else I love, that the web is perfect for, is this guy teaching by example, and with a tickertape of scrolling tablature, how to play bass for Frank Zappa's Saint Alfonzo's Pancake Breakfast (and) Father O'Blivion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwtLzSFXRZo

"The dolphin is a leaping, breaching hate boner." https://theawesomer.com/the-truly-disturbing-reality-of-dolphins/755171/

And rerun: The Chrysler 180-horsepower V-8 air raid siren. https://www.amusingplanet.com/2019/08/the-chrysler-air-raid-siren-was-so.html

Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org, https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

TAKING BETS ON WHEN TRUMP, VANCE, & MUSK WILL START FEUDING

by Monica Huettl

I began writing this piece last summer, after the disastrous Biden debate performance, and Trump’s unusual pick of J.D. Vance as running mate. I set it aside because I assumed Trump had no chance of winning. Vance is a product of Silicon Valley by way of Appalachia, and has been thrust into greatness thanks to the support of billionaire Peter Thiel. Elon Musk’s enthusiastic support of Trump helped to sway the election. That and Russian bots posting lies on social media.

Thiel and Musk go way back. Musk, an enthusiastic Burning Man attendee, is an admitted user of ketamine and other substances. Musk, Thiel, and Vance are smart and tech savvy. These are the new Trump supporters. How are they going to fit in with the old Trump supporters such as disgraced General Michael Flynn, the My Pillow Guy, and Paula White, the lady preacher who speaks in tongues, married to the drummer from the band Journey? It’s going to be a wild circus in the Oval Office.

Trump appeared strong after surviving two assassination attempts. After watching the entire Butler, PA rally on a YouTube video shot by a Japanese TV crew that was covering the rally, I wondered why the Secret Service doesn’t use drones, like our Sheriff does in Mendocino County?

President Joe Biden’s shockingly bad debate performance threw the Democrats into panic and despair. In some ways, I blame Dr. Jill Biden, whose tenacious protection of her husband seems now to have hidden his mental decline. Supposedly, she controlled who had access to Biden. The ouster of Biden and the anointment of Kamala Harris without a primary process didn’t sit well with a lot of voters. It is quite obvious that a machine of handlers is running the Democratic Party. Kamala gave it her all, and still the American voters picked Trump.

By selecting J.D. Vance, at the urging of Thiel and Musk, Trump has given the finger to the Koch Brothers, and other old line, hard right conservatives. Trump is now connected to the Tech and Finance Bros of Silicon Valley, a new source of money. Silicon Valley conservatives are more intellectual than Trump’s typical Evangelical supporters. They are often referred to as the New Right, described in the Vanity Fair article linked below.

I first heard of J.D. Vance while reading a ‘Wall Street Journal’ review of his autobiography, ‘Hillbilly Elegy,’ published by Harper Collins in June 2016. I found the book inspirational, and recommended it to everyone I knew. Vance tells a compelling story of growing up with an opioid-addicted mom, Beverly Vance, a nurse who married multiple times, frequently job-hopping due to her addiction. Because of his mother’s addiction, Vance and his sister spent much of their time with their maternal grandparents, traveling between Kentucky’s Appalachia and the Rust Belt in Ohio, populated by many poor whites from Kentucky. The book was made into a movie, directed by Ron Howard, and released to mixed reviews. Amy Adams played his mom. A funny post on social media said Vance is responsible for ruining Amy Adams’ career.

Vance managed to claw his way out of poverty, inspired by the strength and grit of his grandmother, called Mamaw in the Appalachian custom. After high school, he joined the Marine Corps, where he lived and worked with people from many diverse backgrounds for the first time. Vance was a Combat Correspondent, honing his writing and story-telling skills. Vance credits the discipline instilled by the Marine Corps for his undergraduate success at Ohio State, and later Yale Law School.

One of Vance’s law school advisors was Professor Amy Chua, author of the controversial book about child rearing, ‘Battle Hymn of The Tiger Mother,’ published by Penguin Books in 2011 (which I’ve read and recommend, even though I strongly disagree with her TigerMom methods). ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ describes Chua’s influence and support when the going got tough for Vance in law school.

Vance also describes meeting and falling in love with his wife, fellow Yale law student Usha Chilukuri, daughter of Indian immigrants. They have three children. Usha was a registered Democrat until recently.

Vance followed the typical path of many Yale Law School grads, first clerking for a U.S. District Court judge, then practicing law at Sidley and Austin, a huge global law firm.

Vance went on to work for Thiel’s venture capital firm in San Francisco. Theil is part of the PayPal Mafia, a group of former PayPal employees who founded some of the most influential companies in Silicon Valley (YouTube, Yelp, Tesla, LinkedIn, and many others). The PayPal Mafia includes Musk (apolitical, until recently) and Reid Hoffman (huge donor to the Democrats). The PayPal Mafia is described in this November 2023 ‘Business Insider’ Article.

Vance announced in 2016 that he was moving home to Ohio, to use his Venture Capital and legal skills to help revive the Rust Belt. Vance spent his time in Ohio involved in various groups at the intersection of tech, finance and politics, preparing for his successful 2022 run for U.S. Senate.

I am not a Donald Trump fan, but I have faint hopes that Vance might only be cos-playing as an extreme right winger, given his compassionate portrayal of poor communities in ‘Hillbilly Elegy.’ Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News, is said to dislike Vance, and lobbied Trump to pick anyone but Vance as his VP. Like the old saying, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” maybe Vance is the best liberals can hope for in this situation. Does this mean that Murdoch’s toxic influence on American politics and culture is coming to an end? Musk’s toxic influence is probably greater.

Before he pulled himself together to stump for Trump, Musk seemed to be descending into Howard Hughes-level nuttiness, as exemplified by this video where he ‘explains generic supermarket products’, something that everyone who shops for groceries already knows. He is a frequent guest on the Joe Rogan podcast, a dumbed-down, comedy bro-fest that is sometimes funny and sometimes cringe-worthy. Musk was the “other man” in the Amber Heard-Johnny Depp divorce tabloid drama. Musk is a savant when it comes to running SpaceX, I’ll give him that.

Some pundits say that Thiel and Musk consider Trump a useful tool. Will Thiel and the Silicon Valley crowd be able to control the seemingly uncontrollable Trump, who has always done whatever he wants? Or will the wiley Trump steamroll over the deep pocketed Tech Bros? As a lover of reality shows, the dark-comedy aspect of this is fascinating to me. We are experiencing the old Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.”

For a longer read on J.D. Vance, Peter Thiel and political philosopher Curtis Yarvin, who influences the New Right, check out this Vanity Fair article from 2022, ‘Inside the New Right, Where Peter Thiel Is Placing His Biggest Bets’.

BE LIKE CLAUD COCKBURN: TELL TRUTHS TO THE MASSES

by Jonah Raskin

I never cared for the expression, “Telling Truth to Power,” but didn’t know why. Now I do.

In a review of a book by Patrick Cockburn about his father Claud, the reviewer, Neal Ascherson, writes that Claud “disbelieved strongly the axiom about telling truth to power” because the “rulers of the earth” didn’t give a shit about the truth. Claud believed that it was “much more effective to tell the truth to the powerless so they had a fighting chance in any struggle against the big battalions.”

According to Ascherson, Claud Cockburn had two core beliefs: one was to be skeptical and even cynical when it came to the authorities, whether in the British government or in the British Communist party; and two to remember that “decision-makers were more weaker, more incompetent, more divided, more self-destructively corrupt than they liked people to understand and hence more vulnerable to journalistic attack and exposure.”

Two cheers for cynicism and skepticism.

Cockburn liked to say, “Believe nothing until it has been officially denied,” though he didn’t claim to be the author of the expression.

Now may not be the most advantageous time to unleash the attack dogs in the media and encourage them to expose Trump, the Trump government and all its supporters. We might need to regroup, chill for a moment, catch our collective breath, recharge our batteries and zero in on the corruption and incompetence of the Trumpers.

If we’re to survive the next four years we’re going to need to know what’s going on in the White House and in all branches of government, as well as at the Pentagon and wherever power holds sway and pulls strings.

And to survive we’ll need vital news and information about local Trumpers and their conspiracies. We’ll need reliable sources inside and outside of government and in corporations, too, and we’ll have to get the news and the information quickly to those who can weaponize it and aim it at the senators, congressmen, congresswomen, judges and generals. How about that? I sound like my own self who wrote for Liberation News Service, the movement alternative to United Press International.

To gather news and information as well as gossip, will be more difficult than ever before in the USA because the nation is slipping and sliding toward fascism as even former Trumpers have recognized and said.

Let’s be in the open and let’s also be clandestine. Those of us who were alive in the Sixties and wrote for the underground press might revive those skills and those who can navigate the Internet might hone their skills.

Claud Cockburn happened to be in the right place at the right time: in Spain in July 1936 when Franco launched his putsch. He spent two years in Spain, reporting on the civil war, took part in the defense of Madrid and got out of Spain with tales to tell.

Some say that his finest hour was as a godfather to ‘Private Eye,’ the irreverent, satirical British publication founded in 1961 and still feisty, still incorruptible and a thorn in the side of establishments.

His son Alexander noted that “Claud was the greatest radical journalist of his age, an inspiring influence not only on CounterPunch, but on many other seditious journalistic enterprises.” We might remember him now by doing the kind of work he did.

(Jonah Raskin is the author of Beat Blues, San Francisco, 1955.)

STEVE TALBOT:

A story about being brainwashed by a rightwing media source.

My maternal grandparents were old-school Franklin Delano Roosevelt Democrats. They had survived the Depression in large part due to FDR's New Deal programs and they were grateful for his compassion and leadership. They were well-educated liberals from New Jersey, who were teachers and public school principals before moving to Los Angeles after World War II. My grandfather became an engineer/designer for Lockheed Aircraft. They never had a lot of money but they were comfortable and devoted to their 10 grandchildren. They lived a short distance from my childhood home and whenever my parents needed babysitters, my grandparents were there to help. They were lifelong liberals, book readers, and Episcopalians.

But once when they were in their 80s I came home to L.A. to visit them in their apartment in North Hollywood and they began to tell me how worried they were about crime and the state of the world. They were nervous, fearful. It was as if a miasma of anxiety had filled their apartment. I was baffled. They lived in a completely safe neighborhood. My parents and one of my siblings still lived nearby and saw them often.

It took me awhile, but I finally figured it out. For the first time in their long lives, they were housebound much of the day and they had the radio on for company. Unfortunately, Los Angeles AM radio at that time — this was the late '70s/early '80s — was dominated by rightwing, fear-mongering “talk radio.” This was long before Rush Limbaugh, Fox “News,” etc. They were trapped in an early incarnation of the rightwing media nightmare, hearing angry men telling them to fear all the changes happening in society, screaming about crime (and yes, immigrants and Black people), and how it was ruining their lives.

The answer?

I talked to them about it and we all agreed they should turn off the radio. Listen to some music instead. Read a book or the newspaper. Call a friend or relative on the phone.

It worked. In a short time, the cloud of fear evaporated. My grandparents were back in reality.

The rightwing, fear-mongering, hateful talk has only gotten louder. It's long past time to turn it off. To encourage everyone we know, especially those who are old, isolated, troubled, to break out of the ranting Trump / Fox “News” / ugly talk radio / conspiracy-mongering / lying / dark hole that too many have fallen into.

BIG OIL SPONSORS DINNERS, AWARDS RECEPTIONS FOR JOURNALISTS

by Dan Bacher

One of the biggest and most censored stories of the past several years is the increasingly cozy relationship between the oil industry and journalists and journalism organizations in California.

In one of the clearest examples of the collaboration between Big Oil and the media, the Western States Petroleum Association, the largest and most powerful oil industry lobbying group in California and the West, sponsored a “media dinner” on February 28, 2023, in Sacramento as part of #BizFedSactoDays.

The flyer for the event stated, “Journalists who play an outsize role in shaping narratives about state politics and holding lawmakers accountable will join business leaders to pull back the curtain on how they select and tell stories about California policies, policy and power.”

Featured speakers at the program included Colleen Nelson of the Sacramento Bee, Laurel Rosenhall of the Los Angeles Times, Kaitlyn Schallhorn of the Orange County Register and Dan Walters of Cal Matters.

In a tweet, Catherine Reheis-Boyd, President of the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) and former Chair of the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative Blue Ribbon Task Force to create “marine protected areas” in Southern California, gushed:

“One of our favorite times of year is #BizFedSactoDays when @BizFed helps amplify the presence and power of business in California. And we're honored to host the Media Dinner and featured media speakers! @DanCALmatters @LaurelRosenhall @ColleenMNelson @K_Schallhorn”

WSPA, the largest and most powerful corporate lobbying group in Sacramento, describes itself as “non-profit trade association that represents companies that account for the bulk of petroleum exploration, production, refining, transportation and marketing in Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington.” WSPA’s headquarters is located right here on L Street in Sacramento.

Then on March 16, 2023, the Sacramento Press Club announced in a tweet that WSPA was the new “Lede Sponsor” of the Club's Journalism Awards Reception that was held on March 29: “Thank you to our new Lede Sponsor @officialWSPA! WSPA is dedicated to guaranteeing that every American has access to reliable energy options through socially, economically and environmentally responsible policies and regulations. Learn more more at http://wspa.org

In response to this tweet, investigative journalist Aaron Cantu tweeted back on March 20, “As the recipient of @SacPressClub ‘s environmental award last year, it’s concerning to see fossil fuel industry talking points passed off uncritically here. WSPA becoming lede sponsor happened in the context of a global PR turn as the climate crisis worsens.”

Unfortunately, Cantu is the only journalist other than me with the integrity to contest the sponsorship of the Sacramento Press Club’s Journalism Awards Reception by WSPA.

This year the Western States Petroleum Association was again one of the “lede sponsors” of the Sacramento Press Club’s Annual Journalism Awards Reception on April 11:

In addition to sponsoring journalism events in California, WSPA has expanded its campaign to influence journalists nationally. WSPA and the controversial waste management firm Veolia North America sponsored events at last year’s Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) conference in Boise, Idaho, according to a report from DeSmog.

“The agenda for the conference, which is being hosted in Boise, Idaho, shows that the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) and the waste management company Veolia North America are sponsoring two of the “beat dinners” hosted on Friday, April 21 — the third day of the event,” the article by Sam Bright reported.

Fortunately, WSPA and Veolia’s sponsorships of the SEJ conference spurred condemnation by at least one group, Fossil Free Media.

“There’s no excuse for these sorts of conflicts of interest,” Jamie Henn of the campaign and communications group Fossil Free Media told Bright. “By letting the fossil fuel industry sponsor events, groups like SEJ lend credibility to bad actors” that are attempting to “influence coverage and maintain their social license by pretending to be well-meaning supporters of the free press.”

For years, I have covered the capture of media outlets, journalists, politicians, regulators and environmental NGOs by the fossil fuel industry in California and the West.

In 2023, it was good to see somebody else beside this journalist step up to the plate on a national and global level on exposing the increasing collaboration between Big Oil and media corporations.

Drilled and DeSmog, in collaboration with The Intercept and The Nation, released a startling new report: Readers for Sale: The Media's Role in Climate Delay.

"As the business model for media has faltered, the fossil fuel industry has increasingly weaponized weaknesses to its benefit," the report begins.

The report, coming out as the ongoing COP28 climate summit continues to generate controversy, goes into detail on how much money some of the biggest media companies in the world are taking in from fossil fuel, and where exactly the money is being spent.

“Reuters is one of at least seven major news outlets that creates and publishes misleading promotional content for fossil fuel companies, according to a report released today. Known as advertorials or native advertising, the sponsored material is created to look like a publication’s authentic editorial work, lending a veneer of journalistic credibility to the fossil fuel industry’s key climate talking points,” wrote Amy Westervelt and Matthew Green in the Intercept on Dec. 5.

“In collaboration with The Intercept and The Nation, Drilled and DeSmog analyzed hundreds of advertorials and events, as well as ad data from MediaRadar. Our analysis focused on the three years spanning October 2020 to October 2023, when the public ramped up calls for media, public relations, and advertising companies https://cleancreatives.org/ to cut their commercial ties with fossil fuel clients amid growing awareness that the industry’s deceptive messaging was slowing climate action,” the authors wrote.

“All of the companies reviewed — Bloomberg, The Economist, The Financial Times, The New York Times, Politico, Reuters, and The Washington Post — top lists of most-trusted news outlets in both the U.S. and Europe. Each has an internal brand studio that creates advertising content for fossil fuel majors that range from podcasts to newsletters, videos, and advertorials, and some allow fossil fuel companies to sponsor their events. Reuters goes a step further, with marketing staff creating custom industry conferences explicitly designed to remove the “pain points” holding back faster production of oil and gas.”

You will rarely see deep reporting on Big Oil regulatory capture by journalists in the MSM and ”alternative” media. The report by Drilled and DeSmog, in collaboration with the Intercept and The Nation, was very welcome news in a time of increasing collaboration between media and Big Oil.

There is no doubt that WSPA and Big Oil have for years worked closely with media outlets.

In another example of media collaboration with Big Oil, Catherine Reheis-Boyd, WSPA President, was on the "short list" of nominees for the LA Times "Inspirational Women Awards” held on October 18, 2022.

Can you guess who was one of the sponsors of the LA Times awards? Yes, you guessed right — WSPA was a sponsor.

According to a tweet from @OfficialWSPA, *"Today @latimes acknowledged a woman who is already well known in our industry as a trailblazer and inspiration to tens of thousands of women. Congrats to our fearless leader @WSPAPrez for being recognized as a shortlisted nominee for the Inspirational Women Awards." *

WSPA and the oil companies wield their power in 8 major ways: through (1) lobbying; (2) campaign spending; (3) serving on and putting shills on regulatory panels; (4) creating Astroturf groups; (5) working in collaboration with media; (6) sponsoring awards ceremonies and dinners, including those for legislators and journalists; (7) contributing to non profit organizations; and (8) creating alliances with labor unions, mainly construction trades.

Big Oil has really outdone itself on lobbying expenses in California this year. The oil industry has spent a record $31.4 million in California lobbying efforts in the first 9 months of 2024 in an effort to fend off polluter accountability and anti-price gouging measures.

California’s 2024 third-quarter disclosures reveal that the oil and gas industry spent an unprecedented $16.1 million on lobbying and influence activities from July through September, according to a press statement from the Last Chance Alliance.

“This spending easily surpasses the previous annual record of $26.2 million set in 2017, with a full quarter of payments yet to be disclosed,” according to the Last Chance Alliance. “With a full quarter left—this year’s oil industry spending has reached new heights. Over the seven quarters of the current legislative session of 2023-2024, Big Oil has already invested $56.8 million in lobbying efforts, far exceeding the previous record of $44 million set during the 2017-2018 session.”

The Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), Chevron, and Aera Energy—now merged into California Resources Corporation—collectively spent $14.5 million. WSPA topped the lobbying spending spree with an amazing $10,121,571. Chevron came in second in spending with $4,106,389, while Aera Energy came in third with $302,093.

When so-called journalism organizations are tainted by the toxic stench of Big Oil money — and very few “environmental” and “climate” organizations have any problem with this — you know that we are in a really dark time in human history.

Sigmund Freud with his daughter, Anna, fleeing the occupied Vienna for London (1938)

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Perhaps the Dems will realize that women need groceries more often than they need to terminate a pregnancy? And yes I support that in certain circumstances but not as a means of birth control. The Dems had tunnel vision and focused on what THEY thought was important and that’s the problem. They don’t listen.

GOVERNMENT BY ORGANIZED MONEY is just as dangerous as government by organized mob. Never before in our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they are today. They are unanimous in their hate - and I welcome their hatred!

— FDR, 1936

BERNIE SANDERS: “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo. And they’re right…Will the big-money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign? Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing? Do they have any ideas as to how we can take on the increasingly powerful Oligarchy which has so much economic and political power? Probably not.”

DOROTHY SLATER:

This morning I received a Facebook message from a Portland Oregon friend who announced that she had to take her grieving body into the woods to see some mushrooms growing to ease her bodily pain. Since I live in Mexico, when she said grieving body, I thought she was very ill. I was about to write her and ask her what was wrong when I read some of the responses to her post from other Portland people and then I got it. They are all grieving because of Trump's win of course. What is beginning to bother me very strongly is that these are people who are social justice activists who March in every BLM protest, every me-too protest etc. etc. And yet as 50,000 people have been murdered in Gaza, as millions of children around the world go to bed hungry every night, as people in our own country are living on the streets, they are only grieving because Trump won. I have lost so much respect for people I once called friends. It's one thing to not like Trump. It's quite another to think that the worst thing that has ever happened to humanity is that he won four more years in the White House.

AN 86-YEAR-OLD MAN was waiting in the Double Dutch Bar to have some drinks with an old mate. While he was waiting for his mate a gorgeous girl entered the bar and sat down a few seats away from where he was sitting. The girl was so attractive that the old guy just couldn’t take his eyes off her. After a short while, the girl noticed that he was staring at her, and approached him.

Before the old guy even had time to apologize for his staring, the girl looked him deep into his eyes and said to him in a sultry tone, “I’ll do anything you’d like me to do. Whatever you can imagine in your wildest dreams, it doesn’t matter how unusual or extreme it might be, I’m game. I only want $100, and there’s one other condition.”

Completely blown away by the sudden turn of events, the old guy asked her what that one condition is. Well she says; “You have to tell me exactly what you want me to do and you can only use three words to describe it.”

The old man took a few seconds and considered the offer from that gorgeous girl.

He took out his wallet and gave a $100 to the girl.

He then looked her straight in the eyes, and said slowly and clearly, “Paint my house.”

Billie Holiday 1954. Photo © Charles Hewitt

WHEN BILLIE HOLIDAY toured England in 1954, she went shopping in Nottingham ahead of her evening concert at the city's Astoria Ballroom. A family friend called Betty Jones, wife of the esteemed jazz writer Max, was with her when they went into Marks & Spencer. Holiday picked out some pajamas and went to the counter to pay. The strait-laced sales assistant was shocked to see a 38-year-old black woman haul up her skirt and produce a roll of banknotes from the top of her stocking. “It's safer there,” she said, laughing loudly.

Her lifelong habits persisted, however, and even in hospital she had some ready cash strapped to her leg. She had been herself right to the end, joking with a musician on the eve of her death about writing a new song called ‘Bless Your Bones.’ She also repeated to friends that she was seriously considering moving to England and buying a house in London.

She was only 44 when her heart gave out. The singer who had recorded classics such as ‘God Bless the Child’ and the civil rights anthem ‘Strange Fruit’ had only 70¢ in her bank account.

KENNEDY (Daily Mail):

“We will continue to wage this fight in the voting booth, in the courts and in the public square… The fight for our freedom will take hard work,” Harris howled over the blubbering of Tim Walz and Doug Emhoff (someone get these soyboys a safe-space).

In fact, every Democratic blowhard, who ever had designs on the power of the presidency, is sounding like Dirty Harry today. “We'll fight to the death,” said New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy on Wednesday.

Coiffed Californian Gavin Newsom – barely hiding his giddiness over his Golden State nemesis falling flat on her face – is convening an emergency legislative session to whiteboard all the ways to blackball the new White House.

'The freedoms we hold dear in California are under attack — and we won’t sit idle,' Newsom said. 'We are prepared to fight in the courts…'

That's not very promising.

Clearly, the Democratic establishment is lining up for their starring roles in the noble Trump resistance. But can America still rely on the patriotic Deep State (I mean, federal bureaucracy) to keep the ship of state sailing straight?

I wouldn't bet on it.

ABORTED

by James Kunstler

“Let folks cast their votes for Trump if that’s their choice. But mark my words, we won’t be certifying the election. He might win, but we’ll ensure he doesn’t step foot in the Oval Office.” — Jamie Raskin (D-MD)

At last, it appears that the Party of Chaos got its fondest wish: it aborted itself in the 2024 election. “Joe Biden” was the coat-hanger it used: this miserable, grifting, now-senile hack politician who will be remembered only for driving his country to the verge of ruin. And for what? All in an effort to cover-up a long train of crimes and abuses against the American people perpetrated by a permanent bureaucracy gone rogue that was the party’s partner-in-crime. And now it’s over.

The childishness of the Left — AOC whining about “fascism” — is under-appreciated. Note how the party’s most august mouthpiece, The New York Times, pretends to soul-search in the aftermath of the election debacle. “Many Democrats were considering how to navigate a dark future, with the party unable to stop Mr. Trump from carrying out a right-wing transformation of American government. Others turned inward, searching for why the nation rejected them. They spoke about misinformation and the struggle to communicate the party’s vision in a diminished news environment inundated with right-wing propaganda” — The New York Times

The New York Times diminished itself. It drove itself crazy with narratives — just as a crazy person with disordered thoughts can’t discern what’s real and what’s not. What they need is a serious mental health check. The time for incessant lying, hoaxing, and performative hysteria is over. On Thursday, in a three-minute speech, the President-elect set out a clear list of measures to reconstruct a national consensus based on reality. It includes firing a lot of people in the agencies, dis-embedding all the inspector-generals from the departments they oversee, establishing a “truth and reconciliation commission” to declassify and publish documents “related to alleged deep state activities, including spying, censorship, and corruption,” and finding out who exactly at the CIA / FBI / DHS / and other places has been leaking fables and falsehoods to the news media. In other words, clear away a shit-ton of untruth that burdens the consciousness of country.

Though the statement omitted to say so directly, it’s very likely that a number of public officials will find themselves before grand juries in the years ahead. If you haven’t figured it out already, you’ll learn that the term “misinformation” was just the gas in the gaslight used to confound the country about what has really been at stake — which is your personal liberty in what is supposed to be a free country. The Democratic Party and the Deep State blob really did try to steal that from you.

As they stole the 2020 election — which is probably one of the things to be revealed in the process. Look at this bar graph. Note how many millions more votes were cast in the 2020 elections than in the two previous and now in the 2024 contest. How did that happen? Where did that surplus supply come from? The Covid-19 scam provided the cover for a profligate mail-in ballot operation. They deluged the country with paper. Mark Zuckerberg provided $450-million through his cut-out charities to hire thousands of party activists to harvest and fill-out fraudulent ballots, and stuff them in drop-boxes by the hundredweight, with special attention to the crucial precincts in swing states — and that’s what landed the basement-cringing candidate, “Joe Biden,” in the White House.

It was that simple, and that much in-your-face, and for four years the official organs of the news swatted the truth away claiming they were “false, baseless, conspiracy theories” — and half the country was credulous enough to believe that. Or mentally ill, not able to tell fantasy from reality, especially in the newsrooms. Even more shamefully, this half of the country was led by the better-educated, credentialed, managerial class of citizens, who, amazingly, managed to turn intelligence into a new kind of personal liability. (The simplest explanation for that astounding failure is that people who consider themselves “experts” eagerly believe other experts and credentialed authorities, making them easiest to dupe. That’s why the faculty lounges are full of Jacobins.)

The winning side in this contest didn’t vote against Kamala Harris so much as they voted against the Democratic Party, the Party of Chaos, of BLM riots, of drag queens in the school library, of men in the women’s swim lane (and locker room), of forced vaccinations (your bodily autonomy, sister?), of locking up grandmothers who walked through the Capitol rotunda, of state-driven censorship, of malicious political prosecutions, of ruinous proxy war, of flooding the country with criminal alien mutts, of Mao Zedong style erasing of history, of FISA court surveillance, and, finally, of the same sort of self-loathing for the nation that a three hundred pound sophomore with a nose ring and sleeve tattoos feels for herself.

Indeed, the page is turning, but the story has suddenly changed. It remains to be seen whether the Democratic Party blows up altogether now in what’s shaping up to be a time of harsh recrimination, or whether its front-line activists, Marc Elias, Norm Eisen, Mary McCord, Lisa Monaco and Company skulk in the background hatching new schemes to try to drive the republic insane. They’ll have to work fast because the law might be coming after them in January. But they surely know that.

Between now and then, prepare to put your shoulder to the wheel. It’s not just the US government that begs for reform, but many of the secular operations of daily life in America, especially of an economic scene dominated by freakishly gigantic monopolies that have impoverished so many local communities, destroyed livelihoods and whole ways of life, and made slaves of citizens. That story has hardly begun to be told.

IN WASHINGTON DC

by Linda Kinstler

Barricades went up across Washington DC last weekend in preparation for the violence that many people expected to follow the presidential election. The White House and the Naval Observatory, the vice president’s official residence, were surrounded by additional security fencing; downtown businesses boarded up their windows and police patrolled the city. By Tuesday afternoon, the perimeter of Howard University, where Kamala Harris was preparing to deliver her victory speech, was enclosed in metal fencing. Schools were closed, streets quiet. The media reported that the race was too close to call, that the vote would be uncertain and contested for days or weeks, that the armed militias who marched on the Capitol nearly four years ago might return to wreak further havoc. The momentum seemed to be with the Democrats; Harris campaign staff let it be known that they were feeling confident.

One of Harris’s slogans was “we will not go back,” yet the days leading up to the election felt all too familiar. A week before the vote, Harris addressed the nation from the White House Ellipse, deliberately choosing the spot from which President Trump urged his supporters to march on the Capitol. On Saturday, ten thousand people joined the Women’s March through the city, a protest which first took place the day after Trump’s inauguration in 2017. (The theme of this year’s march was also “we are not going back.”) On Tuesday evening, hawkers set up stalls selling T-shirts emblazoned with Harris’s face and the slogan “I’m with her,” first used for Hillary Clinton in 2016. At the watch party on the campus lawn, where people gathered to witness Harris claim victory, I spotted several Obama-era tops and caps.

The political markers of the past two decades of Democratic campaigns had coalesced around Harris: the optimism of the first Black president, the hope for the first woman president, the failure to beat Trump in 2016 and the jubilation of Biden’s win four years later. After Biden’s late exit from the presidential race in July and Harris’s swift anointing as the nominee, she had little time to build a campaign of her own, and wasn’t able to differentiate her policies from those of the administration in which she serves. She seemed to speak for the Democratic Party rather than for herself; one of the distinctive things about her campaign was her reluctance to invoke her own life story.

By 10 p.m. on Tuesday evening, the polls had started to tilt in Trump’s favor. At Howard, where red, white and blue bunting adorned the bleachers and CNN’s election coverage was projected on giant screens, the mood was still celebratory: Beyoncé’s ‘Freedom’ (Harris’s campaign song) blasted from a speaker and supporters danced beneath a banner announcing “Madam President.” Some people began to filter home, but only because they had been there all day and were tired. It was still early. Harris was going to pull through. Three students left waving American flags. “I love America!” one girl shouted. Across the road, a Secret Service agent sat in an idling Chevy Suburban, watching the results come in on his laptop.

Women from Harris’s sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, danced in their pink and green outfits and took photographs in front of the campaign bus, which was emblazoned with the words “A New Way Forward.” Thousands of people stood on the lawn watching the returns: each time a state was called for Harris, the crowd bellowed and waved their flags; whenever a state was called for Trump, there was silence. Harris was there and was still expected to address the crowd that evening.

Yet as the night dragged on, the stage that had been set up for her in front of the university’s Frederick Douglass Memorial Hall remained empty.

By 11 p.m., early tallies from Georgia suggested that Trump was in the lead. The dancing stopped. People stood quietly staring at the screen, waiting for good news. The head of the Harris campaign, Jen O’Malley Dillon, sent a letter to her staff, which was broadcast on CNN, saying she did not expect the outcome of the election to be determined that night. “We will see you tomorrow,” the letter said. People started to head home. No one wanted to say what was actually happening: instead, everyone agreed that Harris still had a path to victory, there were more votes to count, nothing was certain.

“Why is this close?” Ravi Perry, the head of Howard’s Department of Political Science, said to me on his way out. Worry was creeping into his voice. “There is so much on the line: clean water, funding for schools. Will NATO still exist? Are Black men going to survive militarized neighborhoods?” As we spoke, a friend interrupted to tell him he had won his own race to join the local neighborhood commission; Perry half-heartedly waved an American flag over his head.

Around 11.30 p.m., North Carolina was called for Trump. A graduate student told me she was going home to make a large margarita. Around 1 a.m., just as it became clear that the Republicans had secured the Senate, Cedric Richmond, co-chair of the Harris campaign, came out to tell those of us who were still there that Harris would not be addressing us this evening. “We will continue overnight to fight to make sure that every vote is counted,” he said. “You will hear from her tomorrow.” Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair, John Podesta, had made a similar statement at a similarly ungodly hour in 2016. Richmond adopted a tone of strained positivity, yet his mere appearance was enough to confirm that a concession wasn’t far away. An hour later, Pennsylvania was called for Trump.

The next morning, the city was silent. DC is openly hostile to Trump: more than 90% of DC voters backed Harris. Howard was empty, save for a handful of tired campaign workers. I watched as they dragged tables and chairs outside and pulled metal barriers out of a rental van. There were two students walking by the barricades. “All right, so what country are we moving to?” one asked. “What the fuck, Georgia?”

The Harris campaign announced that the vice president would address the nation at 4 p.m. on Wednesday. By the early afternoon, people had begun to file back into the yard, many of them wearing Harris-Walz attire and carrying the American flags they had been given the previous night. Some were in genuine distress, saddened but not shocked by the results. Others appeared unmoved: a man posed for a photograph and told his friend he could share it “as long as I look a little bit sad about democracy.” The crowd was much smaller than the previous evening, the far bleachers nearly empty.

“A lot of us are just speechless. We thought the race was going to be close,” Ryan Turner, a non-profit executive from Baltimore, told me. A Howard freshman said he’d been harassed by Trump voters on his way to the polling station, where he was voting for the first time. “I didn’t care. I went in there. I was gonna vote. Ancestors have died for us to be able to vote.”

A group of freshman girls told me that the results made them feel unsafe. A campaign volunteer told me he was there awaiting further instructions. No one seemed to know what to expect.

It felt worse than 2016, Rebecca Toyin Doherty, a Howard alumna, told me. She hoped that Trump would not “do all the things he says he is going to do.” His campaign promises include “mass deportations on day one” and “we’re going to drill, baby, drill.” He has expressed support for abortion restrictions, yet in four of the states he carried – Arizona, Missouri, Montana and Nevada – new abortion protections won at the ballot box. Trump’s victory means that the investigations into the events of January 6, 2021 will wind down and that he is unlikely to be further prosecuted for any of his federal crimes.

Harris finally emerged at 4.30pm, striding out smiling to Beyoncé: “Freedom, freedom, where are you?” She told the doleful crowd that they must accept the results and that she had called Trump to congratulate him on his victory. The crowd booed. She said that the administration would help him and his team with the transition: “We will engage in a peaceful transfer of power.” The crowd cheered. She swore her allegiance to the Constitution, to conscience and to God, and told the young people in the audience that it was “going to be OK.” She concluded by telling her supporters about a “law of history, true of every society”: “Only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.” (The phrase is often attributed to Martin Luther King Jr.)

But there are no “laws” of history, and platitudes are not going to reassure anyone worried about the next four years. A retired alumna of Harris’s sorority told me that the vote was a “statement about America.” “When I came in, someone gave me an American flag and I took it,” she said. “And then I felt so stupid for taking the flag, so I put it down.”

(London Review of Books)

“And I could never understand why you were insensitive to the sorrow and shame you inflicted on me with your words and judgments it was as if you didn't sense your own power. And I certainly made you ill with words; but I knew what I was doing, though it hurt me, but I couldn't control myself. I couldn't hold back my words though I regretted them. But you landed blows with your words and you were clueless — you never pitied anybody, not then, not later — and people were defenseless before you.”

— Franz Kafka (Dearest father, Kafka's letter to his father)

THE ONLY THING I LIKE about Trump is exactly what so many empire managers hate about him: he gives the game away. He says the quiet parts out loud. He’s the only president who’ll openly boast that US troops are in Syria to keep the oil or lament that they failed to take the oil from Venezuela, or just come right out and tell everyone he’s bought and owned by Zionist oligarchs.

Trump is the opposite of Obama, who was very skillful at putting a pretty face on the evil empire. Trump puts a very ugly face on a very ugly thing. He is a much more honest face to have on the empire. A crude, stupid plutocrat who is owned by other plutocrats is the perfect representative of that tyrannical power structure.

— Caitlin Johnstone

SATURDAY'S LEAD STORIES, NYT

Smile, Flatter and Barter: How the World Is Prepping for Trump Part II

Trump Has Made His View of Migrants Clear. Will It Stop Them From Coming?

Elon Musk Is Positioning X Behind the New Trump Presidency

The Long Global Trail of Resentment Behind Trump’s Resurrection

Trump Holds Up Transition Process Over Ethics Code

Inside the Federal Work Force That Trump Has Promised to Eviscerate

Trump Weighs Key Personnel Choices, Schooled by His First-Term Experience

Kamala Harris Had a Wall Street-Approved Economic Pitch. It Fell Flat.

Biden and Environmental Groups Try to Protect Climate Policies from Trump

IT'S TIME TO STOP BUYING INTO TOOTH-FAIRY POLITICS. No one's bringing salvation

Trump or Harris, a further slide towards authoritarianism and repression was on the cards. A corrupt, failed system won't admit its mistakes. It will find scapegoats.

by Jonathan Cook

Kamala Harris didn't lose because she's a woman or because she's black.

She lost because, if your political and media system – rigged by donors – limits the choice to two hardline neoliberal candidates, with anything else denounced as “communism”, the most hardline, neoliberal candidate has an edge.

Over time, the system keeps moving further to the hardline, neoliberal right. You can't stop that relentless shift by voting for one of the two symptoms of your diseased political system.

You have to rise up against the diseased system itself.

Notice a pattern of behaviour by the establishment media that week after week told us Kamala Harris was poised for a narrow win, that her “politics of joy” would ultimately swing the day.

For more than two years, that same establishment media told us Ukraine would win if only we sent a few more bombs / tanks / planes. None of those weapons helped. They just incentivised each side to invest more deeply in war. What happened instead was entirely predictable: lots of Ukrainians and Russians have died fighting a protracted war Ukraine could never win and that could have been snuffed out early on with a peace agreement – an agreement that was actively blocked by the US and Britain.

Over the past year, that same establishment media told us that Israel wasn't committing a genocide, even as we watched it kill and maim 10,000s of children in Gaza. That same media told us that our leaders were “working tirelessly” for peace, even as they sent Israel more and more weapons to kill and maim.

The establishment media isn't there to report the world as it is. It is there to shape our consciousness of it – to the benefit of the establishment.

It is there to sell us pipe-dreams.

It is there to buy time.

It is there to make us believe next time will be different.

It is there to buy our docility.

It is there to conceal the fact that our leaders are sociopaths, more committed to lining their pockets than saving the only world we have.

The Guardian’s editor, Kath Viner, lost no time in trying to cash in on her readers’ fears of a second Trump presidency. She quoted the paper’s media columnist, Margaret Sullivan, warning: “Trump poses a clear threat to journalists, to news organisations and to press freedom in the US and around the world.”

She noted that Kash Patel, who may be Trump’s choice for FBI director or attorney general, has threatened: “We’re going to come after people in the media.”

Viner herself added that the Guardian “will stand up to these threats, but it will take brave, well-funded independent journalism. It will take reporting that can’t be leaned upon by a billionaire owner terrified of retribution from a bully in the White House.”

Viner wants readers to dig deep and send more money to the Guardian’s already brim-full coffers to wage that fight on their behalf.

Except… every time the Guardian has been tested, every time it has needed to stand up for genuinely independent journalism and journalists, it has failed dismally – even before Trump’s return to the White House.

For more than a decade, the Guardian led the smearing of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange – the most high-profile and truly independent journalist of our era.

The US and UK went after him for exposing their war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was locked up in a high-security prison in London for years while the US sought his extradition on preposterous “espionage” charges. He faced a 175-year jail sentence.

The Guardian not only raised barely a peep against his years-long persecution, but it actively colluded in that persecution, as I have explained on several occasions.

Most notoriously of all, Viner’s paper recycled an utterly false story – presumably supplied to it by the British security services – smearing Assange as a Russian agent. Even though the story has been thoroughly discredited, Viner has never retracted it.

The failure to defend Assange wasn’t a one-off.

Precisely how brave was the Guardian in standing up to the UK’s security services when they came knocking at its door in 2013 after it published Edward Snowden’s revelations that we were all being illegally spied on by, or on behalf of, the NSA? Did the paper use its huge funds to fight the intelligence agencies and protect the public’s right to know how their governments were breaking the law?

No, the Guardian agreed to destroy the hard drives containing Snowden’s leaks with angle grinders, watched by UK intelligence officials.

But worse than that, the Guardian then proved to the security agencies that it had turned over a new leaf. It would not go rogue again by airing the dirty secrets of the British state and its Washington patron.

As Declassified UK has documented at length, the paper jumped into bed with Britain’s security services, agreeing for the first time to become a member of the Ministry of Defence’s so-called D-Notice Committee, overseeing reporting restrictions. It didn't fight for independent journalism. It became a member of the club that enforces secrecy on journalists.

It was rewarded with world-exclusive scoops: a series of interviews with the heads of Britain’s secret services, puffing up their repressive security agenda. The Guardian had become a fully tamed stenographer to power.

The consequences of the paper’s collusion with the UK security state has been on show in the last few months as Keir Starmer’s government has waged war on independent journalists trying to draw attention to British complicity in Israel’s genocide.

In as many months, three journalists – Richard Medhurst, Sarah Wilkinson and Asa Winstanley – have been raided by counter-terrorism police, and are being investigated under Britain’s draconian Terrorism Act for “encouraging terrorism” by criticising Israel.

You might imagine from Viner’s pleas to readers to help her challenge the threat of state repression that the Guardian has been leading the defence of journalists targeted by the British state for intimidation.

Not a bit. The paper has not written a word about any of these recent attacks on independent journalists, attacks taking place on the Guardian’s doorstep.

Viner wants you to believe she and her paper will act as torch-bearers for honest, adversarial journalism abroad, when she has consistently shown zero courage in defending independent journalism at home.

The outcome of this election was never going to make a meaningful difference to the victims of the US empire, whatever we were told.

Trump or Harris, the engines of “economic growth” – meaning accelerated, wasteful, resource-depleting, suicidal consumption – would continue to burn white-hot.

Trump or Harris, arms would still flow to Israel to slaughter and maim the children of Gaza. Israel would still receive diplomatic cover to starve 2.3 million Palestinians there. And protests against this genocide would still be smeared as antisemitic.

Trump or Harris, the politics of the tooth fairy was going to triumph. Each side would continue to believe its chieftain – a black woman or a white billionaire – was the only, true saviour. Each would blame the other as the reason salvation never arrives.

And Trump or Harris, the winner would slide us further down the slope towards authoritarianism and repression. Because salvation isn’t arriving, not as long as we cling to this provably corrupt, failed system, and believe these charlatans and the parties they lead have our interests – rather their own – at heart.

(jonathancook.substack.com)

*Un oreiller en toile de jute, Paris* (1952) by Robert Doisneau

23 Comments

Koepf November 9, 2024

Editor: “life without parole?” Richard Allen Davis. Hand me the rifle without the blank. Do it yesterday.

Reply
Joseph Turri November 9, 2024

I believe James Kunstler hit the nail on the head when he said:

“The winning side in this contest didn’t vote against Kamala Harris so much as they voted against the Democratic Party, the Party of Chaos, of BLM riots, of drag queens in the school library, of men in the women’s swim lane (and locker room), of forced vaccinations (your bodily autonomy, sister?), of locking up grandmothers who walked through the Capitol rotunda, of state-driven censorship, of malicious political prosecutions, of ruinous proxy war, of flooding the country with criminal alien mutts, of Mao Zedong style erasing of history, of FISA court surveillance, and, finally, of the same sort of self-loathing for the nation that a three hundred pound sophomore with a nose ring and sleeve tattoos feels for herself.”

Reply
- Mike Williams November 9, 2024
  
  “Flooding the country with criminal alien mutts”, wow, that is some seriously racist fear mongering, when stats show that the vast majority of immigrants just want to work and support their families. Yes the border needs tightening and asylum reform, but this kind of rhetoric is inhumane.
  
  Reply
  - Steve Heilig November 9, 2024
    
    Thank you. 100% correct, but such bigots have always been proud of their ugly ignorance and hate. So they vote for a rapist, racist, and chronic con man, called a fascist by his own generals and senior staff, without irony.
    (Kunstler is a proud moron on science so it’s no surprise he is on other fronts too. But I actually suspect he doesn’t believe his own rants and is just riling up trolls).
    
    Reply
Mike Geniella November 9, 2024

Two fine assessments today by Mark Scaramella, and Steve Talbot.

Reply
Harvey Reading November 9, 2024

STEVE TALBOT:

“…turning it off…”

It really doesn’t help much at this stage. The reality of seeing what’s going on around you and the nonsense ordinary people are spouting in this pathetic country these days is inescapable and would make anyone sick even if the “media” were nonexistent.

Reply
Harvey Reading November 9, 2024

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Abortion is no ones business except that of the pregnant woman. The bible thumpers and other know-it-alls should butt out, no matter how sanctimonious they may sound, as they pontificate regarding their brand of “morality”. In other words, BUTT OUT OF THEIR BEHAVIOR AND CHOICE REGARDING ABORTION. I’ve heard the likes of your nonsense for most of my life and am still sickened by it.

Reply
Steve Heilig November 9, 2024

“America, culturally, has completely abandoned a politics of decency and respect and has embraced instead a politics of resentment, revenge, false nostalgia, and bullying.”
https://medium.com/@CJRobichaud/reflections-on-the-2024-us-presidential-election-60ff18516a80

Reply
Mark Taylor November 9, 2024

Trying to imagine how the round up and deportation of illegal immigrants will be implemented. How will they be located and identified? How will so many be bureaucratically processed? How will they all be held and transported? How will they be sent back to wherever, and how will that place be persuaded to accept such a large influx of deportees? On every step of this operation, there will be legal obstacles, requiring a greatly expanded apparatus, how is that to be handled? There will be resistance, I suspect, what kind of enforcement forces will be necessary to facilitate the roundup and return? Logistics are important, will there be enough boxcars?

This will all be massively expensive, of course, so how is it to be paid for? The House, controlled by Republicans, will have to budget it, which will probably take awhile, but how willing are representatives of agricultural districts going to be if this process guts their workforce, or representatives of wealthy districts or tourist areas be if it decimates their landscaping, housecleaning, and waitstaff employee pool? It might be hard to get funding for full implementation approved, so perhaps it’ll be piecemeal and Potemkin, targeting only Haitians in Ohio or immigrant shelters in NY. It’s also going to take a while and require lots of discussion if it’s to be done in a constitutionally acceptable manner.

Or perhaps the whole formal funding and legal processes can be bypassed as being obstructive, using the armed forces and civilian militias to just sweep up anyone of a certain profile, open a hole in the new border wall, and shove them all through into Mexico? Easy, peazy. I suppose Stephen Miller or some other operative has been devising a plan in the lead up to the election, but I don’t believe that was ever discussed. Probably should have been and, certainly, it should be now, prior to Jan 6, Day One of the pogrom.

Reply
- peter boudoures November 9, 2024
  
  I guess they could start tracking them like they did to tulsi gabbart, or just go where the criminals have congregated and taken over sections of housing. How about start and stop by rounding up people committing crimes? How about vet each person at the border to ensure you’re taking in non violent types.
  https://www.nbcnews.com/investigations/13000-immigrants-convicted-homicide-living-freely-us-ice-data-rcna173125
  
  Reply
- Bruce Anderson November 9, 2024
  
  As I understand the great repatriation, it will begin, and probably end, with presently incarcerated criminals. Beyond them, the logistics and expense of rounding up people who have lived here without papers for years, the bulk of so-called illegals, becomes pretty much impossible. In Mendocino County alone, there are x-number of people who will sab any such round-up however they can, and I seriously doubt our local cops will cooperate with the nazi-style cruelty required. Americans aren’t Germans, let along good Germans.
  
  Reply
  - Mark Taylor November 9, 2024
    
    Over half of American voters just cast their ballots for a Strong Leader with a Plan, deportation being a big part of it. Dressed up in the proper propaganda and pressing the right paranoia buttons, as it has been, sure, a pretty good chunk of us have shown that we can, theoretically, be good sheep, if not good Germans. It’ll be interesting to find out if knee jerk voting will result in knee bending obedience.
    
    Reply
    - Harvey Reading November 9, 2024
      
      Actually, they gullibly voted for someone they considered a vulgar smartass, just like themselves. There’s a crowd of them around the country.
      
      Reply
      - McEwen Bruce November 9, 2024
        
        “You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind-legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men. If man were not a gregarious animal, the world might have achieved, by this time, some real progress towards civilisation. Segregate him, and he is no fool. But let him loose among his fellows, and he is lost—he becomes just a unit in unreason.”
        
        Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson
        
        Reply
        
        McEwen Bruce November 9, 2024
        
        “Group think exists” was a phrase MAGA Marmon never tired of rehearsing in his posts and now rumor has it he’s down in So Cal ordering a new custom chopper to ride when he leads his troop of Proud Boys back to Nor Cal Inauguration Day to enforce the edicts of Project 2025….we perhaps should have listened but it’s his prerogative now to say, “I told you so!”
        
        I expect they’ll go thundering into Covelo and clean that place out over night.— our esteemed editor’s skepticism notwithstanding.
        
        Reply
  - Mike J November 10, 2024
    
    The Sheriff described here in a past comment the limits of his office’s involvement with undocumented immigrants. It is very limited. Basically, he noted he would not participate in a mass round-up.
    
    Reply
Jim Armstrong November 9, 2024

“FIRING SQUADS, incidentally, spare most of the riflemen the specific knowledge that it was their bullet that killed a stranger to them. Only one or two fire live rounds, the rest fire blanks.”
They may not know beforehand, but they sure know if they fired a live round and that it went where they aimed.

Reply
- Mark Scaramella November 9, 2024
  
  Wikipedia:
  “In practice however, firing a live round produces significant recoil, while firing a blank round does not. In more recent times, such as the 2010 execution of Ronnie Lee Gardner in Utah, one rifleman may be given a “dummy” cartridge containing a wax bullet, which provides a more realistic recoil.
  
  Reply
  - Jim Armstrong November 9, 2024
    
    One has live or one has blank?
    How about thinking this over and posting again.
    Were you Ed today?
    
    Reply
    - Mark Scaramella November 9, 2024
      
      Oh, you’re right. On second thought I should have mentioned how important water is to Potter Valley. Sorry.
      
      Reply
      - Jim Armstrong November 10, 2024
        
        You know, Mark, I have been waiting years for you to mention that you understand how important water (especially Eel River water) is to Potter Valley.
        But finally doing so in a third reply to a second reply in a day-old weekend AVA comment section is hardly shouting it from the rooftops, is it?
        
        Reply
        
        Mark Scaramella November 10, 2024
        
        That was a wax bullet that obviously missed its target.
        
        Reply
David Stanford November 12, 2024

after reading todays reply’s it looks like everyone has accepted the outcome of last Tuesdays election and are ready to move on, lets hope so…

Reply

Mendocino County Today: Saturday 11/9/2024

UKIAH 28, ANALY 27

23 Comments

Leave a Reply Cancel reply