Mendocino County Today: Wednesday 11/13/2024

A STRONG COLD FRONT is impacting the region with breezy to strong southerly winds, moderate to heavy rainfall, and increasing chances for thunderstorms. Convective showers and thunderstorms continue Thursday, along with light, mountain snow. Much cooler temperatures will then settle in for the end of the week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A cloudy (so far) 51F on the coast this Wednesday morning. More rain arrives later today & into tomorrow. Dry mostly Fri & Sat then more rain Sunday. Next week is looking dry as the pattern changes.

DENNIS HENGEVELD: Did you know that Ukiah once had its own money? The First National Bank of Ukiah was established in 1917 and would last until 1931. As part of the national banking system, it issued its own currency, valid throughout the United States.

EVACUATION ORDERED AT MENDOCINO COUNTY OFFICES AFTER BOMB THREAT

by Matt LaFever

Mendocino County’s administration building on Ukiah’s Low Gap Road was evacuated Tuesday, November 12, 2024, following a bomb threat that later proved to be unfounded, according to Darcie Antle, CEO of Mendocino County.

“I was made aware of a concerning email stating that a bomb had been placed within the administration building,” Antle said. “Upon receiving this information, I took immediate action, coordinating with County policy and consulting with Sheriff Kendall.”

Antle said that Sheriff Kendall “advised initiating a comprehensive bomb assessment to ensure the safety of all involved.” She added, “His guidance played a key role in ensuring the situation was handled efficiently and effectively.”

At 4:00 p.m., staff at the administration building at 501 Low Gap Rd. were evacuated “in an abundance of caution.” Antle added that “by 5:00 p.m., a thorough bomb sweep had been conducted, and I am pleased to report that no explosive device was found. The situation was handled swiftly and efficiently to prioritize the well-being of our employees and the public.”

Antle said she was informed that the same threat had been sent to 17 other counties. “To our knowledge, at this time 17 Counties received the same email from the same sender,” she noted. The email was directed to the Assessor/Clerk Recorder/Register of Voters’ general email and referenced the 501 Low Gap Rd. administration building specifically.”

(mendofever.com)

CITY OF FORT BRAGG PROPOSAL TO PURCHASE MCN

Mendocino Unified School District Board Explores the offer presented by the City of Fort Bragg to purchase the Mendocino Community Network (MCN).

The Mendocino Unified School District (MUSD) Board will evaluate a proposal brought forth by the City of Fort Bragg to purchase the Mendocino Community Network (MCN). The City of Fort Bragg's offer indicates that it "aims to preserve and enhance the community-driven internet service while supporting regional economic and technological development".

MCN, founded as an educational internet service provider in 1994, has served the Mendocino Coast for decades, providing reliable connectivity and fostering broadband thought out the county.

The City of Fort Bragg has expressed interest in integrating MCN into its municipal broadband utility project - designed, constructed, serviced, and maintained by the City. As part of this effort, the City of Fort Bragg is undertaking a cutting-edge digital infrastructure project, ensuring 100% of premises within city limits have access to reliable underground connectivity offering Gigabit speeds at affordable rates. The City's new network will connect directly to the California Middle Mile broadband infrastructure, enhancing regional access while laying the groundwork for future technological advancements and growth.

The transition proposal is in its preliminary stages, as both MUSD and the City of Fort Bragg are committed to transparency and community engagement throughout the process. Stakeholders, including MCN subscribers, local businesses, and residents, will have opportunities to provide feedback and participate in public discussions.

Under the proposed transition, the City of Fort Bragg has stated it "would continue to service MCN customers, including those residing outside city limits, maintaining the same high-quality service MCN customers have come to rely on. Additionally, all current MCN staff members would become the City of Fort Bragg employees, ensuring continuity in operations and customer support, pending approval by the Fort Bragg City Council."

Community members are encouraged to attend the upcoming MUSD Board meeting on Thursday, November 14th at 5:30 at Mendocino High School.

— Jason Morse, Superintendent, Mendocino Unified School District

HOW MANY CONFERENCES DOES THE WILLITS CITY MANAGER NEED TO ATTEND?

Editor,

I’d like to bring some light into the money spent by the City of Willits and taxpaying citizens for the countless trainings of City Manager Brian Bender. Some of these attended training sessions are not even associated with his current employment position as city manager. Besides the Local Government Reimagined Conference, the West Coast conferences, the International City/County Management Association, etc., the city and its citizens have also been paying for Mr. Bender’s upkeep of his Planner License and the needed mandatory continuing education credits that are needed about every two years to maintain his credentials.

While Mr. Bender is given the opportunity to attend these events, it seems unbelievable that some of the other City of Willits employees, in need of attending these very important events and the knowledge that comes with them, are left behind. The number of events attended by Mr. Bender are out of control, and we are wondering who approved them? The City Council? With the upcoming changes and a new city council, we are looking forward to a more controlled and accountable system for these kinds of issues — and more transparency.

Your fellow concerned citizen,

S. Jacobs

Willits

GRANT-BACKED WATER REFORMS bring Redwood Valley closer to reliable supply

by Monica Huettl

The Ukiah Valley Water Authority (UVWA) is progressing with a consolidation plan to unify local water districts and improve water reliability in Mendocino County. General Manager Jared Walker and Ukiah Water Manager Sean White recently led a tour with Carollo engineers to assess the infrastructure. Supported by state grants, the project aims to upgrade aging systems and could eventually lift the moratorium on new water hookups in Redwood Valley.…

https://mendofever.com/2024/11/13/grant-backed-water-reforms-bring-redwood-valley-closer-to-reliable-supply/

THE WELL-PAID SUPERVISORS ARE TAKING ANOTHER VACATION this month, having given themselves their big raise last summer. Their last Board meeting was November 5, 2024 and their next meeting is set for December 3, a month off for Thanksgiving. There’s one more meeting this year on December 17. By the end of calendar year 2024 they will have met 24 times. (Mark Scaramella)

ANDERSON VALLEY HIGH & JUNIOR HIGH RETIRED STAFF REUNION

by Terry Sites

Many memories came flooding back as Anderson Valley High and Junior High School retired staff members gathered for a reunion at the AV Senior Center on Sunday, November 10 from 3 to 7. Brainchild of Mary O’Brien, Kathy Cox and Kathy Borst, the party went off without a hitch. Mary’s collection of old yearbooks and snapshots sent people back in time. “I don’t remember my hair ever looking that dark…,” “Look how happy the kids look in that picture,” “I wish Robert was here to see those pictures of the Redwood Classic,” and so on.

A potluck dinner was followed by an invitation to share stories with the microphone provided. Kathy Cox eloquently quoted “There is no road; your footsteps are the road.” Speaking of herself and her coworkers she said, “We were constantly learning new things every day — every single one of us. We did such a great thing. We worked together well and we cared so much about those kids and they knew it. Other places some of them might have fallen through the cracks.”

Mary O’Brien spoke to the collegiality of the staff during those years. She credited JR Collins (who was in attendance) for his ability to delegate and allow people to do what they did best without undue interference. She remembered him as the most fit principal ever who would never walk anywhere when he could run. She said that if she had to give a name to her career it would be “The Perfect Storm.” Jeannie Collins told us how Anderson Valley changed her life in so many ways not the least of which was meeting her husband JR. “So much love is in my heart for that time at both Clearwater Ranch and AVHS.”

The consensus was that many of their students have gone on to become stalwart members of the community.

Beth Swehla, who describes herself as the “baby” of the group, has now been teaching for more than half of her life (22 years). “You have to get along with the staff and give the kids what they need. Why leave to go somewhere else? We have great kids even on their worst day. They still want to be loved and cared about.” Nadia Berrigan remembered an early mentor advising her to teach something that she really liked (Art). Gaining students’ trust took her awhile but once gained the art department became a place where students could take refuge when life got complicated. Nadia was always an excellent listener.

Stephanie Adams, long time cafeteria assistant under Terry Rhoades, remembered the playful relationship she developed with cafeteria workers and how those high spirits might not have been tolerated or appreciated in a bigger school. Terry Rhoades (with the most years in service to the school district of any living person) was on hand to prepare for the potluck and keep it rolling smoothly throughout the evening. A photo of her and JR standing together reflects the understanding between them that served so well for all those years.

A good time was had by all. The turnout filled the Senior Center with good conversation, head shaking and laughter. Thanks to all who helped make this special event possible.

ILLUSTRATED TALK AT GRACE HUDSON ON NOV. 16

On Nov. 16th, from 2 to 3:15 p.m., the Grace Hudson Museum will present "Below and Above the Earth," an illustrated talk by Tim Buckner. Buckner will provide information on the geologic and other natural forces that shape the various landscapes of Northern California. The dramatic vistas and generous beauty of these landscapes were deeply felt by painter Ray Strong (1905-2006), whose paintings are the subject of the Museum's current exhibit, "Earth Portraiture: Ray Strong's Northern California Landscapes." The event is free with Museum admission.

Born into a family prominent in Oregon's social and political history, Ray Strong grew up on his parents' berry farm. His early life was immersed in nature--working on the farm, hiking, fishing, and hunting. "I think that his appreciation for landscape painting was really grounded in his childhood as a farmworker, roaming those hills, knowing where the landscape went when he walked out the door," Buckner says.

The dramatic folds, curves, peaks, and valleys formed by hills and mountains throughout the north part of the state were revered by Strong during his nearly century-long career. His work as a painter of dioramas for the National Park Service, museums, and nature centers "deepened his understanding of geological processes that sculpt the earth over millions of years," biographer Mark Humpal writes. This knowledge helped Strong convey the heft of a mountain and delicacy of a blade of windblown grass with equal care, uniting science and art in a blend of reverence and skill.

The Grace Hudson Museum is at 431 S. Main St. in Ukiah. The Museum is open Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 4:30 p.m. Contact the Museum for current admission fees. The Museum is free to all on the first Friday of the month; and always free to Museum members, Native Americans, and active-duty military personnel. For more information please go to www.gracehudsonmuseum.org or call (707) 467-2836.

— Roberta Werdinger, Writer, editor, publicist

Navarro By the Sea, Mendocino Co (Ron Parker)

IMPACTFUL BOOKS at Cloud Nine

Let's get together and talk about impactful books we've read recently.

Authors are also encouraged to join in.

Thursday, November 14, at 5pm

Cloud Nine Art Gallery, 320 N Franklin Street in Fort Bragg

Adding to the fun, there will be a drawing for a book of your choice and light refreshments.

— Margaret Paul

PG&E NORTH COAST TOWN HALL: NOV. 19, 5:30 - 6:30 P.M.

PG&E Invites North Coast Customers to a Town Hall for Regional Updates, Savings Support and Safety Tips

At November 19 Virtual Event, PG&E Local Leaders Will Answer Questions and Share Available Resources

Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) invites North Coast customers to a virtual town hall to learn more about affordability resources and how you can save on your bills this winter and safety tips.

On Tuesday, November 19 from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m., PG&E experts, including Regional Vice President Dave Canny, will provide a brief presentation during which participants will have the opportunity to ask questions.

The event can be accessed through the link or phone dial-in information listed below, or by visiting PG&E's website, http://www.pge.com/firesafetywebinars.

Tuesday, November 19, 2024

Link: https://bit.ly/3Y1wAEG

Dial-in: 888-469-1987

Conference ID: 2796382

Megan McFarland, PG&E (MHMR@pge.com)

WHAT'S THE PLAN, STAN?

Agenda & Staff Report(s) for the Next Planning Commission Meeting (11-21-24)

The Staff Report(s) and Agenda for the November 21, 2024, Planning Commission meeting is now available on the department website at: https://www.mendocinocounty.gov/departments/planning-building-services/boards-and-commissions/public-hearing-bodies/public-hearing-bodies#!

Please contact staff if there are any questions,

Thank you

James Feenan

feenanj@mendocinocounty.gov

MENDO HISTORY

by Jack Saunders

Shown here is the Salmon Creek high bridge that opened in 1917, cropped from a photo that has been posted at least a couple of times before. Prior to this the coast road descended down the north Salmon Creek grade (partially marked by the green line) down to the creek, crossed the low bridge in the background marked by the green rectangle, and then climbed up the miserable south Salmon Creek grade marked by the green box. The old road was actually still in use even after the high bridge was opened, as for quite some time there was no path from the new coast road to the Navarro Ridge Road but through the private property of Peter Nonella.

Also shown are the ends of the road to this bridge closest to where one can drive today. The northern end is the left path at the end of Spring Grove Road that skirts the bluff behind the Ledford House restaurant, once Gregory's, while the path to the right is the prior road. On the south the road is on the east side of Highway 1 just to the south of the current bridge. Both are marked with green.

ED NOTES

FROM A COLLECTION of short stories called “Pick Up On Noon Street” by the great noir writer Raymond Chandler, “Hell with the loose ends,” Cathcart grinned. “Nobody’s getting away with any fix that I can see. That sidekick of yours, Denny, will fade in a hurry and if I ever get my paws on the Dalton frail, I’ll send her to Mendocino for the cure.”

CHANDLER’S reference to Mendocino is to the old Mendocino State Hospital at Talmage, once so well known for its alcohol and drug cures that it even found its way into American literature. But you’ve got to be at least 90 to remember when tough guys called women “frails.”

AN INTERESTING short story by Dominic Stansberry, “The Ancient Rain,” contains a lot of interesting, fact-based stuff about the original beatniks and, like Stansberry’s books often do, touches on Judi Bari-type events of the 1960s, the American left’s last gasp: “…But like it or not, the bastard’s activities in the old days, in the so-called underground, the anti-war movement in the early 70s — pipe bombs under cop cars, bank robberies, all kinds of nonsense — had left a woman dead.”

I READ ‘On the Road’ when I was a little too young to fully get it, but remembered that one of my high school English teachers had recommended against it as she had recommended against most literature written after 1940, so I launched an immediate search for the book, and found Kerouac’s epic among the “communist” lit sequestered in a locked cabinet in my high school library. These dangerously subversive tomes required a permission note from home, which I duly acquired and proceeded to read a lot of vegetarian and pacifist tracts along with some truly great stuff, including ‘Johnny Got His Gun’ (Dalton Trumbo) and Kerouac’s frenetic account of his madcap adventures racing back and forth across the United States, circa 1948, prior to freeways and prior to the homogenization of American life. I’d forgotten what a wonderful writer this seminal beatnik was, and how funny and movingly lyrical he could be:

“It was Sunday. A great heat wave descended; it was a beautiful day, the sun turned red at three. I started up the mountain [Tamalpais] and got to the top at four. All those lovely California cottonwoods and eucalypti brooded on all sides. Near the peak there were no more trees, just rocks and grass. Cattle were grazing on the top of the coast. There was the Pacific, a few more foothills away blue and vast and with a great wall of white advancing from the legendary potato patch where Frisco fogs are born. Another hour it would come streaming through the Golden Gate to shroud the romantic city in white, and a young man would hold his girl by the hand and climb slowly up a long white sidewalk with a bottle of Tokay in his pocket. That was Frisco; and beautiful women standing in white doorways, waiting for their men; and Coit Tower, and the Embarcadero, and Market Street, and the eleven teeming hills.”

“It seemed like a matter of minutes when we began rolling in the foothills before Oakland and suddenly reached a height and saw stretched out ahead of us the fabulous white city of San Francisco on her eleven mystic hills with the blue Pacific and its advancing wall of potato-patch fog beyond, and smoke and goldenness in the late afternoon of time.”

NOT to go all lit-crit on you here, but the separate parts of the above are banal, but while taken as a whole capture the feeling most of us have had about San Francisco and the Bay Area. Kerouac’s genius was to elevate the every day into great art.

OUTDOORSMEN may recall the 1981 large-scale relocation of 203 Angel Island deer to the Mayacama Mountains just east of Ukiah. The deer had bred on the island to the point that their over-population had begun to cause them to die. Too many in too small an area. According to a study by UC Berkeley’s Department of Forestry and Resource Management “87 percent of the re-located deer failed to survive in the Mayacamas,” the lesson perhaps being that re-located elk tend to thrive, re-located deer don’t.

ACCORDING to a study conducted at CalTech in Pasadena, the only difference between expensive wine and cheap wine is the price. LA Times reporter Denise Gellene: “When it comes to wine tasting, pleasure is in the price.” Lots of wine people apparently think quality always accompanies price. “Scientists found people given two identical red wines got more pleasure from tasting the one they were told cost more.” “By manipulating prices,” Ms. Gellene quotes lead researcher Antonio Rangel as saying, “we can change how wine tastes without changing the wine. It’s mind-blowing!” Ms. Gellene then quotes George Loewenstein, “professor of economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University,” who pointed out that the CalTech study confirmed what we already know, “People pay high prices for water from Italy, and we know that water tastes about the same wherever it comes from.” A French study done a few years ago concluded that wine tasting experts, in blind tastings, could not distinguish ordinary cheap white table wine with a little red food coloring added from high-priced red wine.

THIS “SCIENTIFIC” OBSERVATION that price is the only real difference between cheap wine and expensive wine is hardly new. Upon my graduation from the enology program at Fresno State in 1967 (before I entered the Air Force) I worked for a few weeks at a large Fresno liquor store. The owner had just obtained two pallet loads of LeJon California Sparkling Wine for a bargain bulk price and decided he’d put it on sale cheap because he didn’t normally sell sparkling wine and because he didn’t really have room for that much of it in his store. So he put a few cases on the sidewalk outside and had a big sign made up that said, “LeJon Sparkling Wine — $1.19 a bottle.” In 1967, as best I recall, champagne sold for around $3 for the stuff that tasted like Alka Seltzer and up to maybe $100 for the stuff the Queen of England drinks. So the $1.19 was a good price. Those of us in the store’s small crew had tasted it and it seemed pretty good to us. A week went by and we sold maybe a dozen bottles. Then the boss, Ron Redekian, decided to raise the price. A new sign was made. “LeJon Fine California Sparkling Wine. Our Best. Special This Month Only. $5.99.” It was gone in a week. (Mark Scaramella)

BTW, On The Road, the manuscript:

Christie”s International Auction House in New York City auctioned off the original manuscript for author Jack Kerouac”s classic novel On The Road. Kerouac, along with Allen Ginsberg (and his poem HOWL) and William S. Burrough’s (and his novel Naked Lunch) began a movement and way of life known as “The Beat Generation.” On The Road was published in 1957, several years after it was completed and in a totally revised form from what was originally written. Jack Kerouac was born in 1922, and was originally known for his athletic abilities carving out an impressive football career at his high school in Lowell, Massachusetts and then by receiving a scholarship to attend Columbia University in 1940. An injury sustained during a game forced him to sit out the season. Two years later Kerouac left college to join the merchant marines and embarked on his famous journey traveling throughout the land.

Kerouac’s On The Road manuscript is a 120-foot long scroll consisting of a series of single-spaced typed twelve-foot long rolls of paper that have been scotch-taped together (estimated to be about 76,000 words).

Kerouac found this method more conducive to his style of writing. He preferred this instead of having to continuously feed sheets of paper into his typewriter during his famous marathon typing sessions in the first few weeks of April of 1951.

He would have marveled at the modern laptop and all that it can do. These writing sessions were the type of story that has inspired many writers to follow in his footsteps. The manuscript has various pencil markings, cross-outs and lines throughout it. The beginning and end of the scroll is tattered (the end is said to have been ripped off by a dog owned by Kerouac’s friend Lucien Carr). For quite some time, this rarely seen manuscript has been in storage, most recently in the New York City Public Library.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Tuesday, November 12, 2024

STEVEN ALLEN, 67, Ukiah. Tear gas.

ROBERT BLUM, 78, Willits. Failure to register as sex offender with prior.

JERRY DEGURSE, 64, Willits. Paraphernalia, suspended license, failure to appear.

TYLER ELZA, 41, Willits. Suspended license, reckless evasion, failure to appear.

DOMINIC FABER, 62, Ukiah. Transient registration, parole violation.

EVERARDO GRANILLO, 32, Ukiah. Probation violation.

ISAGELLA ORTEGA, 18, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

BOBBY ROSTON, 40, Ukiah. Parole violation.

JORDAN ROWLEY, 22, Fort Bragg. DUI.

CODY RYDEN, 31, Upper Lake/Ukiah. Probation revocation.

PETER SAARI, 61, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

PATRICK SCHUETZ, 53, Ukiah. Disobeying court order.

ANTONIO THOMAS, 44, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs.

SOCRATES WALLACE, 24, Willits. Contributing, criminal threats, failure to appear.

NIXON IN UKIAH

L-R 1- Lloyd Bittenbender 2- Frank Sandelin 3- Richard Nixon. c1950. Ukiah Mendocino Co. (via Ron Parker)

A WALK IN THE PARK

by Paul Modic

Last winter I ran into Jared in the park, we walked together for a while, and I found out he went to Harvard for a while and was Valedictorian at his high school in Marin. He was wondering why we don’t name streets after illustrious people in our community? It got me to thinking, that there is only one unnamed street in Garberville and it’s the alley running by the old Redwood Record building. Steve thinks we should name it after a woman, Christina Huff is his choice, but I think it could be the Jared Rossman Alley.

Who is more illustrious than Jared?

Yesterday I was walking in the park, singing a Bob Marley song (Lively Up Yourself), saw a couple people coming toward me and stopped singing, and when they got closer I saw it was Jared, hale fellow well met, and we exchanged greetings without stopping.

“Mister Mulch!” he said with that classic Jared smile. “What a beautiful day!”

A fist bump later, a “See you on the trails,” from me, and we continued along our respective paths alongside the grape vineyard.

I walked around the meadows singing a few more rock classics, a couple by Elton John (Holy Moses and Your Song), then took a left into the woods. I started thinking what I would say if I ran into Jared again, then started composing a monologue as I walked the shady trail alongside the abundant poison oak:

“Hey Jared, I’ve known you for forty-eight years and when I walked with you in the park last winter for half an hour, that was the longest conversation we’re ever had. Anyway, stop by sometime for 15 or 30 minutes, we could hang out on the deck, maybe have a cuppa tea, and shoot the shit. I’ve been feeling isolated recently, just went two days not seeing or talking with anyone, and I’m trying to generate more social life, ya know? Yeah, you probably have lots of that, I need you way more than you need me, I know you don’t want someone to “eat your life,” and so I’m just putting it out there. I’m right on the way to the park, here’s my card if you feel like stopping by, gimme a call or just drop by.”

I came back out of the woods around the park stage, saw Jared in the distance heading to his parking spot by the farm buildings, and headed for the mountain trail. About ten minutes up I looked to the left and saw, about a hundred yards away, what looked like a homeless encampment, maybe an abandoned one? Were those tents, maybe tarps, about four or five possible dwellings on the hillside?

My first thought was I’ve got to report this, turn them in, and alert the park for a cleanup. My next thought was really? It’s up to me to make some struggling people colder and more uncomfortable with winter coming on? Is that what I want to do?

I continued walking and biker Dave came peddling up the hill with his ubiquitous dog. “Did you see that encampment over there?” I asked.

“Oh yeah, I’ve seen that for a couple months, thought it might be trash, the highway’s right over there,” Dave said.

“Well, I’ve been out of action since June and I just noticed it,” I said.

“The world is evolving,” he said mysteriously, and continued up the mountain.

I wondered what he meant by that, that I was evolving because I was actually considering not reporting the encampment?

It was another beautiful fall day in the park.

HOW TO HIDE IN THE AGE OF TRUMP & VANCE, AN ELEVEN-STEP PROGRAM

by Jonah Raskin

I hid folks in the 1960s and 1970s and learned a few things about hiding from the police. Here are some suggestions. Hiding is not a game. It’s hard work and can be exhausting. It takes practice. Don’t go into hiding unless it’s necessary for your survival.

Don’t isolate yourself. Create a circle of trusted friends. Create an underground network.
Change your name; take an alias you can easily remember.
Change your appearance. If you have a beard, shave it; if you are clean-shaven, grow a beard. Wear clothes that conceal your body. Change your earrings. Cover your tattoos. Wear a wig. Use make-up creatively
Follow basic laws; don’t litter; don’t throw garbage from a moving vehicle. Don’t speed when you drive.
Get rid of your cell phone and stay away from the internet.
If you have a distinct accent (Southern or Boston) ditch it and develop another one from a different region, or country.
Protect your true identity, especially when you are tempted to tell someone you meet casually who you really are.
Move to a city other than the one where you have lived.
Use cash as much as possible. If you have to sign for something, change your handwriting.
Don’t take risks. If and when you are bored remember that you may be even more bored in a cell or a detention center.
Be mindful; don’t space out. Enjoy the beauty of nature.

R.D. BEACON

Here is the sad truth, just about anywhere public, and probably would've made it, due to the fact, the voters were tired, of the Democrats and their failing programs, but nobody else wanted the job, things were so broken, for the last four years, the voters have had enough, they wanted to change, and with the Democrats, trying so hard, to keep Donald Trump, from running again, they were willing to sell her souls, to get the job done, but always said, most business people, are so much smarter, professional politicians, most politicians, are dishonest by their nature is into them, and the problem we've always had, in our country, we allowed the lawyers, to run for public office, and they only think they're smart, good lawyer won't run for, political office, because they're making more money on the outside, as we've noticed in the last few years, with our federal Justice Department, at the direction of Joe Biden, and his friends, trying to keep Donald Trump from running for reelection, what it do? It showed how crooked Democrats could be, it showed the entire nation how broken, many of our politicians, are and those people today that still believe, that the Democratic Party is good, they live in a fantasy world, and they would vote for a cartoon character, if told to do so, the simple fact, and has been a resounding phrases, since the beginning of our nation, it's the United States, of America not the individual state, and it is a country that believes, that the government should be for the people, and by the people, for the preservation of the people and its country, those folks who think, that a government should be by the government, for the government, they perpetuated by government, should move to red China, that's where they belong, which brings up the subject, how much money we dumping, inventory and amaze, across the ocean, from small parts in our American cars, to the TV set on our wall, we are supporting the Communist Party, and so many ways, our new president, has promised to put tariffs, on incoming products, to stop the flood of crap, from coming into our country like to jump you buy at Harbor freight, or the dollar store, even companies like Motorola, giant corporate conglomerate, buying a lot of its parts, from red China, and assembling most of the radios in Taiwan, or other foreign countries, most of our American cars, or corporations that own them, have been bought out by offshore interests, and have flooded the market, with substandard vehicles, while other countries do not buy, equal amount of goods, from the American corporations here in America, we need to turn this around, American corporations back in America, hiring Americans paying a decent wage, all of the, and reinforcing the millions, that staggers protection, to American workers, making sure, they get a living wage, someone said the other day to make, it would force prices, up it may go a little bit, but if it means jobs for Americans, that means people will get out from under bridges, to live in a house, if it means bringing American families, back together, if the means creating more American jobs for everyone, then a little race in price, doesn't matter, we as a people, need to stop giving away the store, bring industry back to the United States, of America I believe, corporate America should be taxed, accordingly, where they make their products this offshore, their taxes should be greater than what they are saving, will cause them to have to come home, for there will be no advantage, for them to be, our country, American jobs, for American workers, good, well paying, union protected, jobs for all Americans, without exception, new administration, needs to also consider, modifying the federal income tax law, be able to collect more, by taxing only corporations, rather than individuals, here's the formula, if you have more than 50 employees, then they will come up with an equation, based on what you make, yearly, as a corporation or business, by shifting the tax burden, to corporate agencies, will free up additional money for the private sector, regular people, to spend more in the marketplace, and not have to worry about forms to fill out, by April 15, each state, to do the same kind of ship, where sales taxes involved tax the warehouses, and manufacturers of product, eliminating the problem of Gen. retailers, having to fill out forms, what would happen, yes you would pay more, for product, but you could raise your prices accordingly, cover the difference, but it would look like to the public, that they would no longer be paying sales taxes, people have, more money in their pockets, they will spend it, and the economy will get better, California has tax on timber sales, this could be eliminated, and the burden placed on the sawmill, or manufacturer, by doing this, it would encourage timber owners, producible product, in a more timely fashion, and manage their timberlands, for sustainability, and if the government, federal lab is, will stop the influx, timber products from other countries, it will protect the American interest, in the timber industry, the entire idea or set of ideas, is to create more money, for people to spend, which will in turn, create more money to corporations, that they will pay taxes on, when tourists, come to America from foreign countries, they will buy more product, they don't have to pay taxes, on the products they buy.

INTERNAL EXILE

To the Editor:

I intend to emigrate from within. My wife and I immediately decided that we are no longer giving our evenings to watching MSNBC and CNN. (I suspect that we are not alone and that their ratings will tumble.)

Bring on movies (which I believe will now boom as they did in the Depression), TV mini-series and sports. I especially look forward to the rest of the Rams season. Then there is basketball, an enjoyable bridge to baseball and the Dodgers and Shohei Ohtani.

I’m an artist, and that will now provide an even more welcome diversion. Considering that much of my life has been devoted to the Republican Party at the local, state and national levels, I find this once-unthinkable retreat from being engaged in politics necessary but also sad.

Sandy Treadwell

Ojai

FOUR SAVED, FOUR BILLION TO GO

Editor:

On May 16, 2025, I’ll go on trial facing over five years in prison for rescuing Poppy, Ivy, Aster and Azalea from Perdue’s Petaluma Poultry slaughterhouse. For taking them to get care, I was arrested on felony charges. I’ve been wearing a GPS ankle monitor for more than 300 days while I await trial.

Most criminal defense strategies attempt to make the jury question if the defendant really did what they’re accused of. I will proudly testify and say I did it. I entered the slaughterhouse, rescued four chickens from a transport cage, and left. I treated their wounds and shared their stories publicly.

I will tell the jury exactly what happened. It will be up to them to decide if they believe what I did was a crime. I am at peace with whatever may come, because I know that Poppy, Ivy, Aster, and Azalea are safe, happy and free. I do sincerely hope that someday soon it will be Perdue on trial for what I believe are blatant crimes against animals.

Zoe Rosenberg

Berkeley

WHAT THE BOSA/KAEPERNICK DOUBLE STANDARD TELLS US ABOUT THE 2024 ELECTIONS

by Dave Zirin

On Sunday October 27, nine days before the Presidential election, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy was being interviewed after a win against the Dallas Cowboys. As Purdy spoke to NBC sideline reporter Melissa Stark, All-Pro defensive end Nick Bosa crashed his way into the shot and, looking into the camera, pointed at his Make America Great Again hat.

Though Bosa’s interruption was surprising, it was hardly shocking. Bosa has long enjoyed peacocking around as an open Trump supporter in a world where players largely keep their political opinions to themselves.

But Bosa flaunting a polarizing political slogan on Sunday Night Football, the most watched television program in the United States, right before a presidential election, was simply a bridge too far even for the conservative, albeit controversy averse, league office. Bosa was fined $11,255 for violating the league’s uniform and equipment rules, but given that he makes $34 million a year, the 49ers faithful probably won’t need to set up a GoFundMe,

As Bosa skulked around in a MAGA hat, his red and gold uniform brought to mind another athlete who played for the same franchise. In 2016, Colin Kaepernick, then the San Francisco quarterback, also used his NFL platform to speak out for a cause in which he believed. But he was not agitating for MAGA policy initiatives such as a violent mass deportation program or the right to shoot protestors or second-class citizenship for women. He was kneeling for an end to racial inequity and police violence.

Colin Kaepernick was part of a burgeoning movement in 2016. It was a movement tired of merely asking not to be shot. Instead, they popularized ideas such as “defunding the police” and confronting crime by giving more money to crisis intervention teams and mental health counselors. The movement Kaepernick gave symbol to imagined a world without prisons. And it scared the hell out of the Democratic Party.

Far from running toward this mass youth movement, the party sprinted in the other direction. That meant Colin Kaepernick was left adrift, his legs cut out from under him, when he started protesting. He also was without political support. As Republicans put Kaepernick’s kneeling image in brazenly racist fear-mongering ads, the Democrats either ignored him or snarked at the protest. Even the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg got in on the act when she called Kaepernick’s protests “dumb and disrespectful” and said, “I would have the same answer if you asked me about flag-burning.” After the 2016 season, he was blackballed from the league. No $11,000 fines for Colin. Just the potential earnings loss of millions.

Kaepernick’s lack of a political home reflected the growing reaction to the larger movement, where open doors started to slam shut for Black Lives Matter activists. Most bills to “defund the police” stalled, and Joe Biden undermined the movement by thundering “fund the police” in his first State of the Union address in 2022.

This story of two football players and two fates brings to mind the words of French political figure Jean-Luc Melanchon. The man that Reuters recently called “The towering firebrand of France's hard-left” had his own take on our elections. Melanchon, who counts his political enemies in bulk, said, “The US couldn't choose the Left: there wasn't one. When there's no more Left, there's no limit on the Right. When there's no fight over programme, the election becomes a casting exercise. Trump's win is the unstoppable consequence of this situation."

Melanchon is pointing out the glaring problem in our politics. People overwhelmingly feel like we are headed in the wrong direction. Unfortunately, we do not have two parties capable of offering transformational change. We have one—and it’s a Republican party, shrugging off any principles for a shot at power. Any pieties about states’ rights, balanced budgets, and allegiance to the constitution are now just road bumps on their giddy toboggan ride toward autocracy.

As the traditional GOP, with very few exceptions, sprints to the right, the Democrats, donning cement shoes, have awkwardly tried to follow while staying stuck in place. They were more comfortable courting that mythical creature known as “The Cheney Democrat” than putting up a political fight. Standard left ideas like Medicare For All, opposition to the criminal justice system, immigrant rights, and an arms embargo on Israel to enforce a ceasefire, were given no voice. Instead, as Melanchon said, the people were unable to choose a program in left political opposition to Trump’s because there simply wasn’t one. The Democratic Party is not built for such a battle. It’s like asking a rooster to bark.

As a result, there is no political home for the Colin Kaepernicks of this world. There is no political home for the abolitionist, the striking worker, the student radical, the national health care proponent, or the principled pacifist. They are stranded and losing hope. While Nick Bosa is probably getting fit for a tux in preparation for an inauguration ball, Colin Kaepernick is off to the side, co-editing (excellent!)defenses of Black Studies, instead of being brought to the forefront of a political battle to win people away from Trumpism.

We are going to need to build institutions in this country—in politics, in media, in popular culture—that have the capacity to fight fascism. We are going to need to build institutions and movements that are able to welcome the Kaepernicks of this world to take on the Bosas. We are going to need to build—because right now, Nick Bosa is being unblocked, and he’s not calling for peace.

THE TRUMP-CALIFORNIA WATER WARS ARE ABOUT TO BEGIN

by Michael Macor

In a social media post days after the election, President-elect Donald Trump made clear that California’s water wars are top of his agenda – and he’s firmly on the side of big water users, not fish.

His early words for the state come as little surprise after his first four years in office. The previous Trump administration successfully rolled back environmental protections to send more water from rivers in the north to farms and cities farther south.

While the agriculturally rich San Joaquin Valley welcomes water that might return with Trump 2.0, critics worry that the president’s prior term gives him the know-how now for an even bigger water grab, all the while drying up landscapes, killing wildlife and ruining the serenity and sport many residents seek on the state’s waterways.

“I’m concerned that the incoming administration will be more effective in passing their agenda,” said Ashley Overhouse, water policy advisor for the conservation group Defenders of Wildlife. “We’re talking about generations of Californians that may be impacted by the devastating decisions of this administration. Water is life, so water should be treated as such.”

Despite both the fears and hopes for Trump, making changes to the sprawling water systems that harness California’s rivers and send flows hundreds of miles across the state is neither simple nor quick. Also, most water policy, such as water rights and river flow requirements, is the purview of the state, not the federal government.

Still, water experts expect a handful of moves immediately following Trump’s inauguration. First and foremost, they say, the administration will likely try to deliver more water through the federally operated Central Valley Project, by ramping up the pumps in the lush yet ecologically sensitive Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

Trump accelerated pumping there during his first go-round, allowing more water from the north to move south at the expense of flows for salmon and other struggling fish. The practice was wound back when President Biden took office.

Changes to pumping operations must comply with state and federal laws, including endangered species protections. However, there’s wiggle room. What constitutes compliance is not fixed, and just as the Trump administration did in its first term, it’s apt to rewrite “biological opinions” to similarly make fewer accommodations for wildlife.

“There’s no question that a thumb will be on the scale for more water to be pushed out of rivers and the bay delta,” said Felicia Marcus, former chair of the California Water Resources Control Board and now a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Water in the West Program. “It’s a question of how much more.”

The delta, which is where California’s biggest rivers meet and a linchpin not only for fish and wildlife but water supplies, is in a state of rapid ecological decline, owing to pumping and other stressors such as drought and climate change. Marcus said a better “balance” between exporting water and leaving it for the ecosystem is key to saving the delta.

While environmental groups have fought to protect delta flows, agricultural and municipal interests have pushed for more.

Many growers in the San Joaquin Valley, where more than a third of the nation’s fruits and nuts are harvested, saw water deliveries increase about 5% or more in 2020, the first year that pumping picked up under the previous Trump administration, according to the Fresno County Farm Bureau.

“It has hurt us in the valley (since), and pretty much anywhere south of the delta, by not being able to take advantage of those flows,” said Ryan Jacobsen, executive director of the county farm bureau. “It’s popular to beat up on Trump in many parts of the state… but we’re looking to be able to take water when the conditions allow it.”

Jacobsen and others in farm country, while recognizing the importance of safeguarding the delta, say that years of regulation has done little to improve the estuary. They believe there’s opportunity to sustainably increase pumping in wet periods when there’s plenty of water for all.

Trump has leaned into the frustration over pumping limits. In his three bids for president, he has criticized California for not boosting supplies and made water one of his signature campaign themes in the West. On Friday, he reiterated his gripes on Truth Social.

On the social media site, he cited California water management among the state’s “INSANE POLICY DECISIONS.” He explained his concern as “the ridiculously rerouting of MILLIONS OF GALLONS OF WATER A DAY FROM THE NORTH OUT OF THE PACIFIC OCEAN, rather than using it, free of charge, for the towns, cities & farms dotted all throughout California.”

It’s unclear whether Trump’s mischaracterization, that the state re-routes water to the ocean, is intentional – perhaps it was done to magnify the “insanity” of California’s policies. (The state doesn’t re-route water to the ocean. It’s the other way around: the state re-routes the rivers so that much of the water doesn’t go to the ocean.)

Still, Trump’s point is clear. He wants to increase pumping, essentially in the delta, and leave less water running to sea. The talking point has allied him with the biggest players in California’s agricultural industry, and in last week’s election, likely helped him secure wins in all eight counties in the San Joaquin Valley.

Water regulators, though, warn of a potential problem in halting too much of the flow from the delta to the ocean – one that pertains to the common complaint about water “wasted” when it is sent to the sea. Not only would wildlife along the waterways suffer, but water from the ocean would push inward without the counteracting outflow, filling the delta and its water supply with salt.

Another likely strategy for the incoming administration, water experts say, is expanding the Central Valley Project, specifically enlarging Lake Shasta, the state’s largest reservoir. An additional 634,000 acre-feet of storage at the lake could meet the water needs of more than 1.2 million households annually, at least in wet years.

Such an enterprise has been discussed before, including during Trump’s first term. However, it was largely dismissed as a pipe dream. Extending the reservoir would violate state and federal Wild and Scenic Rivers acts and could mean flooding tribal lands. Also, environmentalists say a bigger reservoir would keep more water from fish.

With a more experienced administration and likely Republican control of the House and Senate, Shasta’s expansion would be more viable. A bill introduced by San Joaquin Valley Republican Rep. David Valadao, which stands a better chance of moving forward after the GOP’s election gains, would help fund the project.

What the new administration is able to accomplish over the next four years hinges largely on how much pushback the state gives. Gov. Gavin Newsom has already assumed the mantle of resistance to Trump, calling for a special session of the Legislature to discuss efforts to combat unwelcome policies.

On water issues, state agencies can exercise some regulatory authority over the federal Central Valley Project, alongside California’s State Water Project, to limit new water deliveries. The state and federal governments are still negotiating the details of how the two projects, and the pumping, should continue after changes were made during Trump’s first term.

Environmentalists, though, fear that state regulators under Newsom, who has shown a willingness to work with the farm community, isn’t going far enough to protect California’s waterways. The state’s proposed operations plan for the projects, which must be coordinated with the federal government’s proposed operations plan, has been criticized as doing too little for fish, especially salmon runs.

“If the Trump administration’s plan was the endangered species extinction plan, then the state’s plan was an extinction plan ‘lite,’” said Jon Rosenfield, senior scientist at the conservation group San Francisco Baykeeper. “The state has a lot of power to protect water and fisheries, but so far the Newsom administration has not created a lot of daylight between it and the federal administration.”

To the chagrin of environmentalists, and the praise of the agricultural community, Newsom has supported construction of a major new reservoir along the Sacramento River, though situated off the main flow. He’s also pushing plans for a 45-mile water tunnel in the delta, in part to boost water deliveries.

Jeffrey Mount, a senior fellow at the Water Policy Center of the Public Policy Institute of California, says there’s simply too much in flux now to have a clear idea of what will shake out in California’s water world.

“The Trump policies did result in a little more water in terms of supply to the San Joaquin Valley, but they really didn’t change things too much – it wasn’t a wholesale change,” he said. “We’re all going to be speculating now on the worst- and best-case scenarios going forward. It’s probably going to end up being something in between.”

CONFESSIONS OF A COFFEE JOCK PACKED TIGHT & PULLED SHORT

by Robert Mailer Anderson (2008)

Johnny Lunchbox was a workhorse with a lick-the-boot mentality. Clocking time. Waiting for his day to come, until out of boredom or necessity, he tied himself off with the brown junk. Just a taste; take it or leave it. But the euphoric sense of speed was overwhelming. He started each sip wanting another. Caffeine mainline. Liquidity. He made the six o'clock stroll to the cafe every morning, staying up later each night unable to sleep or dream or blink. You don't know a town until you've seen it sleep. Same as a woman. Then you can't wake up to the same face anymore; your own. Five generations of ghosts haunting every step, buried with Cala lilies, the grinding of an accordion, wheezing bagpipes, a roller piano; “Kiss me once, kiss me twice, kiss me once again, it's been a long, long time.” He knew the history etched in every epitaph. City hall burned. Creamery stood over there. Family had two houses the size of a city block with a big backyard, leveled for a gas station. Dogs hit by cars, running into streets as if they had swallowed magnetized bones. Sadie, Pal, Hank. He was going down too. Anxiety headaches. TMJ. Quality time ticking. Cold-turkey. Binge. Schizophrenic with everything but the pour; doppio, doppio, doppio. Clouds of foam billowing…

Bankrupt. I own 24% of an espresso bar inside a bookstore that has gone bankrupt. Dead animal. Lights off; mountain of mail on their counter, misshelved books, dust collecting, register removed from sight, no employees. Confused customers. I serve coffee inside this carcass, like Jonah bailing water from inside the whale, learning fast the language of lawyers, landowners, lessors, brokers, businessmen, potential investors, and the multitude of freaks who just want to talk. 80-cents buys my attention. I'm always on. Stringing people out on chit-chat, eye contact, spontaneous performance art, and caffeine. My life is a Mamet play; “Coffee's for closers.”

“Thanks a latte.”

I'll kill the next Kentfield housewife ordering a double half-caf vanilla soy mocha, flat with no chocolate, in a medium cup to stay. Who changes her mind? “Sorry, is it too late to just get a small decaf to go?” Not if you want to Fed-Ex this vegan speedball to some starving child in China or East Oakland who's willing to drink it cold, and pay for the pleasure.

“But I don't want it.”

Then why did you order it?

“I don't know?”

What am I supposed to do?

“Give it to the next customer.”

He wants a large coffee with room for cream, no lid.

“How do you know?”

Because he's ordered a large coffee with room for cream, no lid, every day for two years, and if he ordered something else I wouldn't give it to him.

“What about the woman behind him?”

Non-fat latte, extra chocolate.

“Then we'll have to wait.”

My life is a Beckett play.

The best theater takes place at the front of the line where there are plenty of games to play, including “customer's always right,” “stump the barrista,” “the great menu discovery,” “spill liquid spill,” and my favorite, “suddenly I'm a moron who doesn't now how to complete a simple cash transaction in a coffee shop when seconds earlier I was a successful businessman driving a $50,000 BMW.”

Of course there are games barristas play: “Any milk will do,” “Certainly that's decaf,” “Coming right up,” and “No change for a $20.” There is also the improv that comes with overcaffeination: singing, dancing, swearing. Speaking in tongues. Bad jokes.

Q: What's the difference between Neal Armstrong and Michael Jackson? A: Neal Armstrong walked on the moon, and Michael Jackson's a pedophile.
Q: What's the difference between a crucifixion and a circumcision? A: In a crucifixion you throw out the whole Jew…
A homeless guy opens the door and screams he's suing me because I'm responsible for the death of his brother, the S&L scam, Moses having only ten commandments, and JFK getting whacked in Texas. A woman wearing day-glo make-up, squeezed into a prom dress two sizes too small, screeches at the top of her lungs the song of all tortured souls. Someone takes a bath in the bathroom. No tub. The toilets are clogged with shit, stir sticks and a Victoria's Secret catalog. I don't want to know. Another indigent goes for the double-cup small-in-a-large scam (after receiving a small coffee in two large coffee cups, doubled because “it's too hot to carry,” the bum splits the coffee into the two large cups, filling them to the rim with half and half, creating two large au laits for the price of one small coffee. Cafe owners note: Milk, especially half-and-half, is significantly more expensive than coffee). Reagan's plan of “trickle down neurotics,” opening institutions and setting loose the loonies, is working. The insane are everywhere.

I remember a time in this town when if a man laid on the sidewalk, something was wrong. Now it's commonplace. Everyone is on the ground and it's just a question of which toes you're going to step on. Who's going to get the three count? The politically correct, the police, business owners, the environment, drugs, alcohol, indifference, apathy. Human kindness. People protesting soup kitchens. Christians, cannibals?

I look at the mission, pink stucco surrounded by palm trees, backdrop of hills and cloudless sky. St. Raphael. I remember mass in Latin, hail marys, rosary beads. Site of my parents and grandparents marriage. Crosses to bear. If God gave his approval to that kind of sufferathon, he can give the nod to anything. I want to know, right along with Daniel Woodrell, what would have happened if they didn't crucify Christ? Would the world be different if they had only implemented a little Boonville justice? Took him out back and beat the holy shit out of him?

“Do you have a soy substitute?”

“Milk.”

Telephone rings. It's my mother. She calls at a quarter to nine when the caffeine jones is coming down chaotic on our customers like a million monkeys descending the trees for a single banana. And they're about to be late for work. Dawn of the Dead. Man with the Golden Arm. “No Mom I can't talk now,” I say, scalding myself with the steamer wand, another tribal scar. Mark of the multitasker. Foam spurting in pornographic fashion. Money shot. “I love you too, Mom.” Rattle of coins in tip jar. I end every phone conversation — bakery add-ons, bill collectors, wrong numbers — with, “I love you too, Mom.” Watch the quarters tumble, singles stuffed into the coffee can. You have to work the tip jar — “Nice hair, great dress, fabulous shoes.” “How's Grandma in Des Moines?” “Go Niners!”

“I like my women the way I like my cake, white and moist. Unfortunately, she's like day-old coffee, cold and bitter.”

A dock worker at sea amidst the flotsam of middle aged Marin housewives wants his third double espresso. They want decaf nonfat lattes, “Why Bother?” I want to drink my green health shake, spirulina, mushroom extract, algae. Hedging my bets. Wheat grass and cocaine. Carrot juice and single malt. Cigars and a jog up Mt. Tam. He asks why I would drink such a toxic looking mess. I tell him, “It tastes alright and it's supposed to be good for you.” He says, “That's what they said about pussy!” Housewives freeze like hood ornaments. No rebuttal; Keely Smith is singing “Bewitched, bothered and bewildered.” I slide the guy his drink free; an award for the most offensive statement of the month. Sometimes you don't have to wait for all the entries.

“Frappuchino?”

“Crappuchino?”

“Frozen latte?”

“Cafe booté?”

“Squeeze me?”

“Baking Powder?”

Starbucks. Corporate America eroding the fabric of our lives. Advertising dollars at work. Elaborate lies about the quality of coffee sold by the millions. Billions served. McCoffee. The same people who brought you the Gulf War, a hole in the ozone, climate change, the five-second attention span. They've mall-ified America, destroyed your downtown, killed Mom and Pop's corner store, now they’re back to build in the graveyard. Pick on the bones of your hometown. One flavorless flavor über alles. “But they give to the community.” Like GM gave to Flint, Michigan. Exxon gives to the environment. Next time you're in Starbucks, ask to talk to the owner. Not the manager or a 1-800 number, the owner. See if he's around making foam, stacking milk crates, counting out change. Starbucks customers always ask what happened to the bookstore or the nice people that ran the quaint shop that used to be down the street. I tell them, “You killed them.”

Pop Quiz: I should a) choose quality coffee and a local business, b) support Seattle and a faceless corporation, c) walk up and down the street looking confused.

Caffeine and Cole Porter coursing through my veins, I fall into a rhythm, the camaraderie of the morning crowd; men and women on their way to work. I enjoy the interaction, strangers becoming acquaintances, friends… A community. Playfully joking, recounting boxscores, birthday dinners, movie reviews. Headlines. Daily life. The anonymous anxiety that permeates each and every one of us living with the foregone conclusion of apocalypse. Still making the gesture. Getting up early to battle windmills. Pay the rent. Mow the lawn. Dignity. Hope. I feel partially responsible for this atmosphere, this unnamed enthusiasm, for creating this space. But by the end of my shift, I can't make another latte. All foamed out. I lean back against the refrigerator, sliding to the ground, floor mats sticking to my jeans like honeycomb, contemplating Caffe Valeska from a new angle. Cash register looming like a God. I know the real problem, the true source of my neurosis: I'm not a morning person.

“I had observed that the men who were most in life, who were molding life, who were life itself, ate little, slept little, owned little or nothing. They had no illusions about duty… or the preservation of the State. They were interested in truth and in truth alone. They recognized only one kind of activity - creation.”

— Henry Miller

DESPITE a long series of more or less catastrophic misunderstandings arising from get-togethers of one kind and another, people went right ahead thinking they would do good, as when, early in World War II, some genius said a whole lot would be gained if the late H. G. Wells went on an American tour and made personal contact with influential ex-President Herbert Hoover — might be a turning point in Anglo-American relations.

Wells trekked out to Palo Alto where Hoover was, and he sat down opposite Hoover, he had arrived a little early which gave him a little more time, and he talked. In his high voice Wells talked and he talked. Talked about civilization, menaces to it and ways of averting them, necessity for mutual understanding in the face of perils, etc. It was disconcerting, Mr. Wells told me a long time later, because all this time Hoover's rather big face did not show so much as a flicker of interest round the edges. Still, understanding must be achieved, and Wells kept on and on, pulling out all the stops. When he had been talking about the risks of cessation from the society of nations for nearly 25 minutes, Hoover, immobile as a statue all this time, suddenly moved. He took a watch out of his waistcoat pocket and looked at it.

“I'm afraid,” he said, “you'll have to excuse me. I have an appointment at this time with a Mr. H. G. Wells.”

— Claud Cockburn, from “Cancel That Trip Now,” 1956

Nora Washington with a catfish she caught in the Colorado River. Bastrop, TX (1950s)

HUNDREDS OF SALMON ARE NOW SPAWNING IN KLAMATH RIVER AND TRIBUTARIES AFTER DAM REMOVAL COMPLETED!

by Dan Bacher

Hundreds of fall-run Chinook salmon are now spawning on the Klamath River and its tributaries both above and below the former sites of the four PacifiCorp dams now that the dam removal has been completed.

Craig Tucker, Natural Resources Consultant for the Karuk Tribe, made a trip to Spencer Creek in Oregon 3 days ago. He reported that he counted over 100 Chinook in Spencer Creek and around the mouth of the creek. “Salmon are coming back to the Upper Klamath Basin!” he said.

The Yurok Tribe reported that “hundreds of salmon” are now spawning in the river and tributaries above the former Iron Gate Dam — and emphasized the key role that salmon provide in the Klamath’s ecosystem:

“Within eyesight of the fish, the Yurok Revegetation Crew is hand sowing millions of native plant seeds along the previously inaccessible upper mainstem Klamath and four tributaries. Hundreds of salmon are spawning in this area for the first time in 60 and 112 years.

“Like all Pacific salmon, these Chinooks will perish after they reproduce and their bodies will provide nutrients for the newly planted vegetation as well as saplings and shrubs established earlier this year. The restoration of the flow of marine nutrients from the ocean to upper basin is one of the many benefits of dam removal.

“In addition to fertilizing plants, salmons’ corporeal remains will provide food for other fish, birds and mammals, including resident trout, bald eagles and black bears. Salmon is one of the most nutritionally dense food sources for native wildlife in the region.

“Spawned out salmon also play a particularly significant role in the restoration of aquatic macroinvertebrate populations in streams and rivers. These mostly water-dwelling insects, such as (non-biting) midges, are a primary food source for baby salmon. Salmon carcasses can increase macroinvertebrate abundance and juvenile salmon biomass.

“Much more work is needed to get to a point where the reservoir reach is producing large numbers of juvenile salmon. It has only been five weeks since the conclusion of deconstruction component of the dam removal project.

“Coinciding with natural seed dispersal, the fall seeding project represents the second phase of a years-long effort to restore 38 miles or river and 2,200 acres of terrestrial habitat between the former dams. The first stage was implemented over a six-week period between February and March of 2024. The Yurok Revegetation Crew, under contract with RES, manually planted 8.7 tons of native plant seed, 76,000 trees and shrubs and 2,500 narrowleaf milkweed (Asclepias fascicularis) starts. In total, the inaugural planting included more than 50 different plant species.

“By spring, much of the former reservoirs were covered in a green, yellow and orange blanket of native grasses and wildflowers, which quickly drew the attention of birds, bees and butterflies.

“The Yurok Fisheries Department’s Senior Riparian Ecologist, Joshua Chenoweth, created unique seed mixes for specific microhabitats extending from the uplands to the river’s edge. Each blend contains 10 to 20 plant species that serve a wide variety of functions, such as nitrogen fixation and soil stabilization.

“The mixtures were also designed to produce an abundance of flowers and seeds for the longest time possible for native insects and birds. Numerous blooms were visible from March to October.

“Next year, the revegetation crew will incorporate another 50 plant species into the project. The Yurok Fisheries Department collected the original seed stock from around the dams. Local nurseries cultivated the initial 1 million seeds into 17 billion seeds.

“The Yurok Fisheries Department is involved in multiple aspects of post-dam removal restoration and monitoring of the newly freed part of the Klamath. On a regular basis, Fisheries staff are surveying macroinvertebrates in the reclaimed river channel. The team has already observed stoneflies, mayflies and midge larvae on the river bottom in the Iron Gate Reservoir footprint.

“The presence of these insects is an indicator of improved water quality. The department and several partners are participating in a California Trout-led effort to monitor fish migrations. Yurok Fisheries and other tribal agencies are developing plans to implement an $18 million restoration project on tributaries above the reservoir boundaries.”

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has documented a combined total of 5,660 adult Chinook Salmon and 10 adult Coho Salmon returning to the Shasta River, Bogus Creek, Scott River, Jenny Creek and Shovel Creek, all Klamath tributaries, in their Klamath Project Adult Fish Counting Facility In-season Update on November 8.

The Shasta River station reported 4,625 adult Chinook Salmon and 0 adult Coho Salmon through November 3, 2024.

The Bogus Creek station reported 293 adult Chinook Salmon and 0 adult Coho Salmon through October 30, 2024.

The Scott River station reported 413 adult Chinook Salmon and 10 adult Coho Salmon through November 5, 2024.

Jenny Creek Weir reported 245 Chinook Salmon, 0 Coho Salmon as of October 30, 2024.

Shovel Creek Weir reported 84 Chinook Salmon and 0 Coho Salmon as of October 29, 2024.

MAN FOUND LIVING IN CRAWL SPACE OF LOS ANGELES HOME

by Amanda Holpuch

A 92-year-old woman had heard strange noises late at night for weeks before the police arrested a naked man who they said had been living under her house.

The police in Los Angeles arrested a man on Friday who had been living under the home of a 92-year-old woman, who had assumed that the strange noises she had been hearing inside her house in recent weeks were caused by animals.

Police officers responded to a call around 10:30 p.m. on Thursday about an unknown person in the crawl space of a home in the El Sereno neighborhood and found a naked man who refused to come out, said Officer David Cuellar, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department.

A SWAT team was brought in to assist the police, and after several hours, officers used gas to force the man, Isaac Betancourt, 27, out from under the house and then took him into custody, Officer Cuellar said.

Mr. Betancourt was arrested on a trespassing charge at 4:25 a.m. on Friday morning and released the next day, according to Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department records. He had been arrested at least five times in the past few years. He could not immediately be reached for comment.

The 92-year-old woman and her family had heard strange noises for weeks, usually late at night, and assumed the sounds were caused by animals, her son-in-law, Ricardo Silva, said in an interview with NBC Los Angeles.

On Thursday night, family members at the house heard even louder knocking noises and thought something was wrong and called the police, Mr. Silva said. The family plans to secure the crawl space, which is about two feet high and has three entryways, he said.

It was not clear how long Mr. Betancourt had been under the house.

“It’s a bizarre thing, but it’s not probably uncommon, you know, in this day and age, people are looking for shelter,” Mr. Silva said.

Homes in California are about twice as expensive as the typical American home, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office, a nonpartisan state agency.

In May, a woman was found living in the rooftop sign of a grocery store in Michigan, which she had outfitted with flooring, a Keurig coffee maker and a computer. She had been living there about a year and was not charged, the police said.

It was not clear how long Mr. Betancourt had been under the house.

“It’s a bizarre thing, but it’s not probably uncommon, you know, in this day and age, people are looking for shelter,” Mr. Silva said.

Homes in California are about twice as expensive as the typical American home, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office, a nonpartisan state agency.

In March 2023, a man said he had lived in Philadelphia’s Veterans Stadium from 1979 into 1981 after getting a job there that gave him access to an empty concession stand.

(NY Times)

DEMOCRATS NEED THEIR OWN DONALD TRUMP. HE'S RIGHT HERE IN CALIFORNIA.

Democrats can beat Republicans at their own game by unleashing Gavin Newsom

by Alec Regimbal

If you’ve spent any time online over the past four days, you’ve probably seen internet users thirsting over Gavin Newsom. But if you chose to crawl into a hole after Tuesday’s election, I will sum up the posts for you: Gavin Newsom is an evil sociopath and he’s hot and he hates Republicans so he must run for president.

The reason for this unabashed yearning is, of course, that Donald Trump is the president-elect. Again. How catastrophic his second term will be is still unclear. What is clear, though, is that Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party suffered a remarkable ass-kicking on Election Day.

Harris lost all seven swing states, and is on track to lose the popular vote. Republicans took the presidency and the Senate and are poised to keep the House. Harris actually won fewer electoral college votes than Hillary Clinton did in 2016. It was an exceptionally thorough drubbing.

So, it seems, those social media users are onto something. Newsom, like Trump, is pugilistic. Newsom, like Trump, is petty. Newsom, like Trump, is vain. Newsom, like Trump, really wants to live in the White House.

The presidential rumors have been swirling around Newsom for decades, but they were supercharged in 2022 after a fiery speech in which he called out the rest of the Democratic Party for not being more proactive in taking the fight to Republicans. Since then, he’s shown that his now-famous call to action wasn’t just talk.

He started a political action committee dedicated to getting Democrats elected in deep-red areas and even toured many of those places to promote it. He’s argued with pundits on Fox News, apparently just for the lols, and last year even participated in a televised debate with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was running for the Republican nomination for president at the time.

Watch clips from that debate. Newsom is almost Trumpian in his performance. He’s confident, boisterous and doesn’t hesitate to get personal in his digs at DeSantis. Newsom made the Florida governor look like a fool, and he wasn’t even running for anything at the time. He did it simply because he wanted the fight. That bloodlust was highlighted in one post from over the weekend: “As a Californian, Newsom is an evil psychopathic demon who feeds on the blood of Republicans. I despise everything about him and cannot wait for the day I get to vote for him as president.”

Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, became famous for calling Republicans weird little freaks over the summer. Republicans were peeing their pants when Democrats started calling them weird, because it was a stunningly effective message, because they ARE weird. It is objectively weird to wonder what genitals a high school athlete has. It is objectively weird to insist a female child should carry her rapist’s baby to term.

While that message was inexplicably and quickly abandoned by the Harriz-Walz campaign, it showed that eschewing decorum in favor of aggression can have a real impact. Newsom absolutely loves that s—t, having used adjectives like “delusional” and “poisonous” to describe right-wing ideology in his State of the State address earlier this year.

Notably, Newsom’s attention-seeking bulldog approach to certain issues hasn’t been broadly disqualifying, which is unusual from the left-wing purity test crowd. Many of the fawning posts on X over the past few days refer to Newsom as a psychopath or a sociopath, referencing in particular his calls for California cities to be more forceful in clearing out homeless encampments. Newsom himself helped clear an encampment in Los Angeles County earlier this year.

This is genuinely unhinged behavior, especially for a clean-shaven Californian who once posed for appallingly intimate photos with his then-wife in the mansion of a Getty Oil heir. Yet here he is now, one affair and zombified debate and unmasked French Laundry dinner later, donning workman’s gloves and a flirty black V-neck to pick up trash from under a freeway overpass.

As I watched the election results come in Tuesday, I thought of a social media post made in 2018 by @Arr on what was formerly Twitter: “The last decade has been the Democrats clinging onto the rulebook going ‘but a dog can’t play basketball!’ while a dog f—king dunks on us over and over.”

I think about that post often, because @Arr is right. If there’s one thing I admire about Republicans, it’s that they know how to win. They got Trump, a boorish former reality TV star who entered politics at age 69, elected twice over more qualified candidates. They hijacked a U.S. Supreme Court seat in 2016. Then they did it again in 2020 by completely reversing all the faux-righteous reasoning they offered in 2016.

Democrats, meanwhile, are obsessed with decorum. It’s a debilitating weakness.

There is nothing that Trump could do that would lead his supporters to abandon him. I truly do believe he could, as he once said, “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” and not “lose any voters.” Democrats need someone to match that energy, and it just so happens that one image in particular of Newsom has been circulating in the last few days, in which he is wearing a crisp blue suit and clutching an AR-15 rifle as he directly addresses “members of the United States Supreme Court.” It was ripped from a 2022 video that accompanied his signing of two bills to ban ghost guns in California, and it is the purest distillation of Newsom’s unique blend of debonair and deranged.

With Trump’s latest victory, it’s time for Democrats to throw out the playbook of the past decade. “When they go low, we go high!” has proved ineffective. Democrats need a big man to stand at the base of the hoop and stuff the dog that keeps dunking on them. They need Gavin Newsom.

THIS GUY SHOWED UP, wearing clogs and a backpack, and he told me about the toothbrush cycle, how when you throw away your PVC toothbrush it gets incinerated, and its chlorine becomes dioxin and goes into the air. The air brings it out over the sea; it rains, and the dioxin goes into the plankton. The fish eat the plankton, and you go to a restaurant and order up a nice sea bass for fifty euros, and you’ve just eaten your toothbrush. It was beautiful, this image of everything you throw away coming back to you! It was a global vision of economics and society, which had escaped me until then.

— Grillo

LEAD STORIES, WEDNESDAY'S NYT

Trump Taps Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to Slash Government

Trump Picks Pete Hegseth, a Veteran and Fox News Host, for Defense Secretary

Triumphant Republicans Grapple With Trump’s Influence as They Return to Capitol

Trump’s Demand to Skirt Senate Confirmations Poses Early Test of a Radical Second Term

U.S. to Keep Sending Arms to Israel Despite Dire Conditions in Gaza

Many Kids’ Melatonin Supplements Don’t Contain the Doses They Claim

The Streaming Wars Didn’t Kill the Little Guys. In Fact, They’re Thriving

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I hated a lot of what Kamala stood for, but voted for her anyway. Because I believed that the damage she would do would be far easier to undo later than the damage he would do. Sad that my choice would come down to that. Sometimes I think the “Vote for Cthulhu, why settle for the lesser of two evils” crowd has it down pat.

TRUMP NAMES ELON MUSK AND VIVEK RAMASWAMY to head Department of Government Efficiency - 'Manhattan Project of our time'

by Nikki Schwab

President-elect Donald Trump has officially named Elon Musk to head the newly created 'Department of Government Efficiency.'

Trump put out a statement Tuesday night saying that Musk will co-lead the 'Manhattan Project of our time' with former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

'This will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people!' Musk said in a statement.

Republicans have long complained about government over-spending and Trump touted that DOGE will accomplish its goals by July 4, 2026.

'A smaller Government, with more efficiency and less bureaucracy, will be the perfect gift to America on the 250th Anniversary of The Declaration of Independence,' he wrote. 'I am confident they will succeed!'

Musk and Ramaswamy have become some of Trump's top allies in the tech bro community.

Musk officially endorsed Trump on the heels of the July 13 assassination attempt on the Republican at his Butler, Pennsylvania rally.

The SpaceX, X and Tesla head joined Trump on the campaign trail on October 5 when the now president-elect returned to the Butler venue - memorably jumping around onstage.

He put his money where his mouth was - offering a $1 million award each day to registered voters in battleground states.

Musk was with Trump and his family members at their election night shindig at Mar-a-Lago and has since been seen in meetings with the president-elect as he figures out who's in his Cabinet.

Ramaswamy is a Yale Law-educated entrepreneur who started Roivant Sciences Ltd. a decade ago, which uses technology to aid drug development and other healthcare needs.

He wrote a popular book on the right: Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam.

Ramaswamy started out the 2024 election cycle by running for president himself - though stayed complimentary of the ex-president.

Unlike candidates like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and former Rep. Will Hurd, who were decidedly anti-Trump in the 2024 Republican primary, Ramaswamy touted the 78-year-old's accomplishments in office.

When Trump appeared to be the runaway favorite ahead of the early primaries, Ramaswamy never turned on the former president, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former U.N. Amb. Nikki Haley, allowing him to have a comfortable place to land in the Trump 2.0 White House.

Ramaswamy came in fourth place in the Iowa caucuses, suspending his campaign immediately afterward and endorsing Trump.

Both Musk and Ramaswamy are billionaires - but Musk's net worth is estimated to be 304 billion and Ramaswamy is worth only one billion dollars.

'Republican politicians have dreamed about the objectives of "DOGE" for a very long time,' Trump said. 'To drive this kind of drastic change, the Department of Government Efficiency will provide advice and guidance from outside of Government, and will partner with the White House and Office of Management & Budget to drive large scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to Government never seen before.'

Musk responded to the news by posting to X: 'The merch will be' and then typed out three fire emojis.

(dailymail.co.uk)

*New York Movie* (1939) by Edward Hopper

ELECTING AN AMERICAN FUHRER AS WALL STREET CHEERS & SOARS

by Ralph Nader

On September 17, 1787, the last day after the drafting of our Constitution in Philadelphia, Ben Franklin was leaving the building when a prominent resident, Elizabeth Willing Powel, asked him “Well Doctor, what have we got – a republic or a monarch?” Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

On November 5, 2024, our fragile Republic became a Monarchy-elect. A majority of voters elected a Dictator. This is no exaggeration. Look at just some of the damage Trump has done and the appalling things he has said. In July 2019, he declared “With Article II, I can do whatever I want as president.” And he did, throughout his four years, he violated all kinds of federal laws and provisions of the Constitution, mostly openly, with impunity. He obstructed justice from the White House as a way of life. He defied over 125 Congressional subpoenas. He is a very successful fugitive from justice with lawyers skilled at endlessly delaying judges and courts where federal and state prosecutors have obtained indictments. His convictions and adverse civil verdicts are like water on a duck’s back.

He openly admires foreign dictators and meets with them proudly, musing about wanting to be more like them. Moreover, he is gathering around him a large number of vengeful, dictatorial Trumpsters readying to take over the federal departments and agencies. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, 900-page report prepared a detailed blueprint for the corporate state that is the definition of fascism, American style. Together with Trump, they have their “enemies list” both individually and collectively.

In speech after speech, Trump, Vance, and others have spoken as if they will have boundless power after January 20, 2025. They are not wrong. They control the compliant Republican House and the Senate. The U.S. Supreme Court (6 to 3) decided fanatically last June that a president’s “official” conduct no matter how extreme was immune from criminal prosecution. Three of the Justices were Trump’s nominees.

He believes his presidency will be above the law. There is no one to challenge him. Ordinary citizens have no “legal standing” to sue. And as is the practice, he will replace all the federal prosecutors working at the Department of Justice, under the new Attorney General whom he chooses.

Trump may be on facts and policies, “dumb as a rock,” “with a low IQ!” – to use his words about other persons, but when it comes to knowing the electorate and the mass media, he is a master magician who induces mass masochism. As with violent climate disruptions are “a hoax, drill baby drill.”

He weaves a web of fantasy about his past failed business and presidential records and constantly repeats his megalomaniac refrain: “Only I can fix it.”

His daily lies often come across to his supporters as a form of entertainment garnished with massaging their own grievances and biases into political campaign fodder. He tells those who think they are victims, that he is their savior. He promises a paradise in America in his next presidential term but doesn’t have a clue about how to get there.

As far as the media, his denunciations of them, “fake news,” and the “failing New York Times,” only result in journalists giving him constant top-level coverage, even repeating in CAPITAL LETTERS his pejorative nicknames for people who are not given a chance to reply in the press.

True, the major newspapers have exposed his numerous dark sides – whether personal against women, commercial against workers, students and creditors, against the government with his tax evasions, or as past president, with his brazen violations of law and overt unethical self-enrichment.

Mark Green and I contributed two books– “Fake President: Decoding Trump’s Gaslighting, Corruption, and General Bullsh*t” in 2019 and “Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lawbreaking and Lies Betray All” in 2020 – about dangerous, corrupt Donald.

However, in the end, nothing stuck or mattered. Do-little Donald’s fulminating lies were embraced by his followers. His slippery Teflon persona was underestimated. Voter acceptance of the Trumpian mirage reflects poorly on the majority of the voters who cast their ballots for him.

Trump did have some crucial luck. A weak, arrogant Democratic Party leadership, loaded with inhibitory corporate campaign money, constrained by corporate conflicted political/media consultants, who control the Party’s campaigns and bar input from the experienced citizen community (see, winningamerica.net) made it impossible for the Democratic Party to learn from its past mistakes or its recurring disastrous strategies.

Trump played the Democratic Party, from its bungling nomination process to the anemic Harris campaign like a fiddle – repeatedly, personally, and without a teleprompter, he fed his crowd blatant falsehoods, hateful rhetoric, and delusionary promises. And he gave the middle finger to the “deep state.”

People must realize they are, with all voters, in a two-party duopoly Trap, excluding full access to third-party and independent candidates. No Western country erects, as the U.S.A. does, such barriers to ballot access and many other exclusions and endless harassment. (See Theresa Amato’s book, “Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny”). A competitive democracy we are not. Still, at the presidential level, alternative candidates are often on the ballot if not in the news or in the debates. But most voters want “to be with a winner,” and glumly or willingly accept their electoral incarceration.

Get ready this January for chaos, revenge, greed, rampant abuses of power, and the unbridled control of corrupt plutocrats and oligarchs. With Elon Musk in the lead.

Fascistic states flow into exercises of terror. The majority of the voters have elected an American Fuhrer. Trump will be our founding father’s greatest nightmare. They inserted numerous protections in our Constitution to block another King George III tyrant with their separation of powers and checks and balances. Come 2025 these protections will be shredded.

TRUMP WIN MELTDOWN PROVES LIBERALS ARE MORE DELUSIONAL THAN EVER

by Maureen Callahan

Well, well, well: the republic stands. And dumbstruck liberals can't cope.

Supporters wept outside Howard University as Kamala Harris conceded. Columbia, Harvard, and New York's exclusive Fieldston School offered students days off to grieve — 'hold space', as they love to say, for what might have been.

Georgetown University opened 'self-care suites' where students and faculty could color, play with Lego and have milk and cookies 'in recognition of these stressful times'. Northwestern and Princeton did the same.

These are our future leaders?

The Guardian offered its employees free counseling. Ostensibly hardened reporters traumatized by a peaceful, fair and free election need safe spaces and psychotherapy!

Vogue noted that New Yorkers dressed in head-to-toe black last Wednesday, expressing 'heartbreak' and 'profound disappointment in those who voted against our best interests'.

The left never gets it. They didn't get it after Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 and they sure don't get it now.

For anyone who doesn't just read the New York Times, listen to NPR or watch MSNBC, however, Donald Trump's win wasn't just palpable. It was inevitable.

Despite super-tight polls that barely budged — two myths destroyed, that of the perfected polling system and the 'hidden Kamala voter' — the Mail forecast a Trump win.

If anything, there remain hidden Trump voters, even in formerly deep-blue areas such as Manhattan, which swung almost 10 points red.

Trump also demolished the Blue Wall, took every single swing state, and made major inroads with black and Hispanic voters.

Make no mistake: This is a long-overdue repudiation of all things woke as well as a stifling left-wing media policing language, thought and policy, exemplified by none better than Maria Shriver, herself Democrat royalty.

Here she was, calling herself a journalist and hosting a town hall with Kamala just three weeks ago, to an audience member who raised her hand and said: 'Are we going to be able to ask a question?'

'You're not, unfortunately,' Shriver said. 'Hopefully I'll be able to ask some of the questions that might be in your head.'

Talk about patronizing — a kind of fascism, if you will. By the way, have you noticed how swiftly all those outlets calling Trump the new Hitler abandoned that little talking point? Or the one about the end of democracy, Trump a dictator on Day One?

The American people have had it. They know they're being lied to, and they know the open contempt liberal elites have for them.

Abortion, Reid said after the election, 'was not enough to get white women to vote for Vice President Harris'. Hostin went further, blaming 'uneducated white women' for Kamala's loss.

Meanwhile, a 'blue bracelet movement' has emerged — an accessory for 'progressive' women to signify that they didn't vote for Trump. Really, to signify that they adhere to 'right-think'.

Others are shaving their heads, deleting their dating apps, and refusing to have sex for the entire Trump term. Divorce and voluntary hysterectomies are also recommended.

You couldn't make this up. But such is the one side of America, we're told, that's rational, intellectual and sane.

Yet rather than take this Trump thumping for what it is — a wholesale rejection of trans insanity, of soft-on-crime policies and an untrammeled border — the left prefers to blame a racist, sexist, xenophobic America that's too stupid to get their message.

Here's the thing: America gets the message. We get it all too well. We know that we've been lied to, and we're sick to death of it.

Just as Rhodes scholar Rachel Maddow defended Joe Biden's competency with this stunner: 'He rides a bike!'

Or Joe Scarborough doubling down on his MSNBC show, with typical liberal politesse back in March: 'F**k you if you can't handle the truth. This version of Biden — intellectually, analytically — is the best Biden ever. Not even a close second. And I've known him for years… If it weren't the truth, I wouldn't say it.'

White House press secretary Karine-Jean Pierre insisted all was fine. 'He's as sharp as ever,' she said — one week after that catastrophic June debate with Trump.

Kamala, in February 2024: 'Our president is in good shape, in good health, and is ready to lead in our second term.'

And much of the mainstream media wonders why it sheds eyeballs, subscribers and credibility by the minute.

They dismissed Kamala's terrible internal polling, excused her vapid, highly controlled interviews, and ignored accusations againt her husband, Doug Emhoff, broken by the Mail.

As Axios founder Jim VandeHei told Semafor this week: 'The verdict is not debatable: Half the country thinks traditional media is biased and often useless. They feel reporters treat Republicans like a crime beat and Democrats like friends in need.'

It's a traditional media that ratified Kamala's claims that Trump is a 'fascist' and 'dangerous'.

'This is a democracy,' she haughtily told Fox News last month, 'and in a democracy, the president of the United States, in the United States of America' — whose citizens are, finally, released from Word Salad City — 'should be willing to be able to handle criticism without saying he'd lock people up for doing it.'

Tim Walz, his uselessness matched only by his prevarications, also called Trump 'fascist', 'un-American' and, in the final stretch, heavily implied that Trump supporters are Nazis.

Even Oprah Winfrey — who now denies taking a $1 million payments from the Harris campaign, though her production company sure did — couldn't resist.

'It is entirely possible that we will not have the opportunity to ever cast a ballot again,' she said at a rally last week.

The upside of enduring this supercilious sludge: Celebrities no longer matter. Oprah, made a billionaire by Americans of every stripe, now has zero power when it comes to our politics.

Same with Taylor Swift, Julia Roberts, Beyoncé, Meryl Streep and George Clooney, who penned that op-ed in the New York Times admitting he and other party elites knew, for far too long, that Biden was suffering major cognitive decline and covered it up.

Again: as did much of the media, currently ignoring another exposé that FEMA supervisor Marn'i Washington ordered disaster responders to 'avoid homes advertising Trump' in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton last month.

Imagine a FEMA director telling aides on the ground to ignore homes with Harris signs. The liberal media firestorm would be visible from outer space.

Instead, all we get is wonderment, despair and anger over Trump's victory from the privileged likes of Jon Stewart, Jimmy Kimmel, John Oliver, the Sunday morning news shows and every other left-leaning outlet.

Here's a factoid that encapsulates everything that's wrong with the left: Years of shoving trans orthodoxy down America's throat has backfired.

One of Trump's most effective campaign ads included Harris, during her 2020 presidential run, saying that she supported taxpayer-funded sex change operations for prison inmates.

The tagline: 'Kamala is for "they/them". Trump is for you.'

The success of that ad took even Team Trump by surprise. Common sense could have told the Dems that much of the electorate is against irreversible surgeries on children. Nor do they want boys and men in women's sports and spaces.

In fact, 85 percent of voters in swing states said that their number one issue was abolishing trans orthodoxy.

'I'm not surprised that that [ad] resonated,' said Democratic senator John Fetterman, adding that his party should pay heed to it.

Even socialist senator Bernie Sanders admitted last week that the Dems have 'abandoned working class people'.

Much of this election cycle was permeated by the unbearable phrase 'permission structure': The idea that 'progressive' women needed to allow themselves to vote against their husbands; or that Republican women needed to legitimize a vote for Kamala; or that the bastion of masculinity known as Tim Walz would convince otherwise misogynistic men to the cause.

All of it was a big, fat, pungent lie.

Turns out no one needs a 'permission structure' when it comes to exercising that most fundamental democratic act: Voting.

Or in rejecting a mainstream media that serves only as a propaganda arm of the DNC.

TWO DAYS IN PITTSBURGH

by Linsey McGoey

At PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh on 4 November, teams of ushers were handing out signs that said: ‘Trump will fix it.’ They didn’t allow homemade signs because it was a safety risk, they said, though it also meant they could control what appeared in photos and videos. Seating was carefully orchestrated too: teams of workers wearing T-shirts with union logos and hard hats were positioned close to the stage, behind Trump, so the cameras would show him surrounded by cheering blue-collar supporters. Empty seats were kept out of frame, though there weren’t many of them.

For weeks leading up to the US election, Democratic Party superstars took aim at Trump’s ‘weird obsession with crowd sizes’, in Barack Obama’s words. But the election result suggests a harsh truth: Democrats needed to do a better job of courting Trump’s crowds rather than dismissing them.

I was in Pittsburgh as part of a long-term study interviewing US voters across the political spectrum. I’ve spent a lot of time in the Rust Belt region, in former steel towns, at racetracks and in rural bars drinking pickleback shots with people who are worn down by inflation but still insist, out of pride and politeness, on buying rounds.

It’s more than 130 years since the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers fought Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick’s union-busting Pinkertons at Homestead. Steel-related businesses still provide jobs in the region, but Pittsburgh’s heyday is long past: its population has halved to 300,000 since the 1950s.

The city is still a Democratic stronghold. Kamala Harris took nearly 60 per cent of the vote here. But the surrounding farmland is heavily Republican. Out in the country, among the handmade signs offering Rottweiler puppies for sale and churches publicising free lunches for those who need it, I saw far more Trump-Vance signs than in Pittsburgh. Even in the city, though, Trump’s supporters made themselves seen and heard. Before the rally on 4 November, a passing fire truck blared its horn to whoops from the crowd queuing to get into the stadium.

I spent four hours in the rally queue, talking to people. Artie, aged 69, told me it was the first time he’d felt comfortable enough to wear his MAGA hat in public. He’s a white man from Connecticut, and none of his friends are Trump supporters – he feels like an outlier in his community. He hadn’t come to Pittsburgh for the rally, but had driven the nine hours from Connecticut to cat-sit for his daughter. Recently retired from a job in IT at a financial services firm, he was more expensively dressed than others in the crowd, wearing a navy blazer, jeans and a button-down shirt.

Cameron, 28, also white, also wearing a MAGA hat, was dressed more casually than Artie, in a black body-warmer over a Carnegie Mellon sweatshirt. He’d come alone, too. He’d been a Bernie Sanders supporter in 2016 and voted for Biden in 2020. But now he’s swung to Trump, and he describes his shift in an almost religious way, speaking in awed tones about his certainty that Trump would end wars soon in Ukraine and the Middle East.

In months of interviewing, I have found two broad types of Trump supporter. First, there are those who like his anti-woke stance. They claim that they fiercely value free speech, feel censored for speaking their minds, and think that diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives are undermining the notion of equal opportunity the country is supposed to be built on.

Second, there are the people suffering financially in America’s winner-take-all economy. They attribute low pay and job losses to a loose border, and desperately hope Trump’s win will mean a drop in inflation and lower prices.

There’s overlap between the groups, but keeping both in mind helps to explain why Trump has attracted so many former Sanders supporters to his side – especially young men like Cameron, who feels that the political right, more than the left, is a space of non-conformity and free thought.

During our conversation, Artie and Cameron bonded over their shared admiration for Frank Zappa. Cameron is a musician and grad school student in Pittsburgh. He moved there to study and compose music after coming out as gay to his Mormon parents in Utah. ‘I saw the pipeline that a lot of Mormons have, where it’s like, “OK, you’re going to go on a mission,”’ Cameron said. He didn’t want that but instead went directly to university, convinced before arriving that ‘this was somewhere I could go where everyone’s accepted.’

But he’s been disappointed by his university lectures, angered by what he sees as the lack of openness to different viewpoints. A recent visiting lecturer from the University of Pennsylvania, for example, was critical of people who subscribe to ‘great replacement’ theory but refused, he claims, to take more than a couple of pre-selected questions after her talk. Even Biden is on record admitting that the US is unlikely to be majority white by 2040, Cameron said, so why are people on the right seen as conspiratorial for pointing out that major demographic shifts are a fact of life?

Many of Cameron’s comments were troubling, like his wish to visit England one day and his hope it still ‘looks like England’ – implying that the England he dreams of is white.

But not everyone who is confused and anxious about demographic shifts is a conspiracy theorist, and they might be less susceptible to conspiratorial thinking if there were more open discussion about demographic change, acknowledging that it’s happening and – why not? – arguing for it as a positive development.

Both Artie and Cameron described themselves as strongly socially liberal. ‘My daughter, who I’m cat-sitting for, she’s trans. She was born a boy,’ Artie said. His daughter, like Cameron, is a Bernie Sanders supporter. But Sanders wasn’t on the 2024 ballot, so what option was there for leftists disappointed by the Democratic Party’s rightward stance on issues such as the Mexico-US border and Israel-Palestine? Artie said his daughter voted for the Green Party candidate, Jill Stein.

There have been rare moments in American politics, Artie observed, when the major political parties have altered position in a dramatic manner: he mentioned the Democratic Party renouncing its pro-slavery stance and KKK affiliations and leading on Civil Rights reforms in the 1960s. He said he thought it was happening again today, as the Republican Party – to his mind – is more accepting of freedom of expression and non-conformity than the Dems.

He gestured at the crowd around us: ‘I think that most of the people here will say that the government doesn’t belong in people’s bedrooms. And anything they want to do among themselves as adults is fine.’ Unless, of course, what they want to do is cross the Mexico-US border safely, or have an abortion in Texas or Idaho.

It isn’t surprising that Trump’s conservative positions on reproductive rights should have won him the support of many Christians who have long been anti-abortion. But Artie’s assumption – his willingness to support Trump despite growing hate crimes against gay individuals and the repression of reproductive choice – is less easy to understand.

‘I just honestly could not figure out what redeeming quality you feel like he has that would make you vote for him,’ Sherry, 52, had said to me over breakfast at a café in the Hill District on Sunday, 3 November. ‘I think people should do what they feel comfortable doing, but I’m not going to lie: I do side-eye people who [support Trump] because I feel like they’re missing some of the bigger issues.’

Sherry is a Black woman from Philadelphia who went to university in Pittsburgh and stayed, marrying a man from the Hill District, a predominantly African American area that has suffered decades of economic decline. When the Civic Arena was built in the late 1950s – it was the home of the Pittsburgh Penguins for more than forty years before they moved to the PPG Paints Arena in 2010 – it cast a long shadow on the economic welfare of Hill District families. The project forcibly displayed thousands of Black families and cut off the Hill from downtown, stemming the flow of customers to the dozens of jazz bars and restaurants that had once made the Hill a cultural hub: a bastion of mid-century American optimism for a better, more racially integrated future – hopeful that at last Black families might receive a proportionate share of the wealth that had long advantaging white families.

It never happened. Pittsburgh, like other Rust Belt cities, is still heavily segregated. In the Hill District there are very few bars and restaurants. I passed one boarded-up shop after another. A former NAACP office was abandoned, but there’s still evidence of community support. A leaflet taped to a store window publicised a Memorial and Pollinating Garden to be built by a community coalition. The garden will commemorate people who died from drug overdoses.

‘When we voted for the Democrats four years ago, we were going to get places to eat,’ John, in his fifties, told me. ‘And as you can see, nothing happened. Matter of fact, they’re tearing more buildings down.’ John told me he would be voting for Kamala Harris as ‘the lesser evil’, and taking his 18-year-old son with him, to make sure he at least got to the polling station, whoever he ended up voting for.

I met other Black men in the Hill District who weren’t sure about their support for Harris – or about voting at all. ‘It’s going to be a little harsh,’ the co-owner of one of the few restaurants still open in the Hill said to me, ‘but a person who may be a full-blown drug addict, having the same view as someone who is in the elite thinking class, I really don’t agree with it. He has a right to vote because he’s an American citizen, but should he count?’

The restaurant owner said that his criticism of democracy was shaped by his religion. His conversion to Islam when he was younger, he said, had saved him spiritually and physically. His allegiance was to God, not to any political figure. I asked him about notions of redemption and grace. Why shouldn’t a drug addict ‘count’? Doesn’t he count before God?

He switched topic, threw down a gauntlet, telling me I should ask people whether they were voting on race or voting on policy. He pointed to a woman sitting with us: ‘It might be, like, me and her are the same colour, but maybe our two values don’t match. The race card is played too much.’ His language was blunter than many people’s, but it was a sentiment I heard a lot – especially from Black men. They resented being told they had to vote for Harris because of their race. (More Black men voted for Harris than for Trump, though not as many as voted for Biden in 2020.)

Trump’s win was a protest vote against the incumbent party in a grossly unequal economy where grocery bills have gone up 30 per cent since 2019. But it was also about the perception of freedom of choice – even as migrant safety and reproductive freedoms are severely endangered. And it was a backlash against identity reductionism: the diktat that people should vote a certain way because a candidate is Black or a woman.

Maybe if the Democrats are to win power again there will need to be less lecturing, more listening. Even when a sentiment – such as people not ‘counting’ – is hard to hear. Because democracy’s durability is threatened in many ways, with the biggest danger of all Trump’s capacity to ‘fix it’.

(London Review of Books)

14 Comments

George Hollister November 13, 2024

Where is Marmon?

- Chuck Dunbar November 13, 2024
  
  I have wondered the same thing, hope he is ok and well. Really.
  
- Bruce Anderson November 13, 2024
  
  Jimbo experienced a deep swoon of delight at Trump’s victory, so deep he’s just now regaining consciousness.
  
  - Chuck Dunbar November 13, 2024
    
    JM in bliss and ecstasy–could it be?
    
- David November 13, 2024
  
  Maybe the Rapture?
  
Chuck Dunbar November 13, 2024

Three-plus weeks mostly with no internet—now with new modem, new satellite dish and new underground cable from dish to house—we are back on track. It was probably a blessing during the pre and post election days to not be connected. Far too much craziness, far, far too many words ‘splaining it all.

I did miss the AVA, though not so much the comments section, which in my view has gone downhill. I missed the Ed Notes, like the one today with reflections on Kerouac, missed Bruce’s long view of time, which is seldom seen, most have no sense of it. Missed pieces like Nader’s today on our new dictator.

And best of all—Today’s photos and words about the retired Anderson Valley school teachers goes to my heart and gives me hope. A wonderful piece on how human beings can work together, learn together, help children together, and have some fun doing it. Bless all of you. Humanity at its best, another rare thing these days.

Norm Thurston November 13, 2024

Redwood Journal photo: That’s my dad, Burt Thurston, on the far right.

- Rick Swanson November 13, 2024
  
  I haven’t seen you in almost 50 years Norm,
  but in my mind’s eye you look just like your dad. I hope you are well and enjoying life.
  
  - Norm Thurston November 13, 2024
    
    Thanks Rick, others have noted the resemblance as well. It is nice to touch bases with you on these pages from time to time.
    
Craig Stehr November 13, 2024

Went to the Washington, D.C. Peace Vigil in Lafayette Park early today with hydrating beverages and healthy snacks. Then, the secret service cleared the park to provide additional security for an unstated reason. No more vigiling today, so by default took the Metro to Pentagon City to the 4 story shopping mall and walked the whole thing in a couple of hours. Purchased Chinese food and coffee. Returned by Metro and am presently on a guest public computer at the MLK library. It is noteworthy that in the District of Columbia, you would not know that the presidential election took place! There is no talk about it anywhere. There are no critical statements being made (except at the D.C. Peace Vigil, of course). Residents here do not feel that the federal government has any relevance to them. [This of course resulted from the set up of former D.C. mayor Marion Barry, whom the district voters returned to office after his time of being incarcerated; id est, the Fed is either the enemy or irrelevant. Unless you have a job with the Fed, nobody here could care less about it.] And that’s the way it is on a Wednesday in America’s national capital. Good night. ;-))

- peter boudoures November 13, 2024
  
  Hang in there Craig, looks like there will be thousands of empty govt buildings soon.
  
  - David November 13, 2024
    
    And how cool is that???
    
    It’s so cool. Kids at school with no lunch. But it’s their parents’ fault since they’re poor. I don’t want to pay a few more dollars in my yearly taxes to help feed hungry children. Screw them. And old folks not getting their help and social services, again, I say, screw them! And fuck off with having safe roadways and bridges. Fuck off with all of that socialist bullshit.
    
    Bootstraps people, pull them up!
    
    - peter boudoures November 13, 2024
      
      America first and you won’t have to worry about affording anything. Quit supporting slave labor how bout that smarty?
      
McEwen Bruce November 13, 2024

Hey Jonah Raskin,
Why not take the twelfth step and add another Ben Franklin quip— “If we don’t all hang together, we shall assuredly hang separately “?

Mendocino County Today: Wednesday 11/13/2024

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