Mendocino County Today: Sunday 1/19/2025

Gradual Clearing | Officials Appreciation | Get-Cubbison Conspiracy | Dustin Popped | Women's Rally | Bragg Fool | Pruning Contest | Strike Team | Senior Smoker | Hotel Trashing | Pomo Exhibit | Pelfrey Case | Pet Cherry | Ed Notes | Pomo Trails | Commune Memories | Mendo Reservation | Yesterday's Catch | Never Answer | Imagined Fears | Fire Lessons | Dominica Visit | Marco Radio | Dark Voices | So AI | Understanding Power | Is Us | Were Here | Ceasefire Deal | Techno Era | Day Two | Hillbilly Hegseth | Warrior's Path | Deportee | Black Power | Bumble Joe | After Capitalism | Biden Decline | Borg Moon | Final Speech | Auto Mechanics

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CONTINUED DRY through Thursday, with some precipitation potential toward Friday next week and into the following weekend. Chilly nights and mornings with areas of frost and patchy fog into mid-week next week. Potential for gusty winds exists for Lake County Monday. Potential for gusty winds return for much of the entire area Friday and Saturday. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): Yep, another foggy 41F this Sunday morning on the coast. Our forecast is for more of the same the next several days with cold morning temps & fog. Partial clearing during the day. Partial being the key word.

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THE ‘GET CUBBISON’ CONSPIRACY

County Lawyers Trying To Block Emerging Details In Cubbison Civil Case

by Mike Geniella

Attorneys for the County of Mendocino are attempting to block further sworn depositions by key officials about behind-the-scenes events leading to District Attorney David Eyster criminally charging former Auditor Chamise Cubbison and her subsequent suspension by the county Board of Supervisors.

Details of the highly politicized background, involving the DA, a board majority, and former and current county executives, are revealed in new court filings related to pending civil litigation filed by Cubbison.

The disclosures come on the eve of a long-awaited preliminary hearing this week in the felony criminal case Eyster filed 16 months ago against Cubbison. That hearing is set to begin on Wednesday before Judge Ann Moorman in Mendocino County Superior Court, Ukiah. Moorman will decide whether the contentious case will go to trial.

DA Eyster’s outsized role in county politics that ensnared Cubbison is the specific focus of recent depositions made under oath by retired Auditor Lloyd Weer and former county Treasurer Shari Schapmire as Cubbison’s companion civil case against the Board of Supervisors moves forward.

Cubbison’s civil attorney Therese Cannata, a top-rated business litigation lawyer in San Francisco, cites a private email from Eyster to former county Supervisor Glenn McGourty in August 2021 as the basis of an alleged collusion.

“Unbeknownst to Ms. Cubbison or the general public at that time, (DA) Eyster had sent a (confidential) cover email from his private email account to a board member” that outlined a three-step plan to permanently exclude Ms. Cubbison from becoming the county’s Auditor-Controller,” according to Cannata.

The first step of Eyster’s plan, outlined to Supervisor Glenn McCourty and shared by a former CEO with other board members and administrators, was to block the interim appointment of Cubbison, then consolidate the offices of Auditor-Controller with the Treasurer-Tax Collector position, and ultimately replace those elected positions with a board-appointed Director of Finance who would report directly to county Supervisors. The first two steps were initiated by the board, but the last step went awry when Cubbison was elected by county voters to lead the consolidated offices.

Cannata contends that when the Kennedy extra pay issue came under investigation, prompted by Cubbison’s own report to the County Counsel’s Office and the CEO of a threat of Kennedy litigation over uncompensated time, Eyster “seized the moment.”

It was, declares Cannata, Eyster’s “final step in his personal vendetta against Ms. Cubbison by making sure that the (subsequent) criminal investigation pointed” to her.

Eyster did not respond to a written request Thursday for comments on Cannata’s declaration that is on file with the Mendocino County Superior Court.

The District Attorney’s decision to criminally charge Cubbison in October 2023 led to the Auditor being abruptly escorted from her office by county administrators. Four days later the Board of Supervisors voted to suspend Cubbison without pay and benefits based on Eyster’s filing a felony misappropriation of public funds charge against her and the county’s former Payroll Manager, Paula June Kennedy.

The criminal case has dragged on for 16 months because of legal wrangling over missing county emails, and the possible role of retired Auditor Lloyd Weer in the payments made to Kennedy. Under oath, Weer acknowledges he was aware of the chronic pay issue but he denies giving Kennedy permission to use an obscure county pay code to draw about $68,000 in extra pay over a three-year-period during the Covid pandemic. In turn, Cubbison says Weer and Kennedy struck the pay deal, and she was too swamped by the forced office consolidation when she took over to closely scrutinize it.

Emerging details of the Cubbison civil case are providing a deeper look into the background of events that has rocked county politics and set the Board of Supervisors on a costly path to resolve the dual Cubbison criminal and civil cases.

The new court filings describe the roles of Eyster, former county supervisor McGourty, then Board Chair Dan Gjerde, coast Supervisor Ted Williams and other top county administrators played during a tumultuous time that led up to the criminal charging of the embattled Auditor. Also cited in the filings are actions by current CEO Darcie Antle and former CEO Carmel Angelo.

Statements made by Weer and Schapmire under oath so far support allegations that Eyster became deeply engaged in county Supervisors’ controversial efforts to consolidate the county’s two key financial offices: Treasurer-Tax Collector and Auditor-Controller. It was clear to them, according to deposition transcripts, that Eyster was targeting Cubbison for ouster after she challenged his own DA’s office spending.

Schapmire recalled personal calls from supervisors Gjerde and Williams, among others, lobbying her to agree to take over both offices, an idea the veteran county employee resisted and which in protest led to her to retire nine months early.

“One of the reasons the Auditor-Controller is separate is so that they can question other entities, and clearly DA Dave Eyster had an issue with that as well because of a lot of his reimbursements, I think, she (Cubbison) did question,” testified Schapmire.

Schapmire added, “I just wondered why Dave Eyster was so out of his lane. I can’t even imagine me going over and talking about criminal justice issues.

Weer during his deposition in December acknowledged that while he was still Auditor his then chief assistant Cubbison was questioning Eyster’s use of public funds “to take his staff and their significant others to a dinner at the Broiler (steakhouse).”

Weer said the DA after being challenged changed his rationale and labeled the annual gatherings “training sessions.” Eyster initially wanted county funds to cover the estimated annual costs of about $2,500 but then after questions were raised, Weer said the DA demanded local “asset forfeiture” funds seized in drugs and other related criminal cases be used to cover expenses. How the seized money is used has long been a source of controversy at local, state, and national levels because of potential abuse.

Weer testified that eventually Eyster convinced former CEO Angelo and the county board to exempt the DA’s office from certain county policy provisions “in order that we didn’t have to go head-to-head against him all the time because he refused to follow the proper policy and procedures.”

“Yeah, I mean, (he) made our job difficult to deal with, you know, and so if the board’s just going to cave and support him, then (supervisors) can change their policy was the thinking,” testified Weer.

Attorney Cannata said the board’s 2023 decision to suspend Cubbison was unlawful because “it was based solely on the charging document filed by the District Attorney without a hearing or inquiry into the allegation of misconduct.”

“Had that hearing taken place, it would have demonstrated that the District Attorney improperly targeted Ms. Cubbison in the investigation and failed to gather and/or preserve exculpatory evidence,” contends Cannata.

Cannata argues in her 14-page brief that the criminal case is part of a broader county conspiracy to oust Cubbison, who along with other senior county financial personnel questioned county supervisors’ forced consolidation of the Auditor and Treasurer’s offices.

As far back as August 2021 key county officials worked behind closed doors with Eyster to target Cubbison, charges Cannata.

As evidence, Cannata alleges the board attempted to fully implement a confidential three-step plan outlined in a private email from Eyster to then Supervisor McGourty, at the time when the board was poised to act on a recommendation by Weer that Cubbison be appointed his interim successor upon his planned early retirement.

The email dated Aug. 30, 2021, outlines Eyster’s vision to rid the county of Cubbison.

Eyster stated in the email:

“So, what do I think the board should do? First, vote no for Ms. Cubbison’s appointment and/or any promotion.

“Second, I would say the time is ripe to reap the advantages of consolidating offices, as was authorized and put in place by the Legislature in 2017.”

(The legislative change was put in place in 2006).

Eyster in his private email then advocated that Schapmire should be placed in charge of a single merged office knowing the 40-year veteran county employee was planning to retire at the end of her term in 2022.

Eyster’s third step advocated that when Schapmire announced her expected retirement, county Supervisors should quickly pursue voter approval of a ballot measure to do away with the elected offices in favor of a “single financial department under the supervision of a highly qualified Director of Finance who would report directly” to the Board of Supervisors.

Before the board meeting when the vote was taken to force consolidation, former CEO Carmel Angelo circulated Eyster’s memo among top county staff, including Antle, then Angelo’s top assistant, and Janelle Rau, former director of the county’s General Services Agency.

Eyster’s plan went awry when Schapmire retired early in protest of the enforced consolidation, and her top assistant refused supervisors’ entreaties to seek election as head of the newly combined offices. Instead, to the dismay of the DA and county supervisors, Cubbison ended up in 2022 being elected by voters to oversee the two merged departments struggling to reorganize.

County attorneys in the civil case are arguing that Weer and Schapmire’s testimonies, and others, are unlikely to produce admissible evidence outside the “narrow scope” of whether the Board of Supervisors had the authority to suspend Cubbison without giving her an opportunity to publicly defend herself. The board did it two weeks after the fact and were castigated publicly for their action.

Morin Jacob, the San Francisco attorney who is leading the efforts to shut down the depositions, also sanctioned the Board of Supervisors’ decision in October 2023 to suspend Cubbison without a hearing.

In court filings seeking to halt the depositions of Schapmire and Weer, Jacob contends that whatever information they can provide about the tumult surrounding the enforced consolidation is irrelevant because the only “central issue here is whether the county had the legal authority to suspend” Cubbison.

“Attempting to introduce evidence to this unrelated topic confuses the scope of this matter, and diverts attention from the primary legal question,” states Jacob.

Jacob also argues to the court that the continued depositions of Weer and Schapmire will be “unduly burdensome, costly, and intrusive with no likelihood of discovery of admissible evidence.”

Their further disclosures also could be “embarrassing,” states Jacob.

“The real motive for the deposition is clear. Petitioner (Cubbison) has been charged with a felony, and she would like to blur the lines between the issues in the criminal matter” and the pending civil case, contends Jacob.

Cannata, however, said she believes the court, and the public, are entitled to know the full extent of the alleged collusion among DA Eyster, board members and county administrators that led to the disputed finance office merger, and the subsequent criminal case and suspension of a duly elected County Auditor.

Cannata said when the disputed pay issue emerged, DA Eyster “masterfully controlled the investigation and complaint process to wrongfully target Ms. Cubbison as the wrongdoer.”

As a result, Cannata said the “cause” cited by board members for Cubbison’s removal from office was “based solely on the charging document filed by the District Attorney without a hearing or inquiry into the allegation of misconduct.”

Weer, as he has from the beginning of the Cubbison case, declined to be interviewed about his statements given under oath during his deposition.

Brian Momsen, Weer’s attorney, said this week his client “didn’t bring the motion for a protective order to stop his deposition, the county attorneys brought it.”

Weer “will abide by whatever ruling the Court makes on the motion,” said Momsen.

Jacob’s office said the San Francisco attorney was “out of the office for a case” and unavailable to respond. Jacob associate Madeline Cline (no relation to the county supervisor of the same name) did not respond to a written request for comment.

Judge Moorman, who is presiding over both the Cubbison criminal and civil cases, is expected to hear arguments about the disputed depositions when the criminal preliminary hearing is concluded.

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POSSESSION WITH PRIORS

On January 11, 2025 at approximately 9:00pm a Ukiah Police Department (UPD) Officer was on routine patrol in the parking lot of Walmart, when he noticed a male in and around a pickup truck that had multiple California Vehicle Code violations. The officer took note, and it appeared that the male hastily walked away from the pickup upon seeing the officer.

A short time later the officer saw the male, who was identified as Dustin Bruce, 41, of Willits, walk out of Walmart and return to the vehicle. Multiple officers contacted Bruce to speak with him about the pickup truck and the violations. While speaking with Bruce, officers observed drug paraphernalia in plain view inside the truck.

Officers began a probable cause search of Bruce’s person and located a bindle of methamphetamine. Inside the vehicle officers found a loaded .22 caliber rifle, multiple rounds of ammunition in different calibers, and drug paraphernalia. A records check of Bruce’s criminal history informed the officers that Bruce was a convicted felon, prohibited from possessing firearms or ammunition. Bruce also had multiple previous convictions for drug possession, making him in violation of California’s newly formed law concerning unlawful possession of a hard drug with two or more prior convictions for possession (Prop. 36). Bruce was arrested and transported to the Mendocino County Jail where he was booked for charges of Convicted felon with loaded firearm, possession of controlled substance, possession of ammo by prohibited person, felon/addict with firearm while possessing controlled substance, concealed weapon in vehicle with prior.

As always, UPD’s mission is to make Ukiah as safe a place as possible and rid the community of unlawfully possessed firearms and weapons. If you would like to know more about crime in your neighborhood, you can sign up for telephone, cellphone, and email notifications by clicking the Nixle button on our website; www.ukiahpolice.com.

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DENNIS O’BRIEN

Rally in Ukiah today, organized by Mendocino Women's Political Caucus, The Raging Grannies, and others. Providing hope and support for those who are discouraged by the incoming administration. Somehow we must find common ground as we address the complex issues facing us. May compassion guide us all, whatever our politics. Much love to family and friends dealing with cold back East. Neither politics nor weather can diminish the warmth in our hearts.

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FRANK HARTZELL

We named our town for an idiot, traitor and slave owner! But I am Nancy Reagan on Name Change, just say no.

My colleague from the Mendo Voice will be doing stories on Change our Name/Fort Bragg forever. I have disqualified myself because I have become very strongly against the idea and have pontificated against it. Nobody seems to like my idea of keeping the name and have a political fools festival with Braxton Bragg as the chief fool, cuckolded by his overbearing wife and chased through the festival by the heroic Edward Bragg, as competent a general for the union as Braxie was incompetent for the South. Everybody could come as their own favorite political fool and there is of course NO end to them and there could be a fools hatter party and the the library and the college could benefit as the charities sponsoring the stupidity! Its a shame of history that the brave, smart and competent Edward Bragg should be less famous than Braxie, one of history worst generals by all accounts. If you want to talk to syndey Fishman at the voice about Name Change Or Fort Bragg Forever. drop me a line with your regular email and Ill send it along. She is not biased against or for it as I am. I have always envisioned Joseph as the perfect Braxton Bragg, wouldn't he be hilarious dressed up in a Confederate uniform and going around screwing things up until Edward Bragg appeared in his Yankee uniform to chase him across town. Who would be the virile Edward Bragg? The overbearing wife slave owner Southern Belle ? She would yell BRAXXXXIEEEE across the festival scaring him to death. Perhaps it should benefit Native Education and the establishment of the old fort as a Native cultural center.

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PRUNING CONTEST

Today Mr. Bautista took our first grape vine pruning team, consisting of Pablo, Evelyn, and Aliya, to a pruning contest in Lodi put on by Tokay FFA. 

It has been a very very long time since AV FFA has had a grape vine pruning team.

This contest is not easy. Team members must learn lots of knowledge about how grapevines grow and how to prune quickly. The hardest part of the contest is the knowledge test they must take. Our team placed 5th out of 22 teams on knowledge test in their very first contest. The team did great with their pruning skills but need to work on pruning speed. 

We are so proud of them for trying something new and representing AV FFA! Well done!

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AV FIRE CHIEF ANDRES AVILA

Palisades Deployment On Wednesday Jan 8, the Anderson Valley Fire Department sent Engine 7471 to the Palisades Incident staffed by Ben Glaus (Engineer), Armando Morales (Firefighter), and Alex Aguirre (Firefighter). Mendocino County was not able to fully staff a five-engine strike team and strike team leader. So two engines from Humboldt, three engines from Mendocino County, and a Strike Team leader from Sonoma County were consolidated to form “rainbow” strike team and were deployed for work the following day. The Strike Team is working in tough conditions and with more fire weather conditions in the forecast, I am not anticipating them to return any time soon.

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A LOCAL AVHS SENIOR is selling this smoker that he made to help pay for college expenses.

If you are interested, then text him at 707.657.3327. price:$600.

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JEFF BURROUGHS on the departure of Vernon & Charlene Rollins, former owners of the Boonville Hotel:

I guess my biggest beef with them was the blatant disregard for preservation of the town's history that was in the many different items they found in the old hotel. During their so called renovation of the hotel, they brought in a huge dumpster and proceeded to throw everything they found into it like it was trash. Old photos, hotel ledgers, furniture, everything! Hours before the trash bin was to be taken away to the dump, the word got out to Michael Shapiro who got there just before it was gone and he retrieved a couple of the ledgers, one of which had Jack London's signature in it. Hazel Teague found a couple of framed old photos, one of which she thought looked like my great-great-grandmother so she gave it to me. My great-great-grandparents leased the Boonville Hotel while also running their own place, the Missouri House Hotel just up the street. Anyway, how much history was lost nobody really knows but it pains me to even give it serious thought.

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NORTHERN POMO

The Kelley House Museum is proud to present an online exhibit in conjunction with our current exhibit “Northern Pomo: Mendocino’s First People.”

Explore the history and rich culture of the Northern Pomo, who have lived on the Mendocino Coast for thousands of years. Discover the Pomo language, read about early coastal villages, admire exquisite basketry, and enjoy works of contemporary Pomo arts and crafts. Learn about the historical injustices that drove Native populations to near extinction. This exhibit is a testament to the Pomo’s enduring resilience.

Online exhibit: https://www.kelleyhousemuseum.org/exhibits-northern-pomo-mendocinos-first-people/

Drop by the museum to see the full exhibit. The museum is open from 11AM to 3PM Friday through Sunday.

Photo from “Portraits from North American Indian Life,” Edward Curtis, Promontory Press, 1972.

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TOM HINE (aka Tommy Wayne Kramer)

Re the Anthony James Pelfrey case mentioned in last week’s Off the Record…

All my memories of the Anthony Pelfrey case are bad memories. I worked the case as a criminal defense investigator and I’ll leave it at Pelfrey being the most floridly psycho guy I ever sat in a small jailhouse interview room with in my life. Everything from the panicked sideways glances to the sudden jerky movements that were just this side of violent combined to make him an obvious 1368. (Unable to stand trial or assist his attorney or understand the nature and consequences of his behavior.)

Pelfrey’s cramped little cottage on North State Street adjacent to a bar that’s been empty 20-plus years was a nightmare of scrawlings and messages of doom and despair. I took Dr. John Podboy out to have a look at the abode before he testified in Judge Brown’s courtroom about Pelfrey’s condition, and I furnished Judge Brown photos of that interior. We had a handful of longtime acquaintences testify about Pelfrey’s weird fixations on anything having to do with the left: turning left onto a street, being left-handed etc. They came, they talked, and Judge Brown took everything in, weighed and considered and decided the evidence suggested Pelfrey was an excellent candidate for the California State Prison system. I hate to think of what happened to him in there.

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UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK

Cherry can be cautious with new people, but she's really a doggie sweetheart. And in fact, this young Shepherd mix has begun to blossom from all the love and attention she's getting from the shelter's great volunteers. Cherry will do best with a guardian who has the time and some experience with shy dogs, and will continue working with her. We think it won't take long for Cherry to become a confident and secure companion, ready to be your best buddy. Cherry is a year old and 50-ish lovely pounds.

To see all of our canine and feline guests, and the occasional goat, sheep, tortoise, and for information about our services, programs, and events, visit: mendoanimalshelter.com

Join us the first Saturday every month for our MEET THE DOGS Adoption Event at the shelter.

Please share our posts on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mendoanimalshelter/ For information about adoptions please call 707-467-6453. Making a difference for homeless pets in Mendocino County, one day at a time!

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ED NOTES

I'M NOT ONE for Newsom bashing. I see the guv as the inevitable work product of the semi-liberal politics of the Democrat elite, a guy eating his capitalism and having it too as capitalism eats a majority of US. But when my PG&E bill goes from $90 to $435 in one month to heat my solarized house, I remember that Newsom appoints the Public Utilities Commission that just authorized extortionate rate hikes for PG&E and pays its top exec something like $11 mil a year.

WHICH BRINGS US to Jack Kerouac, one of the last generation of American writers to have a personality. A recent piece in the Chron about Kerouac was called “Kerouac legacy in legal limbo.” The old boy's heirs are still fighting over his estate, a large one, although Kerouac made it clear before he drowned in the bottle who he wanted to get his money. “This is Uncle Jack,” he wrote to Paul Blake in 1969 shortly before he died. “I've turned over my entire estate, real, personal and mixed, to Memere (mom) and if she dies before me, it will be turned to you. I wanted to leave my estate to someone directly connected with the last remaining drop of my direct blood line, and not to leave a dingblasted fucking thing to my wife's one hundred Greek relatives.”

PLAIN ENOUGH, but the one hundred relatives sued and sued, then sued some more on the basis that Kerouac stayed drunk in his last days and didn't know what he was saying. But finally a judge ruled the money should go where Kerouac wanted it to go, which the article was about.

BUT THE PIECE libeled him anyway in a sidebar called “Six facts you might not know,” where this alleged fact appeared: “Contrary to the belief of '60s radicals like Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, who thought him a hopeless redneck, Kerouac actually opposed the Vietnam War. But his reason for opposing it was unique – he claimed it was ‘a conspiracy between the North and South Vietnamese to get American jeeps’.”

IF KEROUAC said that he was obviously kidding, and Jerry Rubin, like a lot of so-called 60s radicals, stopped being a radical when the radical fad ended about 1973, with literary culture now disappeared into Gadget Land and the credulity that reigns there, making up stories about dead writers and even whole eras like the 1960s, has never been easier.

WHICH THEN BRINGS US to “An Idiot's Guide to Charles Bukowski,” which I spotted the other day in an otherwise respectable book store. As if there's something that needs decoding in Bukowski? Or the all-time idiot's festival at Woodstock? Lots of varsity hippies are checking in with their memoirs of Hippie Time, but really, didn't you see the Hep C and methamphetamine coming? Wasn't it clear even then that the big naked piles would end in death and miles of human destruction?

FROM A RECENT CHRON: “The highway that winds along the coast of Marin County offers some of California’s most magnificent vistas, with the deep blue Pacific Ocean glittering through veils of fog. But for a handful of travelers, the views aren’t the prize. At one blink-and-you’ll-miss-it pullout is a natural spring that draws people from across the San Francisco Bay Area, some of whom drive hours through traffic to get there. Many of them reject water from any other source and drink only what they say is ‘liquid gold’ that gushes from the copper pipes of Red Rock Spring.” RED ROCK SPRING is near Stinson Beach. I bring it up because I know lots of Mendo old timers who have their own secret spring waters, their own liquid gold. At the risk of going all woo-woo ancient on you, I was tipped to a spring on Mountain View Road a coupla-three miles west of Boonville High School by a Native American, who told me that on his commute from the Manchester rez to Ukiah he always filled up a few jugs from the site, conveniently capped by the County some years ago. I never had the water tested but it was so sweet and cold I always downed a cup or two in tribute to this gift directly from God before leaving with a week's supply.

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JADE TIPPETT

These rainless, gray, mornings in Fort Bragg, the light, the temperature, the stillness of the air, take me back to a winter I spent in Wolf Creek in the mid-seventies. I had abandoned the East Coast for the West and landed in a gay men's commune in Southern Oregon, proud San Francisco faggots who spent somebody's inheritance on 80 acres of logged out bottom land, trying escape the city and make a go of it.

This was just the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. There were rumors and fear of a “gay cancer”. No doubt those wild men, Chenille, Leonard, Michael… are all dead long ago. I would be, too, if I had taken any of them up on their advances. But they were very sweet and gentle.

They were putting out a small niche magazine for gay men in the country, called RFD. The initials stood for something different every issue. “Rural Faggots Delight,” etc. No computers back then: blue line layouts, contact cement and x-acto knives.

I became the house boy, keeping the fire in the cookstove, making breakfast and preparing meals. I also typed copy when production was 18 hour days, with David Bowe on the stereo.

When everyone was home and there wasn't a bed free, I slept in the hayloft with a couple of cats. There were lots of cats, including one named Blind Michael who slept under the stove. The three-sided barn was something out of “Sometimes a Great Notion,” unbarked pecker poles lashed together with chains rather than nailed or bolted. It rocked and shifted in the wind,

They had lost the crank to start the tractor, so the hay still laid wind-rowed in the field. I rope-started the tractor off the PTO drum and brought in the hay, cut firewood, coop-trained the chickens before the wildlife took any more. I also remember a couple of goats, including an adolescent billy who loved playing butt-the-fist.

I eventually moved on to Seattle by way of Takilma, chasing love that lasted a couple of years. At some point, they reached out to me to move back, but I'd moved on by then.

Still, when the mornings are cool, grey, damp, and still, I am taken back with a pleasant feeling to that winter in Wolf Creek, and memories come back sweetly.

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Saturday, January 18, 2025

BENJAMIN BICKNELL, 35, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, domestic violence court order violation, probation violation.

BRYON BOLTON, 24, Willits. DUI with blood-alcohol over 0.15%

GREGORY CUADRA II, 48, Fort Bragg. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun.

GUADALUPE GUTIERREZ, 35, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, paraphernalia, failure to appear.

MARIO IACHELLA, 31, Redwood Valley. DUI.

NOE LOPEZ, 41, Ukiah. Cruelty to child-infliction of injury.

JOSHUA NEESE, 26, Ukiah. Domestic violence court order violation, county parole violation, resisting.

JAVIER RAMIREZ, 33, Ukiah. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun on law enforcement officer with likely great bodily injury, domestic violence court order violation, resisting, probation revocation.

RUDY VALADEZ-SEPULVEDA, 35, Porterville/Ukiah. Domestic battery.

DONALD WILLETT JR., 41, Willits. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, failure to appear, unspecified offense.

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NEVER ANSWER an anonymous letter.

— Yogi Berra

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L.A. FIRE LESSONS

Editor:

First, climate change has made historical staffing levels of professional firefighters inadequate to protect residential structures. Second, fire-flow provisions of residential water supplies may be inadequate to deal with wildfires.

The first lesson may encourage unprofessional firefighting by residents disregarding traditional evacuation procedures. But increased supplies of firefighting water should be prioritized above increased numbers of firefighters, because more firefighters will simply hasten exhaustion of existing water supplies.

Increased water storage is the first of two measures necessary to increase availability of water for firefighting. Less obvious is the need for larger diameter water mains to convey water quickly to fires from storage locations. Additional water mains are the usual means of increasing flow capacity. Constructing a new water supply exclusively for fire hydrants would be an alternative to providing additional piping to the drinking water supply historically connected to hydrants. Treatment and storage facilities required for drinking would be unnecessary for water used exclusively for firefighting.

In Sonoma County, elevated impoundments like Lake Ilsanjo could be used as water storage for firefighting, and flow in these hydrant water mains could be reversed to pump treated wastewater when precipitation fails to sustain lake levels.

Albert Wellman

Santa Rosa

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RANDY ROWLAND:

Dominica is NOT the Dominican Republic. The names are not even pronounced the same. It’s Dome-in-EEK-a, not Do-MIN-a-ca. We came here by mistake, in a manner of speaking. Thinking of taking a trip to the Dominican Republic, we started doing a bit of research and quickly hit upon a couple books detailing the slave revolts on Dominica, which we assumed was the way folks referred to the Dominican Republic. Joyce bought the books and we were all excited. Then she looked at the map in one of them and exclaimed “This isn’t the right island!” Sure enough, though there were historic uprisings on Hispaniola (which the DR shares with Haiti), the uprisings we were seeking took place on Dominica, which, as we quickly learned, is NOT the Dominican Republic. So we changed our plans, and here we are.

Dominica is a small, lush, Caribbean island nation. It’s the least visited by tourists of all the Caribbean Islands. It sits where the North American tectonic plate subducts under the Caribbean plate, so like the Northwest we’re familiar with, it’s mountainous and volcanic. Only 29 miles long and 16 miles across, it sports 9 volcanoes, and hardly any sandy beaches. Here’s the view from our back porch, to give you a pretty accurate sense of the place:

The majority of the population here lives in the Capital city, Roseau (ROSE-oh), population under 15,000. Here’s a photo of the town, complete with a cruise ship, taken from a view point we hiked up to. We could have driven our rental car up there, but Joyce, who I suspect is a descendant of Tom Sawyer, or maybe a mountain goat, thought it was better for us to scramble up the path. (Temperature in low 80s, elevation gain about 400 feet, I only slipped and fell one time on the way down.)

(via Fred Gardner)

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MEMO OF THE AIR: Bajor for Bajorans!*

“If you're worried about something and you know eventually you're gonna say, 'Who cares?', why not just go straight to 'Who cares?'“ -Kim Andersen

Marco here. Here's the recording of last night's (Friday, 2025-01-17) eight-hour-long Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA) and KNYO.org (and, for the first three hours of the show, also 89.3fm KAKX Mendocino). If you're a fan of Alex Bosworth, author of Chip Chip Chaw, he's still alive. He called at 1:30am (4.5 hours into the show) to tell about what's going on for him now, including that the charges against him were dropped but he still has to wear the ankle bracelet, and he's in medical isolation in a homeless shelter: https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0627

Coming shows can feature your story or dream or poem or essay or kvetch or announcement. Just email it to me. Or send me a link to your writing project and I'll take it from there and read it on the air.

I've been doing my show on a montage of various radio stations every Friday night since February of 1997, when I stopped publishing /Memo/ on real newsprint. The project involves several hours every day of concentrated prep and then a couple of all-nighters, one to get ready and one to go. If you appreciate the show and want to help me out personally, you can trust me not to spend your money on drink, drugs, cigarets, or candy. https://paypal.me/MarcoMcClean

Besides all that, at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find a fresh batch of dozens of links to not-necessarily radio-useful but worthwhile items I set aside for you while gathering the show together, such as:

The L.A. Baldwin Hills Dam disaster of 1963. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUowiNeF_Rw

I'm not sure I understand it. Especially the end. Are we seeing things generated by the old woman's mental disorder? Or does she have magical Bible powers? https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2025/01/pasture-prime.html

Adventures in OCD. https://theawesomer.com/o-c-d-short-film-steven-ogg/760605/

The Boswell Sisters - Rock and Roll. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b5oWwFUhN0

And either the best or the worst balloon salesman in the world. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_6hHkNL3g8

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

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PROGRAMMED

Are we all AI?
All descendants of AI?
Every one of us?

Are our spawn AI?
And all our spawn’s offspring too?
Is it that simple?

Always been AI?
And always be AI?  God.
That’d be so AI.

— Jim Luther

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SAVE US FROM OURSELVES

Editor:

Lots of folks are fed up with government regulations. Easy to understand why. But many regulations chafe us because they’re deliberately underfunded, leading to long lines and inefficiency. The corporate sector detests the regulatory power of government — the only institution capable of controlling them — but those regulations shelter us from pollution, unfair wages, fake medicines, unsafe products and environmental rape. They cost a few cents on the dollar, but since corporations own our airwaves we are constantly exposed to conservative opinions skillfully translating our impatience with government services into resentment of government itself.

Most folks continue to suffer without affordable day care, health care or living wages on a nose-diving planet, but enough drank Donald Trump’s Kool-Aid to facilitate his obliteration of our safeguards as president. While our attention is deflected, Trump proposes an accused predator to run the Justice Department, a reputed drunk to run the Pentagon and a Vladimir Putin fan for intelligence chief, and trumpets Bitcoin (which he once described as a scam) while promising to weaken any regulations disciplining them.

Rather than understanding the power of the wealthy corrupting our political system to their advantage, and instead of altering that system to protect ourselves, we believe the people fleecing us. This will not end well.

Peter Coyote

Sebastopol

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WISH YOU WERE HERE

So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from hell
Blue skies from pain
Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?

Did they get you to trade
Your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange
A walk on part in the war
For a lead role in a cage?

How I wish, how I wish you were here
We're just two lost souls
Swimming in a fish bowl
Year after year
Running over the same old ground
And how we found
The same old fears
Wish you were here

– Roger Waters (1975)

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WHY?

A ceasefire deal seems to have been reached in Gaza. Great. But recall that Israel has breached the Lebanon truce nearly 500 times in the two months since it was signed…and any retaliation or defensive measures taken by Palestinians will be considered a violation, which is how Israel justified ending the first ceasefire/hostage release deal back in late November 2023.

This ceasefire deal could have been reached any time since May and likely anytime since December of 2023, as Qatar’s Prime Minister, Sheikh Mohammed, acidly noted: “13 months of a waste, of negotiating details that [have] no meaning and aren’t worth any single life that we lost in Gaza, or any single life of those hostages.” It wasn’t because neither Netanyahu nor Biden wanted an agreement; even after the leadership of Hamas and Hezbollah had been eliminated, the mass killing and destruction went on.

According to many reports, Wednesday was one of the bloodiest days in Gaza in months, with Israeli airstrikes on Palestinian tent camps, homes, apartments, and journalists. At least 80 Palestinians were killed and nearly 200 injured. How many more Palestinians will Israel kill in the next four days before the ceasefire takes effect (if it does)?

Who will be the last Palestinian child killed by an Israeli-launched US-made bomb in Gaza in the days and hours before the ceasefire commences? (During WW I, the US and UK forces launched a senseless massive artillery barrage on German positions after they’d laid down their arms in the minutes leading up to the 11 a.m. start of the Armistice. At least 2,738 men were killed on the final morning of the war.) Why?

— Jeffrey St. Clair

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“The cultural era of Europe, and that includes America, is finished. The next era belongs to the technician; the day of the mind machine is dawning. God pity us!”

~ Henry Miller

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

But Trump says he will fix all sorts of things “on day one!”

So…on day two, all will be right with the world. The wars will stop, everyone will have a good paying job, illegal immigrants will be gone, gas prices will be lower than anyone has ever seen, food prices will be affordable.

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NOT A HEGSETH FAN…

Editor,

Re: Alcoholic Neo-Nazi Pervert Pete Hegseth

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was criminal. But at least Rumsfeld didn't have actual Nazi tattoos. Traitor Trump's pick Pete Hegseth loves his booze. Hillbilly Hegseth hates America and loves Germany. On his chest, Hegseth has four Iron Cross tattoos! Not to mention a Jerusalem Cross tattoo and more. If you are as idiotic as Hegseth, then you are GOP. Neo-Nazis are in charge of the Rapepublican Party. Trump's an adjudicated rapist and what about Pete? His mom says pervert Pete is “an abuser of women.” But rape victim Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) will vote for him. Refusing to meet with the women Hegseth raped? The FBI didn't do their job like with Brett Kavanaugh. Silencing women Hegseth raped to get him through The Senate confirmation hearings is nothing new. It's exactly what they did to Kavanaugh's victims too. Republican men are disgusting and belong in a zoo. And on top of all their perversions and high crimes, These GOP pigs disgrace Jesus' name all the time. Who would Jesus rape, you evil Republican liars? Pervert Pete is scum and Trump is the Antichrist.

Jake Pickering

Arcata

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DEPORTEE (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)

by Woody Guthrie & Martin Hoffman

The crops are all in, and the peaches are rotten
The oranges are packed in the creosote dumps
They're flying us back to the Mexico border
To pay all our money to wade back again

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita
Adios mi amigos, Jesus and Maria
You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane
All they will call you will be Deportee

Now my father's own father, he waded that river
They took all the money her made in his life
Six-hundred miles to the Mexico border
They chased us like rustlers, like outlaws, like thieves

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus and Maria
You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane
No all they will call you will be Deportee

The sky-plane caught fire, over Los Gatos Canyon
A big ball of fire, it shook all the ground
Who are these friends, who are falling like dry leaves
The radio said they were just deportees

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus and Maria
You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane
No all they will call you will be Deportee

But we died in your hills, we died in your valleys
We died in your orchards, we died on your plains
We died on your deserts, we died in your treetops
Both sides of the river we died just the same

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus and Maria
You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane
No all they will call you will be Deportee

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Footnotes

The genesis of "Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)" reportedly occurred when Guthrie was struck by the fact that radio and newspaper coverage of the Los Gatos plane crash did not give the victims' names, but instead referred to them merely as "deportees." Guthrie lived in New York City at the time, and none of the deportees' names were printed in the January 29, 1948, New York Times report, only those of the flight crew and the security guard. However, the local newspaper, The Fresno Bee, covered the tragedy extensively and listed all of the known names of the deportees.

Unaware of the extensive local coverage of the disaster, Guthrie responded with a poem, which, when it was first written, featured only rudimentary musical accompaniment, with Guthrie chanting the song rather than singing it. In the poem, Guthrie assigned symbolic names to the dead: "Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita; adiós, mis amigos, Jesús y María..." A decade later, Guthrie's poem was set to music and given a haunting melody by a schoolteacher named Martin Hoffman. Shortly after, folk singer Pete Seeger, a friend of Woody Guthrie, began performing the song at concerts, and it was Seeger's rendition that popularized the song during this time.

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GOODBYE TO JOE BIDEN, AND WHOEVER WAS PRESIDENT THE LAST FOUR YEARS

The “Invisible Presidency” is an all-time criminal, and must not be allowed to flee

by Matt Taibbi

I saw His Majesty myself about half past twelve o’clock. His conversation was so hurried, and, though not unconnected or irrational, so unlike his ordinary manner that I certainly should not have thought it proper to have taken his signature or his pleasure to any Act.

— Spencer Perceval, Chancellor of the Exchequer, in an 1810 letter about King George III

King George III went mad as a March hare, talking until he foamed at the mouth, writing 400-word sentences, threatening to “befoul himself,” holding conversations with imaginary people, and insisting he had power to reanimate the dead. Contemporary notes often describe him “in restraint” and “lost in reverie.” His last, worst phase began in 1810, his 50th in power, a jubilee year requiring constant public appearances. The Last King of America by Andrew Roberts shows it can be done:

No fewer than 650 public events — parades, receptions, luncheons, bonfires, firework displays, illuminations and the like — took place in England alone; there were many more across the rest of the United Kingdom and in the empire beyond.

Joe Biden said goodbye to America Wednesday night. The most controversial part of an otherwise weirdly half-assed address (maybe his writers have stopped caring?) was a warning. “Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence,” he said, a “tech industrial complex” that “literally threatens our entire democracy.”

Biden always loved the word “literally.” He’s been misusing it for decades, from “we literally can’t survive“ four more years of Bush policy, to the 2008 election winner having an opportunity “literally to change the direction of the world,” to Barack Obama’s story being “literally incredible,” to saying he’s “literally rebuilding our entire nation,” and on and on. With Biden terms like look, here’s the deal, let me tell you, I promise you, and C’mon, Biden says “literally” often enough to make “Word Crimes” singer Weird Al Yankovic want to “literally smack a crowbar upside your stupid head.” Here, it’s at least a sign that Biden might have added to the speech on his own.

Most all Biden speeches are acknowledged (Lincoln, Obama) or unacknowledged (Neil Kinnock, John Kennedy) homages to other politicians. This last one Biden attempt at an Eisenhower impersonation is backward. We’re warned about an “oligarchy,” which Webster’s defines as “a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes.” He tries to tag disobedient billionaires like Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen and Mark Zuckerberg (as opposed to Reid Hoffman, Bill and Melinda Gates, Steven Schwartzman, etc.) as this new oligarchy, but there’s one even closer to home, which Biden later in the speech referenced:

In the years ahead… it is going to be up to the president, the presidency, the congress, the courts, the free press and the American people… I still believe in the idea for which this nation stands… Now it’s your turn to stand guard.

Biden’s possibly ad-libbed distinction between “president” and “presidency” was the most inspired line of his political career. America just went through four years in which the public was conned into viewing two stories as one. The first was about Joe Biden the human being, a disintegrating flesh-and-blood patsy, conscripted to such a miserably slapstick public regimen that it was impossible not to feel sorry for him. The second was about the presidency, which for years now has been like the eponymous Claude Rains villain in The Invisible Man: an unseen monster.

For four years, while Buster Keatonesque videos of stumbling, tumbling Biden filled social media, just a handful of clues leaked about the ethereal “Presidency” running the American superpower. The latter existed separate from Biden and is scheduled to slither aside Monday. It exits on a bitter note, blaming an “avalanche of misinformation and disinformation” (not enough censorship) for its inability to be re-elected while strapped to a corpse. It hopes to get away unseen and probably will, as reporters prepare to chase the great baited hook that is Donald Trump. It’s too bad James Whale is dead, since this monster’s story will make a great horror movie someday.

Here are two sincere notes of farewell, to the hapless shrinking man Joe Biden, and to his more powerful partner, the “Presidency”…

https://www.racket.news/p/goodbye-to-joe-biden-and-whoever

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BIDEN STAFFERS LIFT THE LID ON PRESIDENT'S COGNITIVE DECLINE AS 82-YEAR-OLD IS ACCUSED OF UNFORGIVABLE LAPSE

by Stephen M. Lepore

Everyone from Mike Johnson to members of Joe Biden's own staff are commenting on the 82-year-old president's noticeable decline in the last days of his presidency.

Biden, the oldest president in American history, had to drop out of his re-election race after a June debate disaster where he looked feeble and his mental faculties were called into question.

As he leaves office on Monday, more and more people are beginning to speak out on how much agency the president had as he's set to dejectedly bow out after one term.

Johnson, who will retain his position as Speaker of the House, said that Biden bewilderingly told him in a January 2024 meeting that he 'didn't do' an executive order that he had signed months earlier.

The order, announced on January 26 and still available on the White House website, placed a temporary pause on pending approvals of liquefied natural gas exports.

Johnson told The Free Press he asked Biden: 'Sir, why did you pause LNG exports to Europe? Liquefied natural gas is in great demand by our allies. Why would you do that?'

Biden was surprised and said he didn't, leaving Johnson stunned.

'He genuinely didn’t know what he had signed and I walked out of that meeting with fear and loathing because I thought, ‘We are in serious trouble - who is running the country?’ Like, I don’t know who put the paper in front of him, but he didn’t know.'

Johnson's comments follow a New York Times expose that cites more than two dozen Biden allies, from aides to fellow lawmakers to donors, about how they planned to 'manage his decline.'

Biden aides would reschedule meetings to suit the president's mood and would delay sharing negative information with him until they could figure out how to spin it to his liking.

He would also typically be surrounded by staffers as he walked to the South Lawn to take the presidential chopper in order not to look frail on camera.

Perhaps most shockingly, Biden had to use a teleprompter for small fund-raisers in private homes, while donors were forced to submit questions before he spoke.

They also made the president's stairway to get onto Air Force One shorter to avoid Biden potentially stumbling on camera.

All the while, they would publicly get angry at any member of the press who suggested Biden wasn't coherent.

Those who best enabled the president were said to be First Lady Jill Biden, troubled son Hunter Biden, strategist Mike Donilon, counselor Steve Ricchetti, deputy chief of Staff Annie Tomasini and Jill Biden senior aide Anthony Bernal.

The half-dozen trusted confidants managed Biden's schedule so that no one could see too much of the president's senior moments.

Biden was fully aware of the perception, refusing an orthopedic boot when he fractured his foot four years ago, leading to a permanent gait in his walking.

Despite all of the evidence to the contrary, Biden has remained defiant in his final days.

The president told USA Today that he would have won reelection in a rematch against Donald Trump.

Biden, 82, acknowledged his age was an issue, and even admitted he's not so sure how the four years would go after he won this hypothetical second term.

'So far, so good,' he said. 'But who knows what I'm going to be when I'm 86 years old?'

In late July, Biden reluctantly ended his reelection bid and endorsed his No. 2 to take Democrats over the finish line in November.

But Harris, who never won a primary election, failed to garner support and lost in historic fashion to Trump – including all seven swing states.

Biden said in his exit interview about his single term as president that if he stayed in the race, he likely would have beat Trump again.

'It's presumptuous to say that, but I think yes,' Biden claimed, citing polling he reviewed.

Asked whether he had the vigor to serve another four years in office, though, he was less confident.

'I don't know,' he replied. 'Who the hell knows?'

Days later, he bizarrely repeated that both he and Kamala Harris could've beaten Trump.

'I think I would have beaten Trump – could have beaten Trump,' he said, days before Trump is set to return to power. 'And I think that Kamala could have beaten Trump, would have beaten Trump. It wasn't about – I thought it was important to unify the party,' he said.

He failed to specify why, if Harris might have beaten Trump, she didn't actually come out victorious. But he did admit that he feared a divided party might lose if he stayed on.

The party fractured after his July debate disaster over whether he would be able to prevail while facing record low approval numbers.

'I thought I could win again, thought it was better to unify the party, and I was the greatest honor in my life to be president United States, but I didn't want to be one who caused a party that wasn't unified to lose an election,' he said. 'That's why I stepped aside. But I was confident she could win.'

As it turned out, Trump beat Harris in all seven swing states and won the popular vote, as he reminded a New York judge Friday on a day he was sentenced of 34 felony counts in his hush money case.

(DailyMail.uk)

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TAIBBI AND KIRN: THE ANNOTATED FINAL SPEECH OF JOE BIDEN

President Biden: “My fellow Americans, I’m speaking to you tonight from the Oval Office. Before I began, let me speak to important news from earlier today. After eight months of nonstop negotiation, my administration, by my administration, a ceasefire and a hostage deal has been reached by Israel and Hamas, the elements of which I laid out in great detail in May of this year. This plan was developed and negotiated by my team, and it’ll be largely implemented by the incoming administration. That’s why I told my team to keep the incoming administration fully informed, because that’s how it should be.”

Matt Taibbi: All right, So a couple of things there. We’ve been in negotiations for eight months, the situation started in October. They had ample opportunity, obviously, to lean all the way into pressuring Israel into some kind of deal. Now, there are varying accounts about how sincere the reports are that Benjamin Netanyahu is not happy with this upcoming ceasefire, that it’s kind of a gift to the incoming Trump administration, that’s a line and that’s being put out there, but unmistakably this deal did not happen before the election, which one would’ve thought they would’ve wanted it to if they wanted to take political credit for it. So very odd that they’re leading off his farewell address by taking credit for something that I really don’t think they can take credit for, can they?

Walter Kirn: No, they not only can’t take credit for it, they must take full credit for how prolonged things have been already, and how terrible this war has been, and how little the United States has seemingly affected any real peace process or managed to create restraint on the part of its ally. It was uncharacteristically generous of Trump, I suppose, to call the deal concluded while Biden was still in office. If he’d wanted to pull a Reagan Iranian hostage thing, he would’ve announced it when he was inaugurated, but instead he left the ball in the corner of the goal for Biden to just kick his leg at and pretend to have scored.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah, very strange. By saying the incoming administration is going to implement this, what he’s really saying is, “We did this, but they’re going to take credit for it and we just want you to know that it was really all us all along and that as this goes forward, it’s going to be our initiative.”

Walter Kirn: ”And at the very moment we had almost zero negotiating leverage, we managed to do it.”

Matt Taibbi: Right. Yes, exactly. I think that that was an odd way to lead it off, but it gets so much weirder, this speech gets weirder. And look, every Joe Biden address, especially towards the end of his term, it’s always kind of there’s sort of a timer that you have to keep in your head, realizing that he’s going to start to lose it in the middle of whatever public address that he’s going to give, and it’s only a matter of time before things start to go haywire, even with a scripted address. So he goes forward, and this is just funny because it’s just such odd writing. Joe Biden has given to the Statue of Liberty before. He has a whole collection of riffs that he retreats to in speeches when he gets lost. Everything from, we’re at an inflection point to, oh god, I’m trying to think of some others. When he really gets lost, he always annunciates the United States of America fully because that gives him an extra second to think of where he is in the speech, but he has done this whole, he’s given pins to the Statue of Liberty, but this one is just weirder than I’ve heard before.

President Biden: “I’ve been thinking a lot about who we are, and maybe more importantly who we should be. Long ago in New York Harbor, an iron worker installed beam after beam, day after day. He was joined by steelworkers, stonemasons, engineers, that built not just a single structure, but a beacon of freedom. The very idea of America was so big we felt the entire world needed to see the Statue of Liberty, a gift from France after our civil war. Like the very idea of America, it was built not by one person, but by many people from every background and from around the world. Like America. A Statue of Liberty is not standing still.”

Matt Taibbi: Now this is where it gets weird.

President Biden: “Her foot literally steps forward atop a broken chain of human bondage, she’s on the march and she literally moves. She was built to sway back and forth to withstand the fury of stormy weather, to stand the test of time because storms are always coming. She sways a few inches but she never falls into the current below, an engineering marvel. The Statue of Liberty is also an enduring symbol of the soul of our nation, a soul shaped by forces that bring us together and by forces that pull us apart.”

Matt Taibbi: Okay, so the Soul of America, the battle for the Soul of America was a big theme in his campaign in 2020, but the Statue of Liberty, literally moving, I’m pretty sure every tall structure is designed to sway back and forth a few inches. “She’s on the march.” I just found that an exceedingly strange image.

Walter Kirn: We should meme that into our Starship Troopers obsession, “The Statue of Liberty, she’s on the march crushing the bugs.”

Matt Taibbi: ”I’m doing my part.” She would turn to the camera.

Walter Kirn: ”With her torch, she’s seeking out the hard corner nests of the bugs, burning them to death.”

Matt Taibbi: ”She’s fully armed.”

Walter Kirn: Right, right, right. “With her giant bronze feet, she has crushed insects from other planets.” Well, the Statue of Liberty is interesting. I don’t remember hearing about it quite as much when I was a kid and I actually attended whatever the centennial of it was or something or something in New York, I went down and saw fireworks in the early eighties, I believe.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah, that was when the tall ships were here, I think, if I remember correctly.

Walter Kirn: Oh, there were fireworks, tall ships, movie stars that we don’t remember anymore, a wholesomeness that has gone from the world, but she gets a lot of play because it’s code for immigration, for one thing. It’s a way to kind of cover his flanks on immigration, which he tried to do the other day too, in claiming that crossings at the border were way down under him and so on. I think he knows that’s his big vulnerability in terms of legacy or one of them. Every time he talks about something, it feels like a ghost story though, like your grandpa telling you a ghost story and you’re afraid. What you’re afraid of is not what’s going to happen in the story, but what’s going to happen in the telling. And whenever Grandpa Biden gets on the TV, I’m hoping actually that he’ll go off into a rift as I just pretended to myself. So anyway, there was that, but that’s all just boilerplate for what comes afterwards, because in some ways, after invoking liberty and freedom,

Matt Taibbi: Moving Liberty, Liberty that is literally loose

Walter Kirn: Swaying, liberty.

Matt Taibbi: Swaying, moving liberty,

Walter Kirn: There was what you might call an orotund quality to this speech. It had a kind of 19th century feel. She doesn’t fall into the current below, the deep dangerous whirlpools of the Hudson, New York Harbor. But after that wind up, we then got a weird bitter speech.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah, it got weird real fast, and yeah, I guess we should start like a number. Okay, let me back up. Biden, if you’re looking for hints as to who writes Biden’s speeches or who might be running things in the White House, there aren’t a whole lot. There are a couple of authorized biographies, if you look, they all give the same handful of names that are behind the scenes. So Mike Donilon is a name that comes up a lot, Ron Klain, clearly at the beginning of the administration he was the chief of staff of the White House. Seems pretty clear he was kind of running things at the beginning at least. That deposition is now occupied by a guy named Jeff Zients. Jen O’Malley Dillon is another person who was in charge of PR, Anita Dunn, but they’ve always been credited with writing the speeches for Biden. So we know that of course he’s not writing this stuff, but he delivers it in such a strange way.

Walter Kirn: He delivers it in the way that Abba sings songs in English despite not knowing the language. With great misplaced verve, you’re absolutely sure that he’s been around long enough to be able to kind of sell the rhythms of a speech without any real awareness of its content. And the fingers being raised and the other gestural techniques seem almost randomly distributed. I think he’s semi-conscious of what he’s saying, he kind of wakes to his meaning in the middle of it, “Oh, I’m talking about the Statue of Liberty, aren’t I? I should be this way.” And I don’t think that the writers were the A team, whoever he gets for his big speeches seem to either be having to go home early or maybe not there anymore.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah, this felt like not even a second draft maybe, maybe like a draft and a half. But the thing you mentioned actually is very important because that was the way I knew in 2019 that something was wrong with Biden, because in 2008 when he was a candidate, I wouldn’t say he’s a good speaker, but he was always kind of engaging and alert. It’s funny if you read some of these biographies of him, they say that his desire to come off as a good speaker got him into trouble, that was why he stole the speech from Neil Kinnock in the late eighties, because he wanted to seem eloquent. I believe that’s in the Chris Whipple biography. Oh no, I’m sorry, it’s the Franklin Foyer book.

But what would happen in 2019, 2020 is that he would start rattling off numbers, he would say things like, “There are 19 million people out of work.” And then he would say, “And then they go up to management.” And you would forget that this is the time that he’s not supposed to be angry, like that’s good news. His affect wouldn’t match the content because he hadn’t been instructed as to when he was supposed to be happy and when he was supposed to be angry. And so that was how you knew that something was wrong, and the press kept reporting this as him being fiery and passionate, but actually he was just off. It wasn’t either of those things, it was just strange.

Walter Kirn: He has had, for the longest time now, an affect that is almost permanently angry. I don’t see it as moderated by or modulated by happiness anymore. It’s just less angry, more angry. And the anger often seems to be when he’s talking about his own accomplishments, and it reads as though you haven’t appreciated him properly. It’s always admonishing, and scolding, and it’s a bad feeling because you get the feeling you’ve done something wrong when you watch Biden speak. He’ll go after Trump, but then in the same tone he’ll list his accomplishments.

Matt Taibbi: And this is why he got into so much trouble in 2020, 2019, because he was always perpetually sticking a finger in someone’s face, sometimes physically into their bodies for emphasis, and he was angry, he was trying to make a point. So yeah, you’re right. He was permanently angry, there was only one other emotion that ever popped up, and that was bewilderment or fear. I once wrote a draft, I don’t think it ever got into Rolling Stone, but I was writing about this in 2019, and I said that the two faces were rage and the other one is as if you were looking at the predator removing its mask. So like the movie The Predator, he has this face like it’s just unspeakable horror, and that will last for a little while until he finally remembers where he is supposed to be in the speech. Anyway, so his affect is off, he goes on with this speech, and then he starts doing the highfalutin democracy talk, and here is where it gets weird. I guess we can start at around, let’s go with number six.

President Biden: “We know the idea of America, our institutions, our people, our values that uphold it, are constantly being tested ongoing to base about power and the exercise of power. But whether we lead by the example of our power or the power of our example, whether we show the courage to stand up to the abuse of power or we yield to it, after 50 years at the center of all of this, I know that believing in the idea of America means respecting the institutions that govern a free society, the presidency, the Congress, the courts, a free and independent press, institutions that are rooted. They just might not reflect the timeless words, but they echo the words of the Declaration of Independence. We hold these truths to be self-evident, rooted in the timeless words of the Constitution, we the people.”

Matt Taibbi: Okay, all right.

Walter Kirn: You idiots.

Matt Taibbi: A lot there. Notice he started to lose it right there. He’s old, we can’t give him a hard time about that. But there were a couple of things I found fascinating there, was there anything you noticed in that?

Walter Kirn: Well, he did one of these rhetorical inversion reversal tricks, there’s a name for it in Latin, but I can’t remember it. Whether we lead by the example of our power or the power of our example, neither of which made a lot of sense to me. What’s the example of our power mean? Force, intimidation? And then what’s the power of our example, I guess that’s moral suasion of the traditional kind. But that’s where I thought the speed traders weren’t home, that this could be AI augmented, and maybe there’s somebody who doesn’t usually write speeches there helping him, maybe the person who adjusts his medications, because that is a move that from seventh grade speech class carried off very poorly, and then later he does it again in a way that made no sense at all and I can’t wait to talk about,

Matt Taibbi: Yeah, so when I first started covering Biden, I noticed this tendency of his to do this thing, and they’re Mike Bradyisms. There are these silly tautologies, it’s like when you think you’re X, it’s actually Y, and Y is actually X, and he just flips things back and forth.…

https://www.racket.news/p/transcript-america-this-week-jan-6f1

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