Quick Weather Report
Since this Pineapple Express hit at 9pm Tuesday night on Nov. 19, bringing .12 inches of precip, Wednesday 5.96 inches fell, 6.61 inches on Thursday, 1.54 inches on Friday, .62 inches on Saturday, 1.38 inches on Sunday, 1.86 inches on Monday, and 0.13 inches on Tuesday, Nov. 26, we’ve had a total of 18.10 inches in the greater Laytonville area. There was no serious flooding, however. We’ve been fortunate since there’s been breaks of light or no rain between episodes of heavy drenching allowing water to channel off into streams and creeks. The historic average annual rainfall in the Laytonville area is 67 inches, with November through March averaging 10 inches per month.
I find myself in complete agreement with Julie Beardsley, retired county Public Health Analyst and former president the union (SEIU) that represents county employees, who posted this comment on the Anderson Valley Advertiser’s website: “You know I’ve lived here for a long time and I remember in the 1970s it rained for a several weeks at a time and we didn’t freak out and call it a weather bomb. It was just rain. I’m having a hard time understanding why normal weather is freaking everyone out … ummm, maybe I’m just old, but remember that where we live is called a temperate rain forest. The important word in that description is rain. Hot in the summer and rainy in the winter …”
My newspaper, the Mendocino County Observer is an official weather station. I’m also the long-time district manager of the Laytonville County Water District, so you might say I have rainwater in my blood.
I can tell you that there has been a noticeable change in rainfall patterns in the past 15 years. While annually we still receive our historical average of around 67 inches, it falls in a more concentrated pattern, starting later in the rain year than it used to. Instead of measurable precipitation beginning in September and ramping up to November, the preceding months are much drier. In recent years, it is not uncommon for rains not to begin until mid-December and continue through mid-April packing high-volume amounts of precipitation.
Bill & Me
You know the old saying, “Great Minds think alike.”
Well, I’ve discovered that comedian Bill Maher is a comrade-in-arms when it comes to explaining how the Democrats got their asses kicked by D.J. Trump.
I readily admit that Bill’s mind — at least the part where humor genes reside — is so much greater as well as more fertile than mine.
I’ll share a few of our excerpted observations on the November 5th outcome where apparently a meeting of the minds intersected. Saving the best for the last, I’ll lead off.
All the “Progressive” pundits are saying they were flummoxed that Trump will be returning to the White House. They’ve been blaming ignoramus voters for being hoodwinked, bamboozled, deceived, and conned by the Trumpster.
The self-proclaimed experts pointed fingers at:
- White, non-college educated male voters.
- White women voters with no college degrees,
- Black and Latino male voters who can’t handle a woman in the White House.
Maybe those people are saying they are fed up with the Democratic elites treating them like dumb asses.
I figured out back when I was in the Labor Movement that voters, most of whom are common folk, working people, and the middle class, know exactly what they’re doing and why they’re doing it when they vote.
Although I’m a Democrat, heavily influenced by Franklin Roosevelt, his Republican cousin Teddy, Jack and Bobby Kennedy, and the Great Emancipator himself, I keep my distance — politically, socially and otherwise — from today’s Dem Party that immerses itself in identity politics, virtue signaling, oh so politically correct buffoonery, and their long-time sellout of workers and the rapidly disappearing middle class with their rabid support of Globalism.
(Please note I included two Republicans, Theodore Roosevelt and Abe Lincoln, as historical influences on my political development. How quaint. There’s also ancestral connections between the Shields family and both men, especially with Honest Abe. But I’ll leave that history for another telling, or most likely, not at all.)
As a Democrat I can say this: The Democratic Party is responsible for creating the landslide victory for Trump.
People were telling the Democratic Party that their paychecks weren’t even close to keeping pace with inflation and that grocery prices were devouring their nearly non-existent discretionary income.
The Dems responded that the economy was on the rebound and that the real issues were “democracy” and that Trump was bad man.
“Trust us” they said, “we know what we’re doing.”
Fortunately, we still have people who have always fueled the engine of change in this country.
Those folks are the working and middle classes who once aroused are a fearsome sight to behold.
They called the Dems’ bluff and created on the fly a political movement to oppose the elite establishments.
Don’t be fooled, these people are not Trump followers or brainwashed disciples.
This is a 21st Century spontaneous version of Populism and the Trump campaign was the only incubator to be found.
Here’s some of Maher’s thoughts, that are, hands-down, much wittier and laugh-out-loud humorous than mine:
HBO host Bill Maher didn’t hold back as he laid into the Democratic Party for their “doubling down” on the politics that led to their recent election night defeat.
During a long rant about the state of the party, the comedian accused some Democrats of being “stupid,” others of being too liberal, and slammed those who blame racism and/or sexism for Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss to President-elect Donald Trump.
“Someone must tell the usual suspects on the far left that the saying is, ‘When you’re in a hole, stop digging.’ Not ‘keep digging.’ Talk about doubling down on what got you f---ed in the first place,” said Maher in his open monologue Friday on Real Time with Bill Maher.
“Even the one concession I’ve heard a few people on the losing side offer—that liberals should stop saying that Trump voters are stupid—comes with a kind of unspoken parentheses. ‘We know they are stupid, just don’t say it,’” he added.
Maher then hit back at “stupid” Democrats.
“I got bad news for you, they don’t have a monopoly on stupid,” he said. “You wear Queers for Palestine T-shirts, and masks two years after the pandemic ended. And you can’t define ‘woman’—I mean, ‘person who menstruates.’ You’re the Teachers Union education party, and you’ve turned schools and colleges into a joke. You just lost a crazy contest to an actual crazy person.”
“You love to speak truth to power, and we always should, but you have completely lost the ability to speak truth to bulls--t.”
“The Democratic polling firm, Blueprint, told Democrats months ago that Black voters, a.k.a. their supposedly liberal base, were more likely to find the president too liberal than too conservative,” he said. “They also found that voters didn’t just want Harris to distance herself from Biden, they wanted her to distance herself from what they believe the entire Democratic Party has become—a Portlandia sketch."
Digging deeper into identity politics, Maher described the Democrats—the party he voted for—as “a bunch of privileged mean girls complaining about privilege and trying to make ‘fetch’ happen.”
“What a shocker that the people who see everything through the lens of race and sex see their election loss as a result of racism and sexism,” he said. “Yes, if only we weren’t so irredeemably unenlightened, we would have elected a Black president by now. Oh what, we did? Oh, right, and then re-elected him. Maybe you missed it because it wasn’t on TikTok.”
Addressing sexism, Maher added: “Hillary got 3 million more votes than Trump, which in a normal country would be called a victory. It wasn’t 21st-century sexism that prevented a woman from becoming president, it was the Electoral College.”
So in a condensed format. that’s what Bill and I had to say about this election.
Between the two of us, I give the winning nod — by a large margin — to Bill. He’s not only a spot-on with his razor-edged analysis but he’s hilarious as hell.
He’s the living embodiment of the droll advice I’ve dished out for years:
Take your politics seriously but don’t lose your sense of humor.
Need any more be said?
Time For Lara To Transition Into Oblivion
The spineless and corrupt state Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara is long overdue for an investigation by the state Attorney-General or the state Legislature, or better yet, both.
The ethically-challenged Lara has proven there are no bounds to the depths he will descend as he debases himself to curry favor with the corporate interests he is supposed to be keeping a keenly peeled weather eye on in his role as the elected defender of California consumers. Instead, he’s just another business-as-usual, sellout Democrat who sees common folk as, well, just too damn common for him to waste much time on.
Consumer Watchdog, in my opinion this country’s preeminent consumer protection organization, is reporting that many of the recommendations released on Nov. 21st by the Little Hoover Commission, including those for greater public oversight of the secret algorithms insurance companies use to decide who pays more for home insurance and who is not covered at all. The report recommends insurers be required to include individual, community, and statewide wildfire mitigation efforts in insurance underwriting and rate decisions, advice critical to restoring insurance access in California.
The Little Hoover Commission, formally known as the Milton Marks “Little Hoover” Commission on California State Government Organization and Economy, is an independent state oversight agency, created by the state legislature in 1962.
The commission calls out Insurance Commissioner Lara’s refusal to testify or even engage with the Commission over the year-long course of its investigation, and identifies the lack of data available to the public about the home insurance market from the Department of Insurance as a key area for reform.
The commission’s report also called for statewide, open data collection and core standards surrounding wildfire mitigation. Consumer Watchdog said these recommendations will enable another critically needed consumer protection: a statewide mandate for home insurance companies to cover Californians who do the right thing to protect themselves, and their communities, from wildfires.
“The Little Hoover Commission gives key recommendations that will make insurers’ actions more transparent and give Californians credit for the billions that have been invested in protecting our communities from wildfire. Californians can’t access affordable insurance because no one is holding the insurance industry accountable. It’s inexcusable that Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara couldn’t be bothered to speak to the Commission and answer for his actions,” said Carmen Balber, executive director of Consumer Watchdog.
In a letter to the legislature, Little Hoover Commission Chair Pedro Nava wrote, “Unfortunately, throughout the Commission process one voice was voluntarily absent — that of the Insurance Commissioner or anyone from the California Department of Insurance … The Commission appreciates the testimony from former Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones and received input from former Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner. That the current Insurance Commissioner did not participate is inexplicable and irresponsible.”
Consumer Watchdog says financial assistance for individual and community mitigation efforts, also recommended in the report, is needed to guarantee that Californians’ access to coverage is not limited to those who can afford costly upgrades.
And the beats goes on …
(Jim Shields is the Mendocino County Observer’s editor and publisher, observer@pacific.net, the long-time district manager of the Laytonville County Water District, and is also chairman of the Laytonville Area Municipal Advisory Council. Listen to his radio program “This and That” every Saturday at 12 noon on KPFN 105.1 FM, also streamed live: http://www.kpfn.org)
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