Mendocino County Today: Sunday, Oct. 30, 2016

• Wet Days
• Woodhouse Situation
• Philo Quinceañera
• Mendo Football
• Little Dog
• Coastal Bus Service
• Guest House Museum Questions
• October Sky
• Yesterday's Catch
• Comfortably Dumb
• Hillary's Ascension
• Tinker to Evers to Chance
• Marco Radio
• Reading Ranochak

TWO MORE RAINY DAYS AHEAD, then a break starting about Tuesday with slightly warmer daytime temps. Next (light) rain expected around next Saturday. The Navarro River continues its slow rise more or less in line with the larger than average sand bar that continues to keep the Navarro River’s winter rain from reaching the Pacific. We agree with Paul McCarthy of MendocinoSportsPlus that the low-lying area of Highway 128 near the Coast is more prone to flooding in conjunction with the next serious rainstorm as long as the river is blocked at the mouth.

THE TROUBLED 3rd District Supervisor, Tom Woodhouse, appeared at last Wednesday's meeting of the Willits City Council where he made a rambling presentation touching on many unrelated subjects and looked unwell — pale, sweating profusely, unable to complete subjects once begun. Woodhouse has not appeared at a Supe's meeting since the August 30 special 10-minute meeting which addressed only the flooding emergency in the social services building.

THE INTERVIEW by Adrian Baumann of the on-line magazine MendoVoice occurred two weeks ago on October 15. Since then a meeting involving the Planning department that Woodhouse mentioned in that interview which seemed ill-conceived failed to occur and nobody attended including Woodhouse. (Although there’s certainly good reason to discuss the Planning Department functioning these days.)

https://www.mendovoice.com/2016/10/an-interview-with-supervisor-woodhouse/

WE WON’T KNOW if Woodhouse is "back" or not until this week's meeting of the Supervisors on Tuesday, November 1st. From what we’ve heard informally so far the odds of Supervisor Woodhouse returning to full supervisorial functioning on November 1 are low.

THE LAST STATEMENT from the Woodhouse family back in early October was:

“As many of you know, Third District Supervisor Tom Woodhouse has been absent from several board of supervisors meetings. Supervisor Woodhouse has a medical condition and is presently under a doctor's care. We are hopeful Supervisor Woodhouse will be able to return to work in early November. The family is asking for understanding and consideration of their privacy during this difficult time. Updates will be provided as information becomes available.”

SO THAT’S TWO MONTHS NOW that Mendocino County has had to operate with only a bare majority of functioning Supervisors. If the Woodhouse situation continues in limbo like this — especially if Woodhouse’s absence is explained by his being “under a doctor’s care — there’s no precedent that we know of for how to handle it. Normally failure to perform basic duties or attend meetings is grounds for removing and replacing a public official, but there’s an exception for medical absences…

JUST IN FROM PHILO, Dave Severn reporting:

Quinceañera

At just about one o'clock Saturday afternoon while on the porch at Lemons Market in Philo with five Family Tree tree-service workers, out from the driveway beside the store came a procession of formally dressed Hispanic people followed by a playing 10 or 12 piece Mariachi band in maroon outfits and another contingent of revelers. In the lead group was a beautiful young woman in a white gown on the arm of a young man in a black suit. Since they were headed toward the Catholic Church down the way I assumed it was a wedding procession. I hollered and clapped my delight and was returned a smile and wave by the young woman. I remember wishing there had been more of us witnessing the occasion. A few minutes later two gentlemen came from the trailer park behind the market in Sunday clothes, one of them still in the process of tying his tie. I asked, Who's getting married? And was told that it was a Quinceañera, the tradition being that family and friends gather at the young woman's house with food and music and then proceed on foot to the church for a blessing.

From Wikipedia:

In Spanish, "Quinceañera" literally means "Fifteen-year-old female." In English, primarily in the United States, the term is used (most often by non-Latinos) to refer to the celebration; this is not the case in Latin American countries, where only the girl, and never the celebration, is referred to as quinceañera. (La Quinceanera)

In rural societies, girls were considered ready for marriage after they turned fifteen. In addition, in the 20th century, the quinceañera has received certain privileges associated with womanhood: permission to attend adult parties, tweeze her eyebrows, wear makeup, shave her legs, wear jewelry and high heels. When this tradition originated, the quinceañera was a small party to celebrate the transition, so friends and family gathered in order to give the quinceañera a chance to mingle with young men. Rich families celebrated quinceañeras with big parties and big fancy princess-style dresses. In Latin American countries, wealthy families announce the quinceañeras as events in the newspaper to publicize their extravagant celebration.

SUPPORT MENDO FOOTBALL

To the Editor:

An open letter to the Mendocino College Trustees:

I submitted this letter to be read at the public comment section of a meeting of the Mendocino College Board of Trustees on Wednesday, Oct. 12. I later learned that it was not read aloud at the meeting but only placed on a table there with the suggestion that anyone who wanted to read it could. I don’t understand why my letter was not read aloud and not entered into the minutes of that meeting. As a result, I want to offer it here because it includes an invitation to other members of the community who hope to resolve the difficulties that students face when attending the College from out of the area.

Dear Mendocino College Trustees,

I would have liked to attend Wednesday night’s meeting but have to be in Sonoma County at that time. However, as part of the public comment period during your meeting I’d like to express my dismay as a resident of Ukiah over what came to pass for the football players residing at the house on Hortense Street in Ukiah and for other student athletes who have lived at a local motel while attending Mendocino College — and would like to make a suggestion that might lead to a constructive solution for out-of-area student athletes in the future.

Meanwhile, I hope that local people are helping the football players find new, decent housing because it seems, from what I’ve read in the Ukiah Daily Journal and The Press Democrat, that Mendocino College believes it can do nothing.

I felt awful when I read about the plight of the athletes living on Hortense Street. In recalling my own college experience, I remember the importance, while living in a dorm, of having resident advisors living there with us on each dorm floor. As recent arrivals from high school, we students needed a bit of guidance from those resident advisors, even if it came from a graduate student who was only four years older and wiser. How anyone could direct 30 young men to seek housing in a building meant to accommodate 24 at most and to live there without supervision and meager resources and then expect a good outcome is beyond me. It didn’t help that these student athletes had no hot water for two weeks and that some of them were sleeping on the floor. What’s worse, these students were mostly African-American young men who are likely to have already encountered racism growing up in America and then, finding themselves in an unfamiliar and predominantly white community, they experienced what seemed to be a blatant example of that racism on the part of the neighborhood. My heart goes out to these student athletes. I’m so sorry that this is the way they were introduced to life in Ukiah.

Newspaper coverage on these recent events also indicated that living conditions have been substandard for Mendocino College athletes advised to stay at a Ukiah motel. If what I read about bedbugs and the presence of prostitutes plying their trade at the motel was correct, I don’t know how the College could in any way suggest to the athletes and their parents that the motel might serve as adequate housing.

Isn’t it possible for the foundation associated with Mendocino College to assist out-of-area students with housing? If not, and if Mendocino College continues to encourage athletes from out of the area to play for the school but cannot provide them true housing assistance, I want to propose that private donors step forward to take up the slack. Possibly this could take the form of private foundation money. It might be possible to set up a donor-advised fund at the Community Foundation of Mendocino County. I called that foundation and learned that a minimum donation of $10,000 to the Community Foundation would be required to establish such a fund. Money from a donor-advised fund at the Community Foundation can be given only to a 501 C 3 organization — in this case, possibly the College’s own foundation — and it has to be designated for benefit of a group and not an individual. In this case, the group might be Mendocino College athletes who come from outside of Ukiah or all students who arrive at the College from outside the area. If anyone attending Wednesday’s meeting of the College Trustees wants to explore this possibility with me, please let me know.

Victoria Golden, Ukiah

LITTLE DOG SAYS, ‘THIS THING’S AKC REGISTERED? FUNNY, DOESN’T TASTE LIKE IT.’

AT LAST

To the Editor:

Hip, Hip Hooray for the MTA!(Mendocino Transit Authority). The bus company is now going to Mendocino and Fort Bragg and back to Ukiah which started Oct. 23, 2016 all in the same day. This is great and a good change. We used to get a bus trip to Ft. Bragg and have to stay there until the next day to get a bus back to Ukiah. I hope there will be a lot of riders which will increase money for MTA. Maybe we will get a Sunday bus, maybe not. It’s a very nice change. People can cool off in the summer months going to Fort Bragg. Thank you MTA.

Leslie Jo Feldman, Ukiah

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE "2013 GUEST HOUSE MUSEUM MASTER
PLAN"?

by B. B. Grace

On 23 September 2016 a request to the City of Fort Bragg was made searching for a means to form a foundation to enable repairs needed to the Guest House. That request led to discovering the "2013 Guest House Museum Master Plan - City Wide Development Plan" which contained the means for such a foundation and much more. The only reference to the Guest House Museum Master Plan in City Council minutes was found, 09 December 2013, a full year after created, and listed within a pile of papers as amendment links that open to "Page not available" on the City website.

There are no City records showing that City Council ever saw the Guest House Master Plan to approve, reject, or modify. Strangely enough, the 1979 rotted deck, which began the investigation, has no documents at all. Who is responsible, accountable?

That question led to this investigation after being informed repeatedly for years that the City owns the building and there is no money for repairs by President Mark Reudrich of the Fort Bragg - Mendocino Coast Historical Society. The investigation began with an attempt to report the 1979 deck as a public saftey hazard with the Fort Bragg Police Department and now is on the desk of Congressman Jared Huffman, who oversees HUD, which funded the $70,000 Community Development Block Grant in 2011, that purchased the Guest House Museum Master Plan. The only government official to respond at this time is Mendocino County Forth District Supervisor Dan Gjerde, who admitted that he had not seen the Master Plan and appreciated the link.

The questions below are selected from a U. S. Justice Department program, “My Town's Report Card”, pertaining specifically to the experience of this investigation. To answer “What happened to the Guest House Museum Master Plan - City Wide Development Plan?” these questions need to be answered:

Do City rules forbid engaging in private business on City/County time or using City/County materials or equipment for private purposes?

Are officials forbidden to represent private interests in dealing with City agencies, or take positions with firms they have previously regulated?

Are there mechanisms for detecting and dealing with violations?

Is information provided by officials available for inspection by public and the news media?

Does the City have have an established mechanism to take complaints from the public and investigate them?

If so, are the complainants informed of the results of the investigation?

Do Master Plans and zoning ordinances match reasonable estimates of the types of housing and commercial development likely to occur in the near future?

Do public officials own shares in firms doing business with the City?

Would officials benefit financially for projects planned or underway?

Is there an agency to investigate organized crime and conduct of public employees?

Are there extensive patronage appointments?

Do public officials use government equipment or material for personal projects?
Are some government employees frozen into their jobs by an act of City council?

Do police discourage citizens from making complaints or pressing charges?

Can public employees retire and receive pensions despite pending charges of misconduct?

Is there an independent investigative agency to hear complaints of official misconduct?

Are government employees salaries equal to local business salaries?

Are kickbacks regarded by business as just another cost of doing business?

Are government procedures so complicated that a middleman often is needed to unravel the mystery and get through to the right people?

Do projects for which money has been authorized fail to materialize or remain only partially completed?

IF the, "My Town's Report Card", were only based on these questions Fort Bragg would not get a pass.

If you're ever in Fort Bragg, please take a moment to walk up the mound to the Guest House and have a look. This is the Crown Jewel of Mendocino Coast, owned by you, the people of Fort Bragg in the name of the City. It was a gift and all that remains of the finest old growth redwood lumber the world ever saw. It's priceless and a major asset that is underused according to the Master Plan sorely neglected. Please go look for yourself. If the Museum is open, enjoy. It's FREE, $2. donation is suggested. If you really love Fort Bragg, come on and give the Guest House a hug. It needs our love.

POINT NOYO, Off Fort Bragg, Late October 2016

CATCH OF THE DAY, October 29, 2016

LAUREANO ALVARADO-VALENCIA, Fort Bragg. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

DYLAN BECK, Ukiah. Under influence, probation revocation.

THOMAS BECK, Eureka/Ukiah. DUI.

ANDREW BRADFORD, Ukiah. Drunk in public.

TERRY FISCHER, Willits. DUI.

JOSHUA FOX, Ukiah. Drunk in public.

TODD HENDERSON, Fort Bragg. Embezzlement.

TRAVIS ‘THE HUMP’ HUMPHREY, Talmage. Dirk-dagger.

DERIN MABERY, Fort Bragg. Domestic assault, probation revocation.

BOBBI MAKI, Willits. Community supervision violation.

WILLIAM MARSHALL, Willits. Pot cultivation, controlled substance, paraphernalia, probation revocation.

SCOTT PRICE, Ukiah. DUI.

CHERRI ROBERTS, Ukiah. Drunk in public.

MARY SCHAEFER, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

HUBERT TAYLOR III, Drunk in public, resisting.

ROAMING CHARGES: COMFORTABLY DUMB

by Jeffrey St. Clair

+ Hillary Clinton is in no danger of losing the election and never has been. She could speak freely about the injustices being done to native people and native land in North Dakota. But she has remained “comfortably dumb” about the Dakota Access Pipeline. Her silence indicates her true position, which we already know from the Wikileaks documents. Anyone who believes otherwise is, to use the Clinton team’s own word, a “loser.”

+ HRC has already been endorsed as an eco heroine by every major green group in the country, which, naturally, means after taking office she can frack away with impunity.

+ Yesterday, police culled from across North Dakota encircled the encampment of tribal people protesting the Dakota pipeline. Outfitted in military gear, armed with assault weapons and backed by armored personal carriers, drones and helicopters, the police raided the camp, firing concussion grenades into the crowds, dousing people with pepper spray, shooting them with rubber bullets, savagely beating people with police clubs (baton is too dainty of a word.) In all, more than 140 protesters were arrested on fallacious charges of criminal trespassing and rioting. The riot was all the doing of the cops and the pipeline company. Dozens of protesters were injured, some seriously. The raid continues this morning, as does Hillary’s silence.

Meanwhile, in a federal court-room in Portland, Oregon, the armed militants who seized the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge last year, held it for 48 days, threatened federal officials and local residents and did more than $6 million worth of damage to the site walked free, acquitted of all charges.

Rarely have the hypocrisies of the American justice system been revealed more vividly. White privilege in action.

+ The bosses of organized labor continue to disgrace themselves and their unions by their support of the pipeline company and its brutal tactics. This week Terry O’Sullivan, head of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, lashed out at unions that opposed the pipeline, calling them “bottom-feeders.” O’Sullivan also smeared tribal protesters as “THUGS.”

“The facts are on our side, yet in the past month, we have witnessed vocal opposition from groups, including some self-righteous unions, who know little about the project and have no job equity in it,” O’Sullivan wrote to his members. “These unions have sided with THUGS against trade unionists. They are a group of bottom-feeding organizations that are once again trying to destroy our members’ jobs.”

Is it any wonder big labor is in decline?

+ Do black lives matter to Black Lives Matter, Inc?

The answer to that question probably depends on how you view DeRay Mckesson. Is the high profile activist the real power behind BLM or a self-anointed figurehead, angling for the spotlight?

Regardless, Mckesson has now endorsed Hillary Clinton for president, a move which is as predictable as it is crippling for the movement with which he is aligned. “Her platform signals both deep understanding of the challenges and a plan to move us forward,” McKesson wrote. “When I met with her last week, it was clear that she now understands these issues well at a policy level and that she has researched the implications of the positions that she has proposed.”

In exchange for a little face time with Hillary, Mckesson is willing to overlook or dismiss Clinton’s description of black youths as “super-predators,” her fanatical support for the racist Clinton Crime bill, her unapologetic backing of the awful welfare reform law pushed through Congress by her husband, her mercenary actions in Haiti, her bombings of brown and black people around the globe, her continued support for the death penalty as the rest of the nation finally turns against this vile form of punishment, her stubborn opposition to drug decriminalization and her constant hectoring about family values and personal responsibility, coded language for deprecations about the black family.

The Clintons have long mastered the technique of capturing the support of those battered precincts of American society on which they have inflicted the most damage. They expect that black support is in the bag, that blacks, like environmentalists and Hispanics, have no where else to turn, that their leaders will intoxicated by the merest nod of recognition in the waiting line. They are assured that the displaced and oppressed will vote for Clinton regardless of her record Like so many other social justice groups before them, Black Lives Matter is treated by the Clinton machine as just another prop which they can manipulate almost at will for their political advantage.

A Wikileaks document shows how this kind of stagecraft works in practice. On January 16 of this year, Jake Sullivan, one of Hillary’s top advisors, emailed Hillary and John Podesta draft language for Hillary to apologize for her rancid description of young black men as “super-predators.” This racist statement, which had never been retracted over the last 20 years, would have been fatal for nearly any other candidate.

Here are the tepid words Sullivan proposed putting in Hillary’s mouth:

Looking back, I shouldn’t have used those words.

It’s unfortunate because my life’s work has been about lifting up children and young people who have been let down by the system or society. Kids who never got the chance they deserved, especially in African-American communities. We haven’t done right by them. We need to. We need to replace the school to prison pipeline and replacing [sic] it with a school-to-college pipeline.

As an advocate, as First Lady, as Senator, I was a champion for children. And my campaign for president is about breaking down the barriers that stand in the way of these kids, so that every one of them can live up to their God-given potential.

Now that’s pretty dull pablum and doesn’t even approach being a real apology. But what’s really interesting here is the timing. The non-apology apology was crafted on the 21st with the advance notice of a planned Black Lives Matter protest at Hillary’s fundraiser on January 24th. The “apology” is publicly released the next day, on the 25th, as if it were an organic response to the Black Lives Matter protest. All theater.

As with climate change and economic inequality, the subject of racial justice in America has largely vanished from the scripts of Hillary’s stump speeches, the platform, venerated by Mckesson, is already moldering away in some vault at the National Archives. Do black lives matter to Black Lives Matter, Inc.? Of course, they do. But they don’t matter to Hillary Clinton and no one should believe for a moment that they do.

+ Jake Sullivan, by the way, is married to Beltway insider Maggie Goodlander, who sharpened her knives as a speechwriter for Joe Lieberman and now toils as a “senior advisor” to John McCain. Do you really think either Sullivan or Goodlander believe anything they write?

+ HRC backs the coup in Honduras. The new junta begins jailing and killing workers, trade unionists, human rights activists and native people. State Department funds the slaughter. The Nation magazine and Michael Moore avert their eyes.

+ If you ever feel the need to purge your lunch, no need to thrust your finger down your throat, just watch Michael Moore’s latest film,Trumpland, where he slobbers all over photos of the young Hillary Clinton.

Moore has been love with Hillary since the 1990s, but his once secret passion has suddenly erupted orgasmically on the screen. Trump’s perv-talk with Billy Bush is less nauseating than Moore’s vapid mewling about Hillary.

Here are a few gems from Moore’s embarrassing recent performance on MS-DNC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews”:

“I’d rather Hillary be the nominee than Bernie.”

“Hillary may not be [a socialist], but she’s a Christian and that’s the same thing.”

“Hillary won’t harm the children, she won’t harm the planet.”

Where’s Charlton Heston when you need him?

+ As far as he knows, Bill is still “dicking bimbos” in Chappaqua and Hillary continues to blame him for advising her on how to shield her e-mails from the prying eyes of the press. But none of that matters. They are members of the same cult, baptized in the blood of Iraq. Thus Colin Powell endorsed Hillary for president this week, one lying war criminal saluting another.

+ Isn’t a feminism which seeks to consecrate its power through drone strikes on weddings and the assassination of foreign leaders less than a standard deviation removed from the old patriarchalism?

+ Tom Hayden, former SDS hotshot turned Clinton supporter, died this week. In Hayden’s FBI file, J. Edgar Hoover instructed his agents: “One of your prime objectives should be to neutralize him in the New Left movement.” In the end, Hayden neutralized himself.

I was never a huge Tom Hayden fan. My allegiance was to the Panthers and the Yippies: Stew Albert, Judy Gumbo, Abbie and Anita Hoffman, Nancy Kershaw, all of whom became friends over the years. In fact, in our last conversation Hayden asked me “why do you hate me so much?” This was just after his slavish endorsement of Hillary. That said, Jim Kavanagh, a former SDS organizer, recalls that Hayden did publicly confess his regrets about one of his most ignoble retreats, the one that led him into the arms of the Israel lobby–a mea culpa we ran on CounterPunch.

+ Alexander Cockburn on Hayden, from the Village Voice in 1982: “In the halls of the national gallery in Washington there are 46 portraits of Benedict Arnold. None look alike, yet they all resemble Tom Hayden.”

+ The New York Times doesn’t have a comics page. For laughs we have to turn to its editorials. This week we were treated to a real howler, Jonathan Rauch’s essay on “Why Hillary Needs to be Two-Faced,” in which Rauch argues, laboriously, that Hillary needs to deceive the electorate in order to enact policies for the “good” of the nation. But doesn’t the moral measure for “getting things done” depend entirely on who they’re done to (the poor) and who they are done for (Wall Street)?

+ The Pentagon admitted this week that it has used radioactive weapons in Syria. The US has crossed the WMD “red line.” Who will hold it to account?

+ Perhaps the decline in humaneness in politics is driven in part by a decline in the humanities in academia…

+ Oregon’s self-styled “progressive bisexual” governor, Kate Brown, has now endorsed the TPP. I think Congress pushes it through in the lame duck session after the election, though if the GOP had any brains, and it doesn’t, they’d wait until after HRC takes office and force her to publicly lobby for its passage.

+ Speaking of the Nanny State, 35% of the tax revenues from Oregon retail marijuana sales go toward funding … the police.

+ California seems poised to legalize the sale and possession of marijuana. This move can’t come soon enough. Even though the Golden State began decriminalizing the use of pot in 1998, there have been more than 500,000 marijuana-related arrests in California the last 10 years alone.

+ Jeff Gerth is a former investigative journalist with the New York Times, who now writes for Pro Publica. Gerth has broken a lot of big stories in his career, including the Whitewater scandal, but his prose is so opaque and his narrative gifts so limited that few people have ever understood the import of his pieces, not even his editors. If a politician wanted to bury a scandal, all they really had to do was it leak it to Gerth, who would write it up in his muddled way and it would all be forgotten by the next morning.

The Wikileaks emails have a fascinating back-and-forth between Gerth and Podesta about the Clinton Foundation. If the Clintons had any sense, they would have dumped the whole matter into Gerth’s lap. Instead, Gerth writes Podesta to alert him to the fact that another reporter is onto the story:

Are you aware of a forthcoming–in a few days–massive examination of the Clinton Foundation by a conservative financial analyst? My understanding is that it raises questions about the foundation’s financial reports and its shift into areas–AIDS, for example–that exceeded its original authorization from the IRS. I’m not writing anything about it but curious if you have heard anything?

How Podesta’s hopes must have wilted at that last sentence.

+ Watching MSDNC talking heads, like Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow, dismiss the latest Clinton Foundation scandals reminds me of the BP press team spinning Deepwater Horizon.

+ Joe Biden was on MSDNC this week quoting the racist sociologist Charles “Bell Curve” Murray favorably. Biden told Chris Matthews that he made “my boys” take the quiz on white alienation in the back of Murray’s rotten book, Coming Apart: the State of White America.Should we be surprised? As chief author of the Clinton crime bill, Biden transformed Murray’s theories into vicious policies.

+ Lyin’ Hillary gets refreshingly honest for a moment: “I’m proud to have the support of real billionaires.”

+ Utah Rep. Chris Stewart compared Trump to Mussolini, and even though Trump falls a little short of the gold standard (i.e., Hitler), Stewart now says he’s going to vote for the authoritarian mogul any way.

+ Bernie Sanders says that he’s prepared to be a liberal thorn in Hillary’s side after she’s election. Being a socialist thorn in her side, alas, would prove a little too prickly, I suppose.

+ The Clinton campaign have shown Sanders no such consideration. Apparently, Clinton operatives have been stalking Sanders for much of the last two years. They even snapped a photo of Sanders sunbathing at an elite club in Martha’s Vineyard. The photo was sent to John Podesta by former Bill Clinton aid Tina Flournoy. A few days later the campaign leaked the photo to gossip blogger Perez Hilton, who posted the photo on his site, quipping that Sanders was lounging after having raised Wall Street money for the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee.

The Clintons wanted to embarrass Sanders, but it just proved that he has a pretty good body for his age.

This is the same creepy tactic the Clinton campaign used against Obama in 2008, when they leaked a photo of Obama in traditional Somali garb.

+ One state, under surveillance, divided by wealth, with liberty and justice for those who pay…

+ What’s really driving the national debt? America’s imperial boot print: $6 trillion and counting for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. With more than 800 military bases around the world, nearly half of the federal tax goes for military spending. Running out of enemies to fight? Wait a few minutes, we’ll create some new ones.

+ Clinton condemned Trump’s critique of the US military strategy in Mosul as “wrong” and “dangerous.” For HRC, any criticism of US foreign policy is “dangerous,” but not nearly as dangerous as the policy itself.

+ This morning James Comey sent a letter to Congress confirming that the FBI has reopened its investigation into Clinton’s emails, after a new batch was discovered in a different case. The Clintons and their lesser-evil supporters love win-win solutions. Here’s one: Elect Hillary, then immediately impeach her. No good. That leaves her political doppleganger Tim Kaine at the helm. Over to you, Jill Stein.

+ The source of the new Clinton emails is not Julian Assange, but another Russian agent, former congressman Anthony Weiner. As a mole, Weiner deeply penetrated the establishment, getting very close to HRC herself and nearly becoming mayor of New York City. Even so, Putin would be well served to keep his daughters at a safe distance from the Ron Jeremy of Instagram.

+ Israel’s politicians make Trump and Clinton seem almost sane by comparison. Check out the latest depraved boast from Israeli Defense Minister Avigidor Lieberman who announced, apropos of nothing, that Israel’s next war on Gaza will be its last “because we will completely destroy them.”

+ Here’s a case study for why so few artists speak out in favor of the rights of Palestinians. American Express just canceled its sponsorship of Roger Water’s world tour in retaliation for the former Pink Floyd frontman’s support of the BDS movement. The cost to Waters: $4 million.

+ NFL viewership is down, way down. Good. I’ve long thought that the sadistic joy NFL fans take from watching talented young black men inflicting brain damage on each other is an appalling metaphor for the dumbing down of American society.

+ Fragment from a dream last night: HRC moves into White House, notices an empty space on the wall of the Oval Office. Turns to Huma. Points. “Let’s put Qaddafi’s head there, shall we?”

Sound Grammar

What I’m listening to this week…

1/ James Leg: Blood on the Keys

2/ Marillion: Fear

3/ Robert Glasper Experiment: ArtScience

4/ Doyle Bramall II: Rich Man

5/ Elvis Presley: Way Down in the Jungle Room

Booked Up

What I’m reading this week…

1/ A Gentleman in Moscow: Amor Towles

2/ The Old Tea Seller: Baisao (Trans. Norman Waddell)

3/ The Genius of Birds: Jennifer Ackerman

What It’s All About

“Free trade and Christianity, it’s the German East Africa Company, it’s French Equatorial Africa, it’s the Belgians cutting down the Congo population from twenty million to ten in barely twenty years, by nineteen fourteen there’s nothing left to plunder in Africa so they go to war with each other in Europe instead that’s what the whole damned first world war was all about.”

–William Gaddis, Carpenter’s Gothic.

(Jeffrey St. Clair is editor of CounterPunch. His new book is Killing Trayvons: an Anthology of American Violence (with JoAnn Wypijewski and Kevin Alexander Gray). He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net. Courtesy, CounterPunch.org)

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

But still. Trump may be beaten on Nov 8 but consider that he was up against the majority of the Republican Party, the whole of the Democratic Party. And Trump was speaking up for people that the Manhattan-Washington Axis and their hangers-on had long ago thrown overboard, those people now commonly referred to as “deplorables” whose only motive, according to the Great and the Wise, is racism and whose chief defining characteristic is stupidity.

As such, given Trump’s built-in handicaps, losing by 5 percent to Hillary – who won by means of rigged primaries, supported by a Party elite that did the rigging, supported by a Republican elite that will not align itself with any other than plutocrat interests – would still be a remarkable outcome.

Still, too bad about the loss. But the clock, as they say, keeps ticking. After Hillary’s victory, the people that Hillary represents, oligarchs and the white collar elite that serve the oligarchs, will do the expected thing.

In their over-confidence they will over-reach and, just as important, they will under-estimate the people written off as ignoramuses. In this latter thing is a terrible mis-calculation. For one thing, millions of the ignoramuses have military training and combat experience and are armed. But never mind that glaringly obvious fact, the oligarchs and their clerisy will try to prop up an economic food chain that has no logic and can’t defy its internal contradictions. They depend on the food-chain and feed off of it but they inadvertently built it to fail. And, as successive financial blow-ups and the never ending cracking and snapping of the financial timbers show us, fail it must.

TINKER TO EVERS TO CHANCE

Baseball’s Sad Lexicon

by Franklin Pierce Adams (a Giants fan)

These are the saddest of possible words:

“Tinker to Evers to Chance.”

Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds,

Tinker and Evers and Chance.

Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble,

Making a Giant hit into a double –

Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:

“Tinker to Evers to Chance.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPDhWFLIIQU

* * *

Rob Anderson's comment:

Baseball fans have often heard lately from the TV talking heads that the Chicago Cubs haven't won a world series since 1908. I'm a SF Giants fan, more or less, but I don't read much about sports, except for scanning the sports page in the morning. But I of course heard of that legendary double play combination, Tinker to Evers to Chance, in the 1950s when as a kid I played and read about baseball. I didn't know that they were on that 1908 team.

Thanks to Mike Wallach.

(Courtesy, District5Diary)

ALL THE FLAVORS OF MALARKEY. AN ANNOTATED HISTORY “Every society invents the failed utopia it deserves.” –John Tresch

The recording of last night's (2016-10-28) KNYO (and, three hours in, also KMEC) Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show ready to download and enjoy, via http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

Or get it this other way, which has the advantage of an instant-gratification play button: https://lostcoastoutpost.com/podcasts/memo-of-the-air/

It's my 969th weekly MOTA show, my 200th for KNYO, 54th for KMEC; it's pretty good, as usual, and the recording is flawless, being made where I sit and read aloud, even though the live on-air radio experience last night was riddled with jarring dropouts because of the ongoing aggravation of the rickety Sonic internet connection at Juanita's house-- the same problem as two weeks ago. Technicians are working on the issue, as they say, or they will be when I call them again, as soon as I send this. They're so nice and competent-sounding on the phone, and I'm such a sucker for that.

Anyway, at http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find literally thousands of links to not necessarily radio-useful but certainly worthwhile things to see and do and learn about, rainy day or shiny day, such as:

The last great spectacular flight in early aviation. 1933. Men flew two open-cockpit biplanes over Mount Everest (!), taking crystal-clear large-format photographs of each other's plane the whole time to prove it. One pilot’s oxygen mask hose fell apart and he noticed that he was starting to die so he plastered it back together with his own bloody vomit and a handkerchief and carried on. Can you imagine? (I glance at my handkerchief and the DSL modem... Hmm...)

http://mashable.com/2016/10/01/flying-over-everest/

Two ways to get rid of wasps and yellowjackets without using chemicals, sprays or poisons. "The ticking sounds are when a wasp flies into the spinning wire." Question: Why /do/ they fly into the wire? Answer: The smart ones don't. But they have no Borg adaptation skills to deal with the shop-vac-full-of-soapy-water method.

http://boingboing.net/2016/10/28/homemade-wasp-killing-machine.html

A little Wonder Woman goes a long way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WW5l67xBqM

And look at what they just found! Dozens of mysterious ancient ships from the Byzantine empire that have been in the dark at the bottom of the Black Sea all this time, perfectly preserved (except for the damage that caused them to be down there in the first place) because of the "lack of oxygen in the Black Sea below 150 metres". Dissolved oxygen, they mean. They know you know that water is made of hydrogen and oxygen and homeopathic memory.

http://tinyurl.com/hocorul

Marco McClean memo@mcn.org

http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

HOW TO READ RANOCHAK

The Assessor-Clerk-Recorder-Elections department is now posting press releases online regarding the election on the county department website:

http://www.co.mendocino.ca.us/acr/

The latest is attached and encourages mail or drop off of ballots to speed reporting of results.

(Previously posted here at:

https://www.theava.com/archives/61938#13)

This well may be in response to the BOS questioning of tardy results reporting.

My only suggestion would be to put the press releases on the Department face page rather than having to enter under "Press Releases," or entitle the topic "Election Information Press Releases." Not everyone would think to open a press release.

(John Sakowicz)