MENDOCINO OBSERVER EDITOR JIM SHIELDS DIED TUESDAY NIGHT. His family notified us of his passing Wednesday afternoon. We do not have any details at this time, but hope to have some soon. Jim Shields was a significant fixture both in Laytonville and in the County of Mendocino. Not only was he the multi-decade owner/editor of his popular weekly newspaper, but he was the manager of Laytonville’s water district, a senior member of the Laytonville Municipal Advisory Board, the late Johnny Pinches’ campaign manager, a long time friend and contributor to the AVA and the Ukiah Daily Journal, and the de facto mayor of Laytonville. He will be greatly missed. Our sincere condolences to his family. (Mark Scaramella)
REMEMBERING JIM SHIELDS
Mike Geniella:
Jim Shields’ first-rate reporting will be missed in Mendocino County. Jim took his role as a community watchdog seriously, and he did it well. RIP.
Sheriff Matt Kendall:
Jim was a damn good man, good friend and a person who would give advice for the betterment of all. I will miss him.
Julie Beardsley:
My condolences to the Shields family. He was not afraid to voice his opinions, which were spot on. The County has lost a good man.
Katherine Houston:
Amen to that.
Anon:
Sorry to hear about Jim Shields. I did not know Jim but enjoyed reading his articles and thoughts. It was obvious he cared about our County. My condolences to his family.
Chuck Dunbar:
I join with all who lament the passing of Jim Shields. Well said they are.
Bob Abeles:
Requiescat in pace, Jim Shields.
Lee Edmundson:
So sorry to hear of Jim Shields passing. A clear incisive voice has been stilled. And we are left with but his echos. RIP.
Linda Bailey:
So so sad. A loss to his family, his community, and all the county residents. His insight and information will be sorely missed.
Anon:
I am so sad to hear of Jim Shields passing. What a great loss to his daughter, family, friends, the Laytonville community and our county. He, along with the AVA editor and Mark Scaramella are the best protectors of truth and information re local government we have. To lose one of these protectors is devastating on many levels. My heart goes out to all who knew and loved him. Just so sad.
Randy Burke:
He will be missed. What a generous spirit of a man was he.
Ted Stephens:
He did such a good job keeping us updated on what was going on. RIP Jim Shields.
Norm Thurston:
RIP Jim Shields. Such a huge loss for our county.
John Sakowicz:
Jim Shields was a true journalist who loved Mendocino County. He followed our show, and we read his newspaper. Our hearts go out to the entire Shields family. Jim will be missed. He was a valuable human being.
WE COULDN’T HELP NOTICING the idea of the City of Willits “outsourcing” their dispatch services to the City of Ukiah (which already does Fort Bragg’s dispatch). In Ms. Cox’s fine report of Willits’ precarious financial situation she doesn’t say whether former County Sheriff (now Willits Major) Tom Allman supports the idea or not. But he certainly did more than a decade ago when he first proposed that County dispatch services be consolidated. Back when he was Sheriff Allman pointed out that there would be substantial savings if the County and the cities and CHP combined their four (!) law enforcement dispatch centers into one operation because, besides the obvious savings, these operations need 24/7 coverage and the smaller dispatch operations are not very busy for at least half the time, so the dispatchers are badly under-utilized. Or maybe consolidate the night shift, at least. Now here comes the subject again, this time from Willits. While everybody agrees that there’s lots of money to be saved, both from the County and the cities, the idea hasn’t got anything but occasional lip-service, and limited lip service at that.
“I AM AN INVISIBLE MAN. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids -- and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination -- indeed, everything and anything except me.” ― Ralph Ellison, ‘Invisible Man’
“TO LOVE AT ALL is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
WHERE HAVE THEY GONE?
John Stephenson, Ralph Maize, and Ronald Parker
It all began in the summer of 1968. Three young men—John Stephenson, Ron Parker, and I, Ralph Maize—found ourselves bound by duty and camaraderie at the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office. That summer, we worked the graveyard shift, 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., patrolling the quiet roads and not-so-quiet calls of Mendocino County. We were rookies then—John and Ron just starting out, I already five years into the job. But from those long nights and shared patrol cars, a lifelong friendship was born.
Fifty-seven years is more than a career—it’s a lifetime. We cuffed the bad guys and placed them in the backseat, just like deputies do today. The tools have changed, the uniforms have evolved, but the fundamentals of the job—and the bond it creates—remain the same.
John and Ron both retired as lieutenants, proud of the work we did and the lives we touched. My path took me even further—rising to Undersheriff before joining the federal ranks, conducting investigations across the country. Each of us carved out a legacy in law enforcement, shaped by integrity, grit, and a shared sense of purpose.
Now, in the twilight of our lives, we look back not with regret, but with gratitude. This isn’t breaking news—it’s just the truth. And truth is something we’ve always lived by in our chosen profession.
One day, we’ll have that seven-point badge pinned on us from above. But until then, we’ll keep showing up for our Wednesday coffee breaks. Because how many people can say they’ve had the same coffee buddies for 57 years?
Come September 2025, we’ll still be sipping, reminiscing, and laughing. And that, my friends, is the kind of legacy no badge can measure.
R. Maize
KAREN RIFKIN NOTIFIES US that “Jody Martinez, deputy editor of the Ukiah Daily Journal, is retiring after 39 years of dedicated service to the community as a behind-the-scenes editor, assisting in overseeing the daily operations of the paper, both creatively and administratively and, as an historian, has filled the pages, over the decades, with short stories and photos, retelling Ukiah’s history. Thank you Jody, you will be missed.”
EYSTER’S DODGE
Just A Reminder. Mendocino County District Attorney David Eyster routinely posts this on the office’s Facebook site: ”Mendocino County District Attorney has limited who can comment on this post.”
The U.S. Supreme Court sees it differently: https://bbklaw.com/resources/la-032124-when-can-a-government-official-limit-comments-or-block-users-on-social-media
HARVEY READING: An extraterrestrial would have be a moron to have the slightest interest in us or our gutted, over-populated planet.
SHERIFF MATT KENDALL: I’m with Harvey. I’ve long said anything that has the intelligence to get to our universe would likely do a little observation before they rolled in. With the way we have been behaving lately… Theres a good chance they would roll up the windows and drive past quickly while pointing out to the wife and kids what a really rough neighborhood looks like.
GRAND CANYON: From every direction, the place is under assault—and unlike in the past, the adversary is not concentrated in a single force, such as the Bureau of Reclamation, but takes the form of separate outfits conducting smaller attacks that are, in many ways, far more insidious. From directly above, the air-tour industry has succeeded in scuttling all efforts to dial it back, most recently through the intervention of Arizona’s senators, John Kyl and John McCain, and is continuing to destroy one of the canyon’s greatest treasures, which is its silence. From the east has come a dramatic increase in uranium-mining claims, while the once remote and untrammeled country of the North Rim now suffers from an ever-growing influx of recreational ATVs. On the South Rim, an Italian real estate company recently secured approval for a massive development whose water demands are all but guaranteed to compromise many of the canyon’s springs, along with the oases that they nourish. Worst of all, the Navajo tribe is currently planning to cooperate in constructing a monstrous tramway to the bottom of the canyon, complete with a restaurant and a resort, at the confluence of the Little Colorado and the Colorado, the very spot where John Wesley Powell made his famous journal entry in the summer of 1869 about venturing “down the Great Unknown.” As vexing as all these things are, what Litton finds even more disheartening is the country’s failure to rally to the canyon’s defense—or for that matter, to the defense of its other imperiled natural wonders. The movement that he and David Brower helped build is not only in retreat but finds itself the target of bottomless contempt. On talk radio and cable TV, environmentalists are derided as “wackos” and “extremists.” The country has swung decisively toward something smaller and more selfish than what it once was, and in addition to ushering in a disdain for the notion that wilderness might have a value that extends beyond the metrics of economics or business, much of the nation ignorantly embraces the benefits of engineering and technology while simultaneously rejecting basic science.
— Kevin Fedarko (The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon)
RON RICCI:
I’m a bit of a poser being a part timer, but I’ll introduce myself. I grew up in Vermont and drove to the West Coast 27 years ago. Never looked back. The first moment I spent time in Anderson Valley it reminded me of home. Such a beautiful, bucolic place with great people. Fits like a glove. My wife and I have had our place for 15 years, full time for a couple of those years, and in the long run plan to be full time again. We’ve been lucky to share it with our kids (12 & 13), and now also share it with my in laws. Thank you for being the amazing community that you are.
STATE SENATOR MIKE MCGUIRE, ALONG WITH GREAT REDWOOD TRAIL AGENCY REPRESENTATIVES, GAVE A PROGRESS UPDATE ON THE GREAT REDWOOD TRAIL
by Monica Huettl
State Senator Mike McGuire, along with Great Redwood Trail Agency representatives, gave a progress update on the Great Redwood Trail. Senator McGuire represents District 2, ranging from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Oregon border, encompassing the area through which the GRT runs.…
MARK SCARAMELLA NOTES: Everything — and we mean every single thing — that Senator McGuire and his Trail minions emit about the Great Redwood Trail is propaganda. It may be correct, narrowly speaking, but it’s very selective and incomplete. It’s well packaged slick political marketing. That’s because they know that public opinion ranges from Mulheren-style generic support of anything they label “trail,” to who cares?, to skeptical, and on into outright opposition to the ridiculously oversized, overpriced, mismanaged and dubious project. Therefore, they are making every effort to use taxpayer money to sell the project to the mostly disbelieving public as often as possible. The more they try to sell it to the public the more desperate they look. Just look at the North Coast Rail Authority from which the GRT sprang a few years ago at almost exactly the same time the NCRA funding was being cut by the state Transportation Commission. The Democrats have been milking this train/trail to nowhere scam in one form or another since the 1980s. Very little happens because a 300-plus mile trail isn’t practical except for dribs and drabs, just enough to keep the public thinking there’s some there there. The idea and the location for the 300-mile long GRT boondoggle only arose because the California Democratic Party happens to own the right of way and a large majority of the state legislature. McGuire & Co. have not championed any other trail projects and no other projects have received any attention (with the possible exception of Newsom’s anti-Trump redistricting measure), much less tens of millions in taxpayer planning and construction funds. McGuire makes no such effort to promote or publicize any other issue, as if the Great Redwood Trail is his only/top priority. (Last I checked, isn’t California running a big deficit?) Ask Sheriff Kendall if he agrees that the GRT should be the state’s or the senator’s top priority. When was the last time McGuire offered a “progress update” on law enforcement in California? Or on Health care? Or…?
Prediction: After he terms out next year, McGuire will end up in some cush tax-funded position somehow connected to the Great Redwood Trail. (Our guess: the State Coastal Conservancy.)
LEW CHICHESTER (Covelo)
A few thoughts on the Great Redwood Trail: it’s a boondoggle, all tangled up in what seems to be a typical California public project, heavy on the administration, planning, permits and process and not getting much done for a lot of time and money wasted. It’s too much like the high speed rail project which would not be hard to build somewhere else other than California. The engineering and construction is not complicated, but it’s to the advantage of a certain group of politicians, planners and paper pushers to make it take as long a possible. Once it’s built you are out of a job.
However, I still think The Great Redwood Trail is a good idea. As a person who used to ride bicycles all over the place, wherever a safe route could be found, and enjoyed exploring the world without much baggage, the potential to navigate from Sausalito to Arcata on a bicycle is intriguing. Particularly the part from Dos Rios down the Eel River canyon.
In the southern state of Georgia, where a hundred years ago there were rail lines all over the place, to every little town, and then many of them abandoned as highways and corporate consolidation bankrupted the little short lines, some of these old rail routes are now bicycle paths. People who know about this come from all over the country to make these bicycle trips. Where I lived many years ago in Cedartown now has a paved bike lane on an old rail line all the way to Atlanta. It’s maybe sixty miles. These various old rail now bike lanes intersect and groups of people can travel much of the state on bicycles, stopping in the small towns, staying in the old hotels, eating in the little restaurants. It is a special kind of tourist industry. We could do this up here if the Great Redwood Trail project wasn’t so convoluted and seemingly corrupt, benefitting a bunch of people invested in making it take forever. It should be easy. If ever built, it would certainly be a great trail, maybe one of the best in the world.
JIM ARMSTRONG:
Since Potter Valley itself is the only stakeholder in the “Two Basin Solution” that gets no benefit from it (thown under the bus sums it up), it is worth keeping in mind that all the water that Sonoma County and other Russian River users are yelling about is Potter Valley water. The total inflow to Lake Mendocino comes from about 100 square miles, all (except for Cold Creek and the Eel diversion), purely water that has fallen on Potter Valley during the rainy season. It is ours, then it goes and we may be able to somehow use that leverage to keep Eel River summer flow and save us from becoming high and dry. The alternative of giving up the fight should not be contemplated.
SUPERVISOR MAUREEN MULHEREN:
When I get to welcome new employees I always thank them for coming to work for the County because without our Team none of the work I do as a policymaker matters. Every single employee whether they interact with the public through Social Services, Behavioral Health, Law Enforcement or serve internal functions like IT and Retirement has the opportunity to make a difference in someone’s lives and support our community. I want to thank you all for continuing to show up and leading, guiding and supporting everyone in Mendocino County. I am incredibly grateful for your service.
JULIE BEARDSLEY RESPONDS:
Interesting that the take-over of the CDC by people with no Public Health experience, mirrors what happened to Mendocino County Public Health. When the current Director was put in place over 60 experienced public health employees left. The staff now seems to consist of very young, newly minted nurses and others with no public health experience. God help us if we have an actual public health emergency.
JEFFREY ST. CLAIR:
- Kill 11 people riding somewhere in the Caribbean on a dinghy with an outboard motor, broadcast the kill shot, gloat about it as if you’d sunk a Chinese battleship, then ask your minions to try to come up with a legal basis for the assassinations a couple of days later, if they could (they can’t)…
- There is no legal justification for Trump’s military strike on an alleged “drug boat” off the coast of Venezuela. The boat, a simple speedboat, posed no threat to the US Navy vessels. The little boat could have easily been interdicted, searched for drugs and its occupants detained if any were found. No proof was offered that it was carrying drugs or was associated with the Tren de Aragua “narco-terrorist organization.” In any event, drug trafficking is not a capital offense, even when it’s been proven. Most countries would consider this an act of terrorism and mass murder under international law. Indeed, such a strike is also prohibited under US law.
- The Trump Administration didn’t know where the boat was going or why 11 people would be taking up space on a small, open-air craft that was supposed to be packed with illicit drugs. Were they fishermen? Immigrants? Who could believe them? Rubio’s State Department has repeatedly lied about Venezuela and accused immigrants from that country of being Tren de Aragua gang members based solely on tattoos or the fact they’re wearing Air Jordans…
- In his latest Substack post (“On Anonymous Sources“), Seymour Hersh once again appears to claim sole credit for “exposing” the My Lai Massacre: .
“In 1969, I exposed the My Lai massacre in a series of freelance reports for a small anti-Vietnam War Saigon-based writers’ cooperative known as Dispatch News Service. Earlier I had covered the war as a Pentagon correspondent for the Associated Press, and—despite that experience and my writing for the New York Times Magazine about secret US work on chemical and biological weapons as well as a book on the topic—I could interest no major media outlets in what I had uncovered about the massacre at My Lai. I had obtained access to an Army charge sheet accusing a young Army 2nd lieutenant named William Calley of being the “bad apple” who engineered the crime. My work for Dispatch won me many prizes, including a Pulitzer, and a front-page story in the New York Times about the award for foreign reporting going to a freelance writer. Then, as now, the Times was the place to be a reporter.”
In fact, the slaughter was first exposed by Hugh Thompson, who tried to stop the killing, and wrote a report about it the day it happened. Then, in March 1969 (seven months before Hersh’s first story), another Army veteran and investigative journalist, Ron Ridenhour, wrote a detailed account of the war crime and sent it to Nixon, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird and leading members of Congress. It wasn’t just Ridenhour, either. As I recounted in my piece “The Last Child of My Lai,” the day before Hersh’s first story for Dispatch News appeared, Wayne Greenshaw published a front-page piece in the Alabama Journal on the massacre, under the title: “Fort Benning Probes Vietnam Slayings: Officer Suspect in 91 Deaths of Civilians.”
The atrocities committed in “Pinkville” were no secret to the Vietnamese. Within days of the massacre, investigators with the Census Grievance Committee in Quang Ngai City released a fairly accurate account of the killings. But in a striking parallel to the Palestinian journalists covering the genocide in Gaza today, the reports by the Vietnamese were denounced as “VC propaganda” and dismissed by the Army, US investigators and western reporters.
Ridenhour and Greenshaw’s ground-breaking work also goes unmentioned in Cover-Up, Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus’s new documentary on Hersh, which has been greeted with enthusiastic reviews following its premiere at the Venice Film Festival. It’s also worth noting that Hersh’s reporting on the US’s biological and chemical warfare program for New York Times Magazine in August 1968 (and an earlier piece in the New York Review of Books in April 1968) leaned heavily on work first done by the Portland-based investigative journalist Elinor Langer (“Chemical and Biological Warfare,” Science, January 13/20, 1967).
- In no way is this meant to detract from Hersh’s vital reporting. But to recognize the contributions of Thompson, Ridenhour, Greenshaw and Langer, who weren’t “anonymous” sources and shouldn’t be rendered as such. One of the reasons Alexander Cockburn dismissed journalism prizes, such as the Pulitzer, is that he believed, correctly, I think, that journalism is a collective endeavor, where one so-called “exposé” almost always builds on and is enhanced by the work of other journalists.
- “Then as now, the Times was the place to be a reporter.” Really, Sy?
R. CRUMB:
Jesus. Fuckin’ raging, epithet music comin’ out of every car, every store, every person’s head. They don’t have noisy radios on, they got earphones; like, “motherfuckin’, cocksuckin’, son of a bitch. Lot of aggression. Lot of anger, lot of rage. Everybody walks around, they’re walkin’ advertisements. They’ve got advertisements on their clothes, you know? Walking around with “Adidas” written across their chests, ‘49’ers on their hats. Jesus. It’s pathetic. It’s pitiful. The whole cultures’ one unified field of bought-sold-market researched everything, you know. It used to be that people fermented their own culture, you know? It took hundreds of years, and it evolved over time. And that’s gone in America. People now don’t even have any concept that there ever was a culture outside of this thing that’s created to make money. Whatever’s the biggest, latest thing, they’re into it. You just get disgusted after a while with humanity for not having more, kind of like, intellectual curiosity about what’s behind all this jive bullshit.
A FEW DECADES AGO, I had the opportunity to sit in Phil Burton’s office, trying to interview him about Pacific Lumber Company-related issues as a steady stream of people paraded in and out. He barked orders and swore at those he felt were unnecessarily interrupting him. Burton took a call, and within a few minutes was shouting, “F you,” before slamming the receiver down. Through all of this, he would turn, smile at me, and ask, “Now, where were we?”
— Mike Geniella
WESTPORT READER ROBERT SOMER alerted us to the unsighty delapidated building right on Highway 1 last year.
Back then, the entire front façade of the old building had fallen into the highway.
Mr. Somer is pleased to report that this week the building owner, a Mr. Stephan Passalacqua of Healdsburg has begun renovation. Reportedly, the renovation work is accompanied by applicable permits or permit applications.
ON LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK
[1] ChatGPT is a bit sociopathic in its programming, It'll aways look for ways to affirm your point of view. Try it sometime. State an opinion that you believe in and it'll praise you for your brilliant take. Then state the opposite with equal conviction and it'll pivot to support that. It won't feel embarrassed for the quick about face because it can't.
The programming seems to be that way to sort of flatter you into continue using it. It's probably what the product team calls "stickiness."
Now imagine being a confused, depressed kid. ChatGPT is going to find ways to agree with you that the world is unfair, that life perhaps is not always worth living, now that you put it so brilliantly.
It's an amazing tool. As someone in these comments put it, it's a super-duper autocomplete. But it's a product. It cost a lot of time and money to make. And its creators want you to use it, no matter what.
This, to me, is the creepy power of tech. ChatGPT is a piece of code that seems human, but has no real POV, no ethics, and experiences no feelings at all. But it seems like a it does. And it'll be your grinning yes-man no matter what fucked up thing you want to do.
[2] I keep having this recurring dream that Walter Cronkite is climbing into my bedroom window while I am sleeping--which is really weird because my window is on the third floor. I wonder what it means. Anyway, next time I get that dream I’ll tell him you spoke up on his behalf. :)
[3] Our son was in a US medical school, more than half of the class was female. He spent 4 years being congratulated that he wasn’t “as bad as all the other white cisgender males” by self-identified victims of misogyny (in a majority female school). Our son, along with any other normal male (of all skin colors btw) just put their heads down for 4 years and worked. In other words, a percentage of a medical school class self-censored for 4 years at a time when we desperately need new ideas and thinking in medicine. That is the problem with even stifling free speech. We risk losing our greatest asset, human creativity. The public square used to be the place ideas went to be argued, and the best ideas won.
[4] I have lived in California for almost half a century. Other than the fact that I have to pay so much state income tax, I don't have a lot to complain about. And the weather is nice most of the time.
[1] My father had advanced Alzheimer’s and lived at home — he was unable to care for himself. He had some savings, Social Security and a Veterans Pension. If his expenses were more than the money could cover as it often was, my family made up the difference. We were not paid to care for him, and it was a 24/7 responsibility. As a die hard bleeding heart liberal I chose to vote in favor of programs to provide assistance for those that needed support from Medicaid, services for Veterans, food and shelter for the homeless. I did not judge or hold bias. I trusted that if my care required support from our government. it would be there. You had just as much information as I did. And chose to vote for an bankrupt of morals and ethics convicted criminal, and his cronies who have every intention of destroying democracy for their own personal gain at your expense. You trusted that was the better choice? I will have to make sacrifices to insure my aging years and so will you as much as it pains me to say this, but don’t ask me to send letters and call my Republican Senator and Congressman who do not hold town halls, did not respond to me and thousands of others who called, sent letters, rallied, and did everything possible we could to try to change the BBB vote. Your vote - your choice, and now you and I have to live with it, cutting in to income, savings and budgeting to stay alive. Welcome to the reality Neighbor. Best of luck.
[5] ICE isn’t finding drug runners and criminals any better than our existing Law Enforcement already was. That’s why they’re catching gardeners, and firefighters, and lurking around immigration hearings for people doing their diligence. Talk to any immigrant who went through the “legal” process and you’ll hear a story that spans a decade and is full of silly hurdles, long waits, and long drives to distant hearings.
[6] I once heard an audio anecdote from a man-in-the-street interview with a voter. This voter had a big head of steam built up about how one particular reactionary crank candidate earned his vote. Having heard the candidate’s angry, resentful pitch, this angry, resentful voter figured ‘Yup, this is my guy all right’. What was the big issue this voter wanted dealt with? He figured that once in office, the candidate would do something about the hassle he was having over renewing his fishing licence. Yeah, you read that right. His fishing licence.
In case it needs pointing out, the candidate hadn’t said a thing about fishing licences. The candidate didn’t care about fishing licences. The candidate’s party didn’t care about fishing licences. To a first approximation, no one on god’s green earth cared or cares a fig about fucking fishing licences. What some people do care about, though, is power. And they understood something about that voter, namely, that the voter didn’t really care about his fishing licence either -- he cared about his feelings. And so, they trained their candidate to send an angry, resentful message, and this guy did what they wanted: he voted his heart. Power was lying in the street and they picked it up, thanks in part to this angry, resentful loser.
Multiply that by a few tens of millions, and you have MAGA: America’s angry, resentful, seething id. For the moment, at least, anger and resentment have the whip in hand, and they’re energetically cracking it to pursue their real agenda of turning back the clock: rolling back the 20th century, rolling back the Bill of Rights, rolling back as many as possible of the ways the USA became a better place over the 250 years since its founding.
[7] Am I the only one who sees the Palestinian people as victims of Hamas just as much as the Jews are? Granted that the stupid bastards voted them into office in 2007, however they have subsequently been the victims of these rabid zealots for as long as the Jews.
I wish Julie Beardsley would run for office.