Mendocino County Today: Tuesday 11/11/2025

Warm | Stop Work | Felony Jones | Gofund Perez | Website Survey | Pelicans | Coast Courthouse | Support Veterans | Be-Bop a Vet | Sharing Resources | Leaf Skeleton | Food Drive | Belly Dance | Local Events | Need Boats | Yesterday's Catch | The Hailstorm | Grape Glut | Curses | G20/COP30 | Climate Comments | Ranch Windmill | Computer Dead | Deja Fait | Matchbox Blues | Curse Them | VA Services | Robert Stevenson | Romantic | Go Back | Cannot Believe | Cursive | Civic Groups | Scab | Storm Watch | Double Bird | Fall Leaves | Corrupt Party | Misplaced Loyalty | Grok Love-Chick | Parade Bros | War Propaganda | Lead Stories | Sandwiches Win | SF Cablecar | End Shutdown | Banana Republic

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ABOVE NORMAL TEMPERATURES and dry conditions will persist through Tuesday with overnight valley and coastal fog. Wet and unsettled weather conditions will impact the area starting mid to late in the day on Wednesday. This will bring heavy rain and wind Wednesday night. Thursday, snow levels are expected to drop as low as 4,000 feet with potential additional precipitation. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A partly cloudy 48F this Tuesday morning on the coast. It is looking rainy Wednesday & Thursday, dry Friday & Saturday then more rain Sunday. Dry for a few days after that ? Of course it depends on which forecast you are looking at...

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AS EXPECTED, STOP WORK ORDER ISSUED for Lambert Lane Bridge Project

The West Coast Contractor Crew is winding down and buttoning up for the winter and does not expect to return until late spring of next year. There are obvious cost and schedule implications of the Fish and Wildlife stop work order which will have to be ironed out between the County and the contractor. Not to mention the crew turnover and the re-start process.

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GETTIN' KINDA OLD FOR THIS, AREN'T YOU JONESY

On Sunday, 11/09/2025 at around 9:40 PM, Mendocino County Sheriff's Deputies assigned to the Coastal Patrol Sector were in the area of the 23800 block of DeHaven Creek Road, Westport, attempting to locate Jeremy Jones, 50, of Westport, who was known to have a felony arrest warrant (issued for a prior violation of Prohibited Person in Possession of a Firearm and Discharging of a Firearm in Negligent Manner).

While checking the area, Deputies observed Jones' vehicle parked in front of a residence and verified that he was inside. Deputies contacted Jones and took him into custody, without incident. Deputies verified that Jones was presently living at the residence with a female. Deputies had prior knowledge that Jones was on active felony probation from Humboldt County for Prohibited Person in Possession of a Firearm and had a search term as part of his probation.

Deputies conducted a search of the residence and located a 12-gauge shotgun, a .22 caliber rifle, and containers of live ammunition, which Jones is prohibited from possessing due to numerous prior criminal convictions. Deputies also located suspected methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia inside Jones' residence.

Upon the conclusion of this investigation, Jones was arrested for Prohibited Person in Possession of a Firearm, Prohibited Person in Possession of Ammunition; Mendocino County Felony Arrest Warrant for Prohibited Person in Possession of a Firearm) and Discharging of a Firearm in Negligent Manner; Possession of Methamphetamine, Possession of Drug Paraphernalia

Jones was booked into Mendocino County Jail and is being held in lieu of $65,000 bail.

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EMMA PEREZ-MENDOZA (Ukiah):

In Loving memory of Rudy,

Our hearts are heavy as we mourn the loss of my dad, Rudy, who passed away on 11/9/2025, unexpectedly. He was a beloved father, brother, and son, who brought light and kindness to everyone around him.

In response to this sudden loss, we are gathering donations to help cover the cost of my dads memorial services, funeral arrangements, and to support my little brother and myself.

If you are unable to donate, please consider sharing this page and keeping our family in your thoughts and prayers.

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your love and support.

His daughter, Emma Perez

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MENDOCINO COUNTY WEBSITE REDESIGN SURVEY

On October 21st, the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors passed a contract with Granicus to migrate the public website to a new Content Management System and redesign it with public interactivity, ease of navigation, and accessibility as our forefront guiding lights. If you have a couple minutes, we would greatly appreciate you filling out the linked survey.

The Survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/2XFGW8X

We much appreciate you taking time out of your day to do this.

Sincerely,

Mendocino County Webmaster

www.mendocinocounty.gov

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COURT EXECUTIVE SAYS THERE IS NO PLAN TO CLOSE COAST COURTHOUSE, surprise cuts are blamed on Judge Brenann's sudden retirement; but there is much more to this story, stay tuned

by Frank Hartzell

With two unelected judges recently appointed and another on the way, it’s time to speak up for Fort Bragg about cutbacks to the Coast. Coastal supervisors, we need you!

At MendocinoCoast.news, we’re calling on Supervisors Ted Williams and Bernie Norvell to speak publicly about the future of the Fort Bragg courthouse. We’ve had to take the lead. But make no mistake: we’d gladly step aside if our elected leaders chose to lead.…

https://mendocinocoast.news/unintentional-and-intentional-justice-in-the-shadows-from-mendocino-countys-judges/

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FRANK HARTZELL:

DA Eyster Writes: “As the DA of Mendocino County, I am ADAMANTLY opposed to what the judges are proposing for Fort Bragg. I found out about this by reading the press release; no one from the courts sought my input before deciding to downsize Ten Mile. Any minor cost savings realized from the Ten Mile court is literally being transferred to the wallets of coastal residents and coastal law enforcement if this goes through. More than ever coasties will have to make MORE treks over the hill to Ukiah, costing victims and witnesses time and $ and leaving less police officers to protect coastal public safety — while they travel back and forth to and hang out in the Ukiah courthouse. Did these budget problems just appear out of thin air? No. So why then did the local judges seek and endorse the appointment of TWO new highly-paid judges? Why also is there still a push for a new multi-million dollar courthouse in Ukiah? Why can’t any downsizing happen in Ukiah? I could go on and on — but please listen up! All our coastal friends need to light up the court’s phones and let them know how important it is to have a full-time, full service court in Fort Bragg to serve the needs of coastal residents! The court’s admin office telephone number (in Ukiah, of course) is (707) 463-4664 M-F. Please be polite but let Judge Henderson and his colleagues know that this is Ukiah-centric and a bad plan.”

MARK SCARAMELLA NOTES: Based on the references to a press release (which we have not seen from the courts lately), Judge Henderson (now retired), and the “push for a new multi-million dollar courthouse in Ukiah” (no longer a push, but a reality), I suspect that this was written years ago when the Courts first proposed to close the Ten Mile Courthouse. Public pushback resulting in the court, lead by Judge Henderson at the time, withdrew that proposal. Not that the DA’s wrong or anything.

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WE CAN DO BETTER THAN THANKING VETERANS FOR THEIR SERVICE

Editor:

Thank you for your service is a nice thing to say to someone who contributed to their community, and it has become the correct thing to say to those who served in the military. Unfortunately, it increasingly sounds like a platitude with no more behind it than a response of “gesundheit” to a sneeze. When I hear it, I say, “If you really want to thank veterans there’s something you can do to help, and it only takes a few minutes.”

I tell them to write their representative and senators to inform them that they don’t care for politicians giving tax cuts to corporations and billionaires and trying to offset some of that by paring down medical care and counseling for veterans. Demand that the Department of Veterans Affairs be properly funded so no veteran who seeks help goes wanting. Demand that services be expanded so veterans who don’t live near a VA hospital can receive help close to home.

Send a few emails or letters to members of Congress and let them know that there should be no limits on the help we offer to people who risked and sacrificed so much. Do it today. And again next year. Give veterans a reason to thank you.

— Bill Wertzberger, Cloverdale

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CASEY O'NEIL, A LAYTONVILLE FARMER

We Can’t Depend On Government Systems To Feed Us

I’m thinking about mutual aid networks, ways of sharing resources to make sure that there is enough food to go around. It’s a hard realization to come up against just how little I’m capable of producing in the scope of a community’s needs, but it’s heartening to see us pull together. The donation table at the market last week was awesome, big thanks to everyone who brought food to share. We’ll be stocking it again with cooking greens and potatoes this week.

The thing about SNAP is that even when the benefits are being released, they are not enough. SNAP should be expanded, not contracted, especially with the changes in the economy, the rise of AI and the continued increase of billionaires stealing the productivity of workers while wages remain stagnant. That said, I am glad that benefits have been released, but we’ll still be focusing on gathering donations for the market and for the Laytonville Food Bank on the third Friday of the month, the 21st of November.

It all has me thinking about local food security, about how hard it is to trust government systems when they can be manipulated by the wealthy to deny support to folks in need. I’m grateful for the hard work of the people who make the food banks happen, and for all the community members working to support each other through donations and sharing of resources.

Community free-food pantries like the one on Branscomb are a critical part of food-sharing that operate as mutual aid networks for folks in need. Low-cost sharing that makes food accessible when it’s needed has to be a core part of the strategy for making sure that everyone in our community can eat. The more we share what we can, the stronger we are together. When we feel the caring of our neighbors it changes how we feel about our little place in the world for the better.

Sharing what we can is a critical step towards meeting immediate needs, but in the long term we have to increase the amount of food we grow in our communities. We need more gardens, more livestock, more people involved in the care of plants and animals. As macro systems become more variable and untrustworthy with the breakdowns of late-stage capitalism, we will need to be able to do more for ourselves.

Laytonville is an agricultural community that has suffered through the crash of its main export crop. The infrastructure is still in place; pivoting to food production is not easy, nor will it bring in the type of money that cannabis used to, but it has to be part of our strategy of community survival. The quality and freshness of food grown locally has much to offer, and shared sales channels like consignment farmstands, farmers markets and food bank donations do a great job of sharing the surplus around and generating some income.

On the farm I’m focusing on late season planting and moving into some light infrastructure upgrades. Because our whole farm is on a slope, all of our beds are terraced, and I’ve been gathering used metal roofing, T-posts and foundation stakes to shore up terrace banks and create more effective growing space. As is, I lose the outer edge of the bed on the low side as a planting space for the quick rotation crops because it always wants to slump downhill. With a hard panel wall, I can plant right out to the edge and deal less with erosion.

I’m halfway through planting the current wave of greens, with the next one about ten days out from being ready. This week we’ll sow another round of seeds to keep the pipeline topped up as we edge towards the end of the year. Growth has slowed, but things are still ticking along, and the crops that were planted out earlier in the fall are coming into abundance. Last week saw the first of the broccoli for CSA and the first heads of cabbage for the market table and a new batch of sauerkraut.

I’m glad for a few days of sun after the big rains last week, giving me some time for projects, planting, and working with the livestock. Yesterday we moved all the sows and piglets to the north pasture and expanded their range with the electrified pig netting. Then we put the sheep in the south pasture where the forage provides abundant grazing. I moved the chickens to fresh ground after spreading the manure and straw from the coop on the area they had scratched up, and I’m looking forward to the flush of growth that will happen there in the weeks to come. Animal rotations are like anything else in farming; they take time and effort, there are often mistakes, but over time it gets better and better. As always, much love and great success to you on your journey!

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CLOVERDALE THANKSGIVING FOOD DRIVE

Let’s Give Thanks and Help those in Need

Drop off Information

At Cloverdale Healthcare Center

300 Cherry Creek RD., Cloverdale

To Fernado or Nancy

Please Drop off by November 18th

We will be distributing food on November 21st

At Cloverdale Healthcare Center from 1pm-3:00pm

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BELLY DANCE CLASSES IN FORT BRAGG

A new session of belly dance classes with Rose is starting this week!

When: Wednesdays 6-7PM from 11/12-12/17

Where: Mendocino Dance Project's Redwood Studio - 305 East Redwood Ave

Whether it's your first belly dance class or you've been dancing for years, this class is designed to be accessible to all levels of dancers!

We will start with working on fundamental isolations, shimmies, and steps that can be used in any style of belly dance. Depending on student interest, classes may also explore veil, Arabic rhythms, floorwork, fan veils, and other special topics.

The class is drop-in friendly, meaning it is not required to commit to or attend all 6 weeks, just show up and dance!

Class fees: $100 for all 6 weeks, $20 for drop-in, scholarships are available.

Special promotion- Bring a friend for their first class and you both get half off!

For questions or registration contact Rose:

[email protected]

Call/text 707-397-5561

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LOCAL EVENTS

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LIT BOAT PARADE NEEDS BOATS!

The Lit Boat Parade is coming, Saturday November 29th at 7pm and Lit Boats are needed! This year lit boats receive 10% off December slip rental or for the night of the parade, a gift certificate to an area restaurant, and the chance to win the coveted title of Most Lit Boat.

Registration is a $20 donation to help cover costs, and you can register or get info at 607-437-8465

Brought to you by the misfit Mariners of Mendocino and Mendocino mermaids both 501(c)(3) nonprofits

If you would like to volunteer, please get in touch with me, Thanks! Heather [email protected] 607-437-8465

Here’s a link to the Facebook event with more info: https://facebook.com/events/s/lit-boat-parade-noyo-harbor/816107247893802/?mibextid=wwXIfr

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Monday, November 10, 2025

JOSEPH BUCKINGHAM, 45, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, county parole violation.

RICHARD CRUZ JR., 43, Ukiah. Under influence.

JEREMY JONES, 50, Westport. Negligent discharge of firearm, felon-addict with firearm, harassment by repeated phone calls, ammo possession by prohibited person, controlled substance, paraphernalia.

NATHANIEL KUGLER, 22, Fort Bragg. Loitering, probation revocation.

ESAU LLAMAS-CASTRO, 31, Lathrop/Ukiah. DUI-any drug, resisting.

JOSHUA NEESE, 27, Ukiah. County parole violation.

KRISTO OUSEY, 41, Ukiah. Under influence.

LACEY RANDALL, 28, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

RICARDO RAZO, 23, Ukiah. Domestic battery, kidnapping.

TIMOTHY RICKON, 41, Fort Bragg. Trespassing, controlled substance, paraphernalia, failure to appear.

LEE RUPERT, 50, Fort Bragg. Trespassing, shoplifting, public nuisance.

MEGAN SPAIN, 33, Ukiah. Assault.

KEVIN STORDHAL, 36, Hidden Valley. Under influence, resisting.

EMMANUEL TISCARENO, 22, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, controlled substance, contributing, probation violation.

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SONOMA COUNTY WINEGROWERS FACE GRAPE GLUT AS VINES PULLED STATEWIDE

by Sarah Doyle

Dave Massoni is leaving town.

More than 150 years after his family began farming in Healdsburg, the 66-year-old winegrower is getting out of the business and moving to Nevada.

“I’ve been farming grapes since I was 18 and this is the worst year I’ve ever seen,” said Massoni, owner of Massoni Ranch in Healdsburg. “I have beautiful fruit just hanging on the vine and I can’t sell it. I had prospective buyers, but they all went silent.”

Massoni is not alone.

Jeff Bitter, a wine industry analyst and president of Allied Grape Growers in Healdsburg, predicts 2025 could be California’s smallest grape crush in 30 years. In response to the sluggish wine market, many wine producers are scaling back production, leaving countless growers stranded with unsold fruit.

California produces nearly 3 million tons of wine grapes each year, but Bitter speculates nearly a half-million tons will go uncrushed this harvest.

“We knew this was going to be a pretty painful harvest for most growers … We just didn’t know how bad it was going to hurt,” said Bitter in a post-harvest press conference with the California Association of Winegrape Growers on Nov. 5. “A lot of buyers asked to be let out of their contracts for fear of being unable to pay for the grapes.”

Massoni, who grows Chardonnay in the Russian River Valley and Pinot Noir in Dry Creek Valley, has sold grapes to Constellation Brands for 20 years. But that ended this year when the company canceled its contract.

“I ended up pulling out half my Pinot Noir vines because it was cheaper than farming them all season and paying $15,000 in crop insurance,” he said. “You can’t pay your bills with the cost of farming, and I imagine next season will be even worse.”

Tough Times Continue For Winegrowers

Bitter points to two primary dynamics affecting the grape market: a surplus of grapevines and an oversupply of wine in tanks, in bottles and on store shelves.

A decline in alcohol consumption is partly to blame, a decrease linked to numerous health advisories on the potentially harmful effects of even moderate drinking. According to Gallup’s annual Consumption Habits survey, the percentage of U.S. adults consuming alcohol has fallen to 54% – a record low since Gallup began tracking drinking behavior in 1939. For those who do drink alcohol, only 29% of consumers prefer wine.

To balance supply and demand, Bitter urged growers to remove 50,000 grape-bearing acres across the state last year, including a total of 5,000 in Sonoma and Napa counties.

A new report commissioned by the California Association of Winegrape Growers estimates 38,000 bearing acres were removed between Oct. 1, 2024, and Aug. 1, 2025, with 2,700 acres pulled in Sonoma County and 3,100 in Napa County. While the numbers suggest growers are on the right track, it’s difficult to determine how many of the removed acres are simply being replanted.

At Sangiacomo Family Vineyards in Sonoma Valley, about 50 acres of older, less-productive vines are replaced each year. Farmers in Sonoma County for nearly a century, the family grows about 1,500 acres of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.

But like many winegrowers this year, they were faced with unsold fruit.

“On the bright side, the quality of this year’s fruit is outstanding,” said Steve Sangiacomo, a third-generation partner. “Unfortunately, about 10% of our fruit went unsold to longtime buyers. We’re in an unprecedented cycle, but are trying to stay optimistic.”

It was a similar story at Serres Ranch in Sonoma Valley, where Taylor Serres’ family has been farming for a century and growing grapes since the 1970s. Over the years, the Serres have strategically diversified their business to survive, farming blueberries, cattle and row crops and launching a wine label.

This year, about 10% of their grapes went unsold. Serres acknowledges the company is in a better place than many other local growers this harvest. Still, she expects they’ll have to tighten their belts to make up for the lost revenue.

“We’re going to try to cut costs where we can while balancing the needs of our workers and families,” she said. “Farming is not for the faint of heart, and these are tough times. We’re trying to remain hopeful things will turn around.”

Ryan Petersen, owner of Petersen Land Management in Geyserville, would have been thrilled to sell 90% of the grapes grown on the 250 acres he manages in Sonoma County.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t so lucky. All of his long-term clients canceled their contracts this year, leaving 75% of the fruit unsold.

Some Central Valley-based wine companies, like Bogle and Bronco, purchased high-quality Sonoma County fruit this year because the prices were so low, he said. Their hope is to build relationships with local growers to carry them into next year.

“My great-grandfather began farming in Dry Creek Valley in the 1900s, so I’m doing everything I can to survive,” said Petersen. “Maybe it will stabilize next year – maybe the year after. In the meantime, we’re producing the best quality fruit we can, so when the market turns around, our clients will come back.”

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G20?…COP30?? -- SORRY SON, YOU MISSED IT.

by David Gurney

The U.S. is further isolating itself into a isolationist, fascist dystopia by this week missing two important annual conferences of world leaders, namely the G20 Summit and the COP30. The G20 is a meet-up of the top 20 economic nations, to discuss development and international cooperation. COP30 is the 30th U.N. Climate Change Conference, a crucial gathering of nearly all the 200 nations on Earth, to figure out WTF25 we are going to do about Climate Change? Trump has ordered the United States to boycott both international conferences.

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AI Overviews: The G20 Summit is an annual meeting of the leaders of the world's 19 largest economies plus the European Union and the African Union, focused on discussing major global issues like economic cooperation, climate change, and sustainable development. It serves as the premier forum for international economic cooperation, bringing together leaders to coordinate on key issues, with the summit being the culmination of numerous G20 meetings that take place throughout the year.

What the G20 is

• Membership: The G20 includes 19 countries — Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States — along with the European Union and the African Union.
• Global representation: The group represents over 85% of global GDP, over 75% of international trade, and about two-thirds of the world's population.

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COP30 is the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference, taking place in Belem, Brazil from November 10-21, 2025. It is a critical meeting where representatives from nearly 200 countries will gather to negotiate climate action, with a key focus on transitioning to renewable energy, implementing new climate pledges, and assessing progress towards the Paris Agreement goals. The conference is also significant as it marks the halfway point to 2030 and is being held in the Amazon, highlighting the role of rainforests in climate regulation.

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AVA COMMENT LINE

Steve Heilig: Add TWK to the sad list of those who can’t understand climate change so feel it doesn’t exist, while also feeling he knows more than legions of renowned scientists. It’s a conundrum. Also a disease.

George Hollister: The climate is changing, and always has. To what extent humans are effecting that, is highly uncertain.

Harvey Reading: Pure nonsense.

Marshall Newman: I call BS on this one. The extent to which humans are involved is well documented.

Dick Whetstone: Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels have increased sharply over the last 100 years, rising from about 300 parts per million (ppm) in the early 20th century to over 420 ppm today, which represents an increase of more than 50%. This rise is primarily attributed to human activities, particularly the burning of fossil fuels.

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YOU DON’T REALIZE HOW ALONE YOU ARE UNTIL YOU LOSE THE INTERNET

by Paul Modic

I was shocked at the computer store yesterday when they killed my computer, instead of fixing it, but see an opportunity now that I have been stripped of internet, email, the works. I have been “on it” more than ever in Mexico without TV, watching my usual sports talk shows and many comedy specials on Youtube while preparing food and eating it, cleaning up the kitchen and while flossing and brushing.

I had been maniacally clicking on the same five sites multiple times a day in the addictive posture where there is usually nothing new after the first time around, and yet I searched, but for what? Entertainment, news and anything else of interest. I do communicate on email to a few friends and family, I’ll have to alert them that I’m offline. (I also watch the internet just to kill time until an hour before bedtime, wondering if all that screen time helps to tire me out for sleep or disrupts it?)

Yes I was in utter shock and dismay when I saw what they had done to my laptop. I had brought it in to see if the young tech could fix my delete button, broken for half a year, but I had been using a work-around to delete since then. I told him hey, give it a try, if you can do it great, if not no problem, and I also tried to say “Just don’t hurt the laptop,” but he didn’t speak English and my Spanish was limited.

When I came back two hours later to pick it up he was still in the back working on it, finally he brought it in and when I checked it out everything was haywire: there was light flashing across the screen, the cursor wobbled and rarely stayed on anything, and I could see a couple incoming emails but couldn’t open them up. When the delete button was pushed it went crazy deleting whole paragraphs, and when I clicked on a document other documents opened up on top of the first in rapid succession.

He opened up the laptop exposing the guts, said there was moisture behind the keyboard, suggested a part to be ordered and said I needed a new battery but wasn’t sure he could order it.

When I saw its condition I wasn’t going to do any more business with them. “You killed my computer!” I said. (Tu matar mi computadora!) “It was working well before I brought it in.” He and his boss then told me that the moisture spread from behind the delete key but I wasn’t buying it, at least I could still see the keyboard and move the fuzzy cursor around.

I called Melody, who just happened to be in town also, and she came over to the store to translate for a few minutes. I told her I had no confidence in them, that they had killed my computer, but I did have all my files backed up in Time Machine. She said she had also had a problem with this shop, they gave her back a very slowed down laptop and she had just bought a new one at Costco.com.

“San Luis has a pretty, sparkling Apple Store,” she said.

“Yeah, they could check it out, I should have done that in Austin but I was afraid of all the traffic,” I said.

Now my computer is dead, I have to accept that, but what next? You really need the internet up on that mountain and I’d like to keep typing up my non-adventures or I could buy a cheap smartphone just to stay connected.

“Do you have an extra Mac?” I asked Melo.

“Yes, I do have my old refurbished Mac I will lend you, we just use it for some office stuff at the hotel,” she said.

“But don’t you need it?”

“You can borrow it for awhile or just go to San Luis and get a new one.”

I didn’t like the idea of compounding a problem by doing something extra like going to the big dirty capital city, just seemed contrived, and I didn’t want to own a smartphone either.

Melody left, they took it into the back again to try one more thing and when they finally brought it back out I said, “How much?” How much do I pay you for killing my computer?

He waved me off, no charge.

I knew it was my fault: I had gotten greedy and wanted that delete key even though I had been surviving all right without it for six months. I should have known the Mexican kid wouldn’t know what to do with a Mac.

I checked out of the motel, got my ice chest from the restaurant, put on a Mexican music CD and headed out of Matehuala and up the mountain to Real de Catorce. If only, if only, but I had to stop regretting, it was over, my nine year old laptop was pretty much dead.

I was almost home, had stopped to talk to Chelo at her souvenir stand, when Melody called and asked when I could pick up the computer and my weekly bag of organic veggies she grew at her farm down the mountain in the green belt.

“After I unload my car,” I said.

A few minutes later I was at my gate and shuttled all my town stuff into the house. I put the computer in position, connected the charger, and pressed “on” repeatedly. I held the button down, pushed it multiple times, and nothing happened, it would not even go on! They had killed it off for real, put it out of its misery, in that back room.

I called Melody and she said, “Time for a new laptop!”

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MATCH BOX BLUES

How far to the river, mama, walk down by the sea
How far to the river, walk down by the sea
I got those tadpoles and minnows all in over me

Standing here wonderin′ will a matchbox hold my clothes
I'se sittin here wonderin′ will a matchbox hold my clothes
I ain't got so many matches but I got so far to go

Lord, Lord, who may your manager be?
Hey, mama, who may your manager be?
Reason I ask so many questions, can't you make arrangements for me?

I got a girl cross town she crochet all the time
I got a girl cross town crochet all the time
Mama if you don′t quit crochet-in you gunna lose your mind.

I wouldn′y mind marryin', but I can′t stand settlin' down
I don′t mind marryin', but Lord, settlin′ down
I'm gonna act like a preacher so I can ride from town to town

Well, I'm leavin′ town, but that won′t make me stay
I leavin' town, cryin′ won't make me stay
Baby, the more you cry, the farther you drive me away

— Blind Lemon Jefferson (1927)

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CURSE the blasted, jelly-boned swines, the slimy, the belly-wriggling invertebrates, the miserable sodding rotters, the flaming sods, the sniveling, dribbling, dithering palsied pulse-less lot that make up England today. They've got white of egg in their veins, and their spunk is that watery its a marvel they can breed. They are nothing but frog-spawn — the gibberers! God, how I hate them! God curse them, funkers. God blast them, wish-wash. Exterminate them, slime.

I could curse for hours and hours — God help me.

— D.H. Lawrence on the English

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THIS VETERANS DAY, THE VA FACES MULTIPLE THREATS

by Steve Early & Suzanne Gordon

When veterans and their families gather at commemorative events on Nov. 11, many who use the benefits and services of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) will be wondering whether they can still rely on that federal agency.

Among those worried about the agency’s future — and their own — are the 100,000 former service members who comprise one-third of the workforce in the largest public health care system in the country.

These veterans work at nearly 1,400 VA-run hospitals and clinics nationwide. Every day, they help the nine million men and women who have service-related medical conditions or qualify for VA coverage because of financial need or recent deployment in combat zones.

The fact that so many VA caregivers have first-hand experience with the military–and resulting wounds of war–creates a culture of solidarity and empathy between patients and providers that is unique in U.S. health care.

But the Trump administration doesn’t seem to appreciate the importance of veterans getting specialized, high-quality services from a skilled, committed and union-represented workforce.

Since January, political appointees in Washington have canceled the contracts of VA researchers developing new treatments that can save veterans’ lives (and benefit millions of non-VA patients). VA Secretary Doug Collins has reduced the agency’s in-house clinical care budget and pledged to cut 30,000 positions this year. More patients are now being referred to private sector treatment — which is often costlier, of lower quality and not as accessible, particularly in rural states. And, in a move still being challenged in court, Collins has deprived 300,000 workers of their collective bargaining rights.

In 2022, VA doctors, nurses, therapists and thousands of support staff members used their collective voice to block VA facility closings sought by the Biden administration. VA nurses have campaigned for better nurse-patient staffing ratios to improve patient safety and for the use of lift equipmentthat protects both patients and their bedside helpers.

Union members at the VA have also blown the whistle on waste, fraud and abuse involving unnecessary outsourcing of VA services, which costs U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars each year. Recently, 170 current and retired VA clinicians recently signed an open letter warning that, if this privatization trend continues, it will “undermine direct care delivery, overwhelm (the) VA’s budget and negatively affect the lives of all veterans.”

The letter reminded Congress, the White House and VA Secretary Doug Collins that the VA has a long history of “continuous improvement and innovation,” which has made it a “respected model for integrated, patient-centered medicine” as well as “the system that the vast majority of veterans trust and prefer for their care.”

VA patients and their families have been showing up at local and national protests against privatization. They are joined by veterans’ groups that range from progressive to conservative and differ on many issues but all agree on one thing: saving the VA.

Women veterans — now the fastest-growing part of the U.S. veteran population — are very active in this fight, according to Kyleanne Hunter, the former Cobra attack helicopter pilot who now heads Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

“Women veterans need a strong and highly functioning VA because we have unique needs, not only when compared to those of male veterans but also to women who are civilian patients,” Hunter told us in an interview. “Anyone who takes care of women vets needs to understand the jobs women had in the military and the injuries and exposures we may have sustained and how that impacts our health.”

A healthy nation depends on a healthy VA; this Veterans Day, let’s recommit to keeping it that way.

(counterpunch.org)

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ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

He wrote it in three days while dying of tuberculosis. His wife made him burn it. He rewrote it in 6 more days—possibly high on cocaine prescribed for his hemorrhaging lungs. It became the most famous horror story ever written.

In September 1885, Robert Louis Stevenson woke up screaming.

His wife, Fanny, rushed to his bedside, terrified. He was thrashing in the sheets, eyes wild, shouting about transformations and monsters.

"Louis, wake up! You're having a nightmare!"

Stevenson snapped awake—and immediately became furious at her.

"Why did you wake me?" he shouted. "I was dreaming a fine bogey-tale!"

That "bogey-tale" would become The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—one of the most famous horror stories ever written.

But first, Stevenson had to survive long enough to write it.

Robert Louis Stevenson was 35 years old and dying.

He'd had tuberculosis since his teens—a disease that slowly destroyed the lungs, causing victims to cough up blood, lose weight, and suffocate over months or years.

In the 1880s, there was no cure. Doctors prescribed rest, fresh air, and various medications that rarely worked.

One of those medications? Cocaine.

Yes, cocaine. In the 1880s, it was considered a miracle drug—prescribed for everything from depression to lung disease. Medical journals touted its ability to constrict blood vessels and stop hemorrhaging.

Whether Stevenson was actively using cocaine while writing Jekyll and Hyde remains debated by historians. His wife Fanny was known to scour British medical journals for treatments, and cocaine was heavily promoted in those journals at the time.

What we know for certain: Stevenson was confined to bed, coughing blood, forbidden by his doctor to even speak for fear of triggering more hemorrhages.

And in that state—fevered, possibly medicated, definitely dying—he had the nightmare that would change literature forever.

The dream gave him three vivid scenes:

A man drinking a potion

The transformation into a monster

The monster committing terrible acts

When Fanny woke him, Stevenson was furious because he'd been watching the story unfold in his mind like a movie. He immediately got out of bed—against doctor's orders—and began writing.

His stepson, Lloyd Osbourne, later described what happened next:

"Louis came downstairs in a fever, read nearly half the book aloud, and then was away again, busy writing. The first draft took three days."

Three days. Stevenson hand-wrote an entire 30,000-word novella in 72 hours while coughing blood.

When he finished, he gave the manuscript to Fanny to read.

She hated it.

Not because it was poorly written—but because she thought he'd missed the point. He'd written it as a straightforward horror story about a man who becomes a monster. But Fanny saw something deeper: an allegory about the dual nature of humanity, the good and evil within every person.

"You've written it wrong," she told him. "This should be a moral tale, not just a thriller."

Stevenson was devastated. He'd poured everything into this manuscript. But he trusted Fanny's judgment—she was his first and most important editor.

So he did something drastic.

He took the entire manuscript—three days of fevered work—walked to the fireplace, and burned it.

Every page. Reduced to ashes.

"If I don't destroy it," he said, "I'll be tempted to salvage parts of it. I need to start fresh."

And then, still sick, still hemorrhaging, possibly still on medication, Stevenson rewrote the entire novel in six days.

Six days. A complete rewrite of a literary masterpiece. By hand. While dying.

His stepson later wrote: "The mere physical feat was tremendous."

When Stevenson finished the second draft, he collapsed. But he had his book.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was published in January 1886.

It was an instant sensation.

Within six months, 40,000 copies sold in Britain alone. American publishers pirated it (copyright laws were weak), and it became a bestseller in the United States.

Stage adaptations opened within months. Actors became famous for playing Hyde. One actor, Richard Mansfield, was so convincing as the monster that some people suspected him of being Jack the Ripper (who was terrorizing London at the time).

The phrase "Jekyll and Hyde" entered the English language permanently, describing anyone with a dual personality.

But Stevenson never fully recovered his health. He spent the rest of his life chasing warmer climates, trying to ease his tuberculosis.

In 1888, he sailed to the South Pacific and eventually settled in Samoa, building a house and living among the islanders who called him "Tusitala" (teller of tales).

He kept writing—Treasure Island, Kidnapped, dozens of essays and stories. But tuberculosis was slowly winning.

On December 3, 1894, Stevenson was working on a new novel when he suddenly collapsed. He died hours later of a brain hemorrhage. He was 44 years old.

The Samoans buried him on top of Mount Vaea, overlooking the ocean, with a tombstone bearing his own poem:

"Here he lies where he longed to be;

Home is the sailor, home from sea,

And the hunter home from the hill."

But his most famous work—written in nine fevered days while dying, burned and rewritten in a frenzy of creativity—lives on.

Jekyll and Hyde has been adapted hundreds of times. It defined the horror genre. It gave us a metaphor for human duality that we still use today.

And it all came from a nightmare that Stevenson's wife almost prevented him from remembering.

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I GO BACK TO THE HOUSE FOR A BOOK

I turn around on the gravel
and go back to the house for a book,
something to read at the doctor’s office,
and while I am inside, running the finger
of inquisition along a shelf,
another me that did not bother
to go back to the house for a book
heads out on his own,
rolls down the driveway,
and swings left toward town,
a ghost in his ghost car,
another knot in the string of time,
a good three minutes ahead of me –
a spacing that will now continue
for the rest of my life.

Sometimes I think I see him
a few people in front of me on a line
or getting up from a table
to leave the restaurant just before I do,
slipping into his coat on the way out the door.
But there is no catching him,
no way to slow him down
and put us back into sync,
unless one day he decides to go back
to the house for something
but I cannot imagine
for the life of me what that might be.

He is out there always before me,
blazing my trail, invisible scout,
hound that pulls me along,
shade I am doomed to follow,
my perfect double,
only bumped an inch into the future,
and not nearly as well-versed as I
in the love poems of Ovid –
I who went back into the house
that fateful winter morning and got the book.

— Billy Collins (1995)

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I CANNOT BELIEVE in a God who wants to be praised all the time.

— Nietzsche

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HOW PROGRESSIVE CIVIC GROUPS CAN AVOID WEAKENING THEMSELVES

by Ralph Nader

National and state progressive civic groups have more than their hands full challenging Trump’s wrecking of America, but they need to address the ways they are weakening themselves. Here are some of them.

1. They are largely working remotely. Apart from the customary exceptions, not working in person with colleagues takes the life out of an organization. There is no substitute for person-to-person interactions, for that sudden flash of an effective tactic or strategy, or suggestions of a better way of writing or saying something. Also, serendipity thrives in an office filled with enthusiastic colleagues. Working in an office can also encourage less time goofing off on and less time on screens for non-work purposes.
2. While preserving civility and boasting during annual celebratory dinners, try to avoid becoming an internal, mutual admiration society. You need to challenge and nudge one another. None of us is as smart as all of us.
3. Find ways to replace managers or directors of groups or ongoing projects who have stagnated or burned out. Not doing this disables the entire project, subgroup, or group, year after year, not to mention driving out younger, more energetic, imaginative, and bold replacements. Nice people, listlessly hanging on too long, is a very serious problem.
4. Unless there is a self-privileging hierarchy or chronic abuse, try to avoid unionizing inside a nonprofit, fairly run. Even benign unions can freeze a group’s need for instant weekend commitments, staying longer at work, or otherwise having work rules that impede or block the passion for all-out engagement to prevail over the corporate greed hounds, corrupt politicians, or unresponsive bureaucracies. This does not preclude for any organizations having an honest complaint-handling process.
5. Do not be lulled into piling on a coalition to take credit for any successes. Most coalitions are joined by nominal signatories, with the real work being done by a small number of initiators.
6. Whether or not a group litigates, it should challenge bad judicial nominations sent to Congress or to the state legislature for confirmation. Same for nominations in states having elected judges. Some litigation groups make the mistake of standing on the sidelines and not informing the public of the reasons for rejecting such federal, lifetime nominations for fear of being penalized during future cases they bring. Doesn’t work that way.
7. The most successful lobbying of federal and state lawmakers is direct and personal with the incumbents and their staff. Some citizen lobbying groups in Washington, DC work remotely! The most powerful lobbyists – corporate, NRA, AIPAC – do personal lobbying. They are not known for big public marches. Do not be satisfied with a distant large rally or march, whose civic energies float into the ether. Also, personal lobbying, which is an ever-evolving skill, can more likely offset some of the opponents’ campaign contributions. Most civic groups don’t make campaign contributions.
8. Keep asking for and thinking about ways to convey Trump’s vicious attacks on our democracy, the economy, the environment, and worker and consumer health and safety where people live, work, and raise their families in both Blue and Red states. We can’t rely on the feeble Democratic Party, even when the worst GOP in history by far helps the Democrats win some elections. (See Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lawbreaking and Lies Betray All by Mark Green and me.)
9. Never tie your missions to the tail of the Democratic Party. That is a perfect way to lose your leverage, independence, and conscience. For an example of how to be even-handed in denouncing charlatans in both major Parties, read the excellent book in 1990, WHO ROBBED AMERICA?: A Citizen’s Guide to the S&L Scandal (about the massive savings and loan scandals and bailouts) by Michael Waldman, the former director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch, and their staff.

Being a steady “go-along” with the Democratic Party is the surest way to jettison an ambitious agenda and the chance of pushing the Democrats toward long-overdue progressive services to and protections of the people.

Also, it would help authenticate the citizen associations’ dedication to democracy not to marginalize third-party and independent candidates by supporting the major Parties’ obstruction of ballot access and other presentations by these candidates who have the right to earn votes.

10. Citizen groups are reflecting the overall cultural aliteracy. That is, they know how to read but do not go beyond their narrow specialty. “Readers think and Thinkers read” is our motto. That means book clubs. That means reading your group’s publications and other outputs. That means reading some government reports, the Congressional Record, and hearings.

It also could mean, if you pardon the touting, our three-year-old Capitol Hill Citizen newspaper, which is meant to be a print voice for civic advocates. It comes out quarterly and can be obtained by going to capitolhillcitizen.com for individual or group orders at a discount. We all need its unofficial empowering journalism to help broaden our range and depth.

Most of the above wariness is not easy, as it often deals with personalities, norms, and preoccupations in our overall society. On the other hand, rendering oneself more powerless in a plutocratic, dictatorial corporate state is or should be far more uncomfortable.

See my book Civic Self-Respect with suggestions for rebuilding our civic culture.

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WINTER STORM WATCH

by James Kunstler

“We live in the dumbest of times and Democrats are truly led by the dumbest of all of us.” —Sean Davis, The Federalist

You can suppose the government will re-open this week, and then what? It could close back down in January when the latest funding patch runs out. And then what? Another shut-down and another continuing resolution? The nation hopscotches toward insolvency and breakdown.

The sorrows of Mr. Trump mount as his enemies devise ever-novel punishments for the people of this land. The mutual animus of the two parties spirals upward like the vortex of a developing superstorm.

It’s the nature of crisis that the outcome is uncertain and the possibilities seem mostly dire. And so it is the nature of heroic action to overcome all that and stick a landing in some safe place out of harm’s way. Can we convert the economy of financial chicanery to an economy of purposeful production without provoking a ruinous crash of assets and debt obligations? The most thoughtful observers doubt it. It’s really only a question of time when the floor you were standing on gives way and suddenly everything is in freefall.

The precious metals are sending out a distress signal in the futures charts this morning, even while the equities markets worldwide melt up. That’s got to be a bad combo. Something is going wrong with money everywhere. The overarching question is: will money continue to be money? (That is, will it be worth anything?) Money that is increasingly worthless leads to some of the worst social and political outcomes imaginable.

The authorities of the money world only pretend to be in control of the forces behind money and its movements. Money is subject to the laws of physics like everything else: actions and reactions. . . momentum / inertia . . . entropy. As economist Herb Stein sagely observed a half-century ago: “Things that can’t go on, stop.” An awful lot of things in our world need to stop if we want to continue the project of civilization. We can see, to our distress, that many things are actually stopping: Truck shipments of goods, idle freight trains, stores closing, closed down construction sites, restaurants empty. That tends toward rents, loans, mortgages not being paid. That leads to daisy-chains of broken obligations. Inflation reverses to deflation. Money starts to disappear.

In a deflation, money will stop losing its value. The catch is, people will have less money. There will be less of it around, chasing whatever goods get produced. Some people will have no money at all. The government will almost certainly attempt to counter that by giving them money created out of nothing. It will also give money to broke institutions like banks, and perhaps to businesses deemed “critical” to society. That will cycle back into money losing more value. We’ve been through this cycle a number of times in this young and turbulent century.

You’ve probably noticed that our country is seething with pissed-off citizens. All the machinations of the money authorities pretending to manage money have produced perversities, distortions, and spooky unintended consequences. Things manifest strangely. For instance, medical care is a godawful mess, namely, the ACC, Affordable Care Act. Got an acute problem like abdominal pain? We can give you an appointment three months from now, the HMO says when you call? Are they insane? Do they not hear themselves speaking? And you’re paying, like, $20-K-a-year for the family’s health insurance, so-called. (Hey, you can always go sit in the ER for eighteen hours with plenty of illegal aliens to keep you company.)

Mr. Trump just proffered a novel gambit: take away federal subsidies and tax credits from the ACC-linked insurance companies and send the money to US citizens to spend directly on doctors, drugs, and surgeries, or on private insurance outside the orbit of Obamacare. Nobody really knows how that might work, but you could allow that sometimes horrible problems call for far-out responses. Make America Health Again (MAHA) was a major plank in the president’s campaign platform. Everybody knows that Obamacare functions as an obstacle to being healthy. The entire purpose of it was to make medicine both unaffordable and unavailable. It’s been operating for going on fifteen years, failing spectacularly in plain sight.

The Democratic Party proposed to fix it, via their shut-down stunt, by enrolling onto Obamacare the millions of illegal aliens they ushered into the country at the cost of a trillion-plus dollars. Some fix. This is why they are known as the Party of Chaos. You can depend on the Democratic Party to always make a bad situation worse. The shut-down has even led to chaos within the Democratic Party itself as members now denounce their own leadership.

This would be a good time for President Trump to beat them with a stick as hard as possible. Ending the silent filibuster would be a good start — since the Democrats aim to do it anyway. Of course, that is up to Mr. Thune, the Senate Majority Leader. A fire needs to be lit under his well-tailored ass. Then, pass some really juicy legislation starting with election reform entailing proof-of-citizenship to vote, paper ballots, end of mail-in ballots (except for traditional absentee voting), and do away with the janky vote-counting machines). That would be an excellent start. Proceed from there.

As for those troubled financial markets and shaky money venues, they will do what they will do. If they wobble and crater, great opportunities will open up to decisively fix so much that has gone wrong in our country. You might not know it, considering the drift of recent years, but there are still a lot of capable people in this country ready to roll up their sleeves and go to work repairing what is broken.

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FALL, LEAVES, FALL

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day!
Every leaf speaks bliss to me,
Fluttering from the autumn tree.

I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night’s decay
Ushers in a drearier day.

— Emily Bronte (1846)

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

NY is a Democratic city. Normally a reliable vote for the mainstream Dem. But guess what? Those voters (like many Americans) are sick and tired of the status quo Dem. The party itself has sold its soul to the devil. Take note, the voters are now stronger than all that corrupt money.

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“I DON’T CARE A DAMN about men who are loyal to the people who pay them, to organizations…I don’t think even my country means all that much. There are many countries in our blood, aren’t there? But only one person. Would the world be in the mess it is if we were loyal to love and not to countries?”

― Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana

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THIS IS ALL OUR RULERS ARE OFFERING US

by Caitlin Johnstone

Pentagon contractor Elon Musk, currently the richest person alive, has posted a video clip showing off how people can use his AI video generation tool Grok Imagine to create the image of a woman’s face saying “I will always love you.”

The AI-generated clip looks fake and creepy, and everything about Musk’s post is downright depressing. But it’s not quite as fake, creepy and depressing as the capitalist dystopia which birthed it.

This is all the ruling class has to offer you. Fake love. Fake connection. Worthless technological parlor tricks at the expense of our dying biosphere.

The underlying argument for continuing with the capitalism experiment even though it’s destroying our ecosystem is that these megabillionaires will save us all with green energy and carry humanity’s surplus population out into the stars to colonize the galaxy, which is a terrible vision for the future in and of itself.

But that isn’t even happening. They know they’ll never colonize Mars. We’re not meaningfully any closer to knowing how to keep humans alive completely separate from Earth’s biosphere than we were a thousand years ago; human space travel thus far has consisted of glorified scuba expeditions wherein everything needed for survival is imported directly from the planet our anatomy is intimately interwoven with.

And meanwhile ecocidal capitalism keeps incinerating our world.

This is it. Once they burn through the generative AI scam and sell a few million AI sex robots that cost as much as cars, they’re basically out of ideas. Maybe someone invents an app that helps people sell their kidneys and get them delivered to the purchaser via drone or something, but that’s pretty much it in terms of profit-driven tech innovation. And from there the plan is to just grab up as many resources as possible and hole up in a bunker somewhere while the world burns.

And in the meantime they’re not even happy. The world’s richest man says he has no social life and works almost every waking hour of his existence, and here he is projecting his own loneliness onto the rest of the world by telling everyone how awesome it is that you can have an AI create an image of a woman’s face telling you it will always love you.

That’s right, kids: work your fingers to the bone, catch a few lucky breaks, pour all your blood, sweat, tears and time into winning the capitalism game, and you too could one day be as miserable and alienated as Elon Reeve Musk.

These are the sorts of people who are ruling our world. These are the people who are holding the steering wheel of human civilization and determining the future of our species.

Nothing about this is healthy. Nothing about this is functional. We need drastic revolutionary change and we need it soon, because these freaks are driving us to our doom.

(caitlinjohnstone.com.au)

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“ONE OF THE MOST horrible features of war is that all the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.”

― George Orwell, ‘Homage to Catalonia’

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LEAD STORIES, TUESDAY'S NYT

Senate Passes Bill to Reopen Government Amid Democratic Rift

Shutdown Deal Revives Democratic Infighting

Spending Bill Would Pave Way for Senators to Sue Over Phone Searches

Trump Pardons the Husband of a Republican Congressional Ally

Trump Pardons Giuliani and Others Involved in Effort to Overturn 2020 Election

Felon Freed by Trump Is Sentenced Again, This Time to 27 Months

How Canada Lost Decades of Progress in Fighting Measles

M.L.B. Limits Bets on Individual Pitches After Gambling Charges

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IF PEOPLE have to choose between freedom and sandwiches, they will take sandwiches.

— Boyd Orr

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SENATE PASSES DEAL TO REOPEN GOVERNMENT

The Senate, with the help of Democratic defectors, passed a bill to end the longest government shutdown without the health insurance subsidies Democrats long demanded. The earliest the House will vote is Wednesday.

The Senate passed legislation on Monday night to end the nation’s longest government shutdown, after a critical splinter group of Democrats joined with Republicans and backed a spending package that omitted the chief concession their party had spent weeks demanding.

The 60-to-40 vote, on Day 41 of the shutdown, signaled a break in the gridlock that has shuttered the government for weeks, leaving hundreds of thousands of federal workers furloughed, millions of Americans at risk of losing food assistance and millions more facing air-travel disruptions.

“He thought he could break the Republicans and the Republicans broke him,” Trump says during an interview with Fox News when asked about Senator Charles Schumer facing criticism from his fellow Democrats over the forthcoming deal to end the government shutdown. After a key slice of Senate Democrats agreed back down from the party’s demand that Republicans fund health care subsidies before funding the government, some Democrats have erupted at Schumer and called for him to step down from his leadership position.

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AMERICA IS A BANANA REPUBLIC

El Presidente Donald Trump is the gringo version of brutal and corrupt dictators foisted on Latin American countries by their oligarchs and Yankee imperialists.

by Chris Hedges

El Presidente Trump is cast in the mold of all tinpot Latin American despots who terrorize their populations, surround themselves with sycophants, goons and crooks, and enrich themselves — Trump and his family have amassed more than $1.8 billion in cash and gifts from leveraging the presidency — while erecting tawdry monuments to themselves.…

https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/america-is-a-banana-republic