Mendocino County Today: Friday, Nov. 25, 2016

• River Watch
• '66 Panthers
• Robber Apprehended
• Little Dog
• Santa Popped
• First Impressions
• Ukiah Costco
• Housemate Wanted
• Yesterday's Catch
• The Finisher
• Fake News
• Gertrude's Portrait
• Hacking Unlikely
• Dog Sweater
• Uneasy Listening
• Trump's Hair
• Papini Found
• Prop 53

NAVARRO RIVER LEVEL GOT SLIGHT ‘BUMP’ FROM RAINFALL

The recent rainfall — we got 0.63” here in Elk by Wednesday morning, other areas more than an inch — raised the Navarro River slightly - nothing to worry about as the mouth is still open. The “flood level” of the river is 23-feet — except when the sandbar doesn’t breach, then they can close CA-128 with as little as four feet in the river — like last week’s 128-hour closure, and another “sandbar” closure last December.

At last report (10:15 am) the river was only discharging 149 cubic feet of water per second into the ocean - or translated into a form we can understand — about 1,114 gallons per second.

MSP has an “alert” set when the river reaches 5.0’ — it had dipped below that level until Wednesday @ 2:15 pm — then rose from there to “crest” @ 5.48’ at 3:15 pm:

WEDNESDAY

• 3:15 pm - 5.48’ ***River broke 5.0' barrier & "Crested"
• 4:15 pm - 5:45’
• 5:15 pm - 5.38’
• 6:15 pm - 5.33’
• 7:15 pm - 5.27’
• 8:15 pm - 5.24’
• 9:15 pm - 5.19’
• 10:15 pm - 5.16’

SATURDAY

• 12:15 am - 5:09’
• 01:15 am - 5.07’
• 02:15 am - 5.03’
• 03:15 am - River level dipped below five-feet.

GRAPH — The "peak" on the graph was when the Navarro River sandbar "breached" last Saturday @ 5:00 pm.

(Courtesy, MendocinoSportsPlus)

THE 1966 ANDERSON VALLEY PANTHERS

Norm Clow fills in the blanks.

Here’s the ’66 team photo complete with names and scores from that 1966-67 Redwood Classic team (1967 AVHS annual. Vern Peterman and I have got 20 years worth scanned and available on line, 1962-1979 plus three from the 1940s, more to come):

Just to make it easier, first names are from the front row: Ron, Gary, Eugene, Dan, Charles, Larry; back row: Dave, Rick, Jerry, Dan, Tom.

Dan Morabito, the only “non-local” in the bunch, i.e., no family in AV, had lived with the Faylors at Vista Ranch and later, our senior year, at Ashiku’s. He was from Brooklyn NY of all places, and spent a career as an EMT and then a surgical nurse in Kansas.

Head coach was John Walters, who left after that year due to his team losing two games. He found that entirely unacceptable and moved to Sonoma High School.

The second Point Arena game was a disaster. Steve Campbell spent the entire night hitting baseline jumpers from the corner, either that or finding someone getting behind the defenders under the basket for easy drop-ins. The last three games were at the Potter Valley tournament. AV probably could have beat Clear Lake, led by future Atlanta Falcon Len Gotshalk, who played basketball and football at SRJC before being named a Little All-American lineman at Humboldt State. But…fell behind early with turnovers and never could get caught up. Getting caught up, so to speak, with Gotshalk was also an on-going problem. I remember Tom’s dad, Bob Rawles, asking him after the game when the two of us were sitting out in the near-empty gym, "Well, son, would you care to explain exactly what happened out there in 10,000 carefully chosen words or else?” Son didn’t.

RE: Junior Panther basketball, it was actually founded around 1960 by Bob Mathias, with the first coaches being Walter Tuttle, Bill Rynearson, Bob Rawles, and my dad. Paul ran it for years and really made it a great program. He was our Scoutmaster for a while, too. Always had time for kids.

RE: Ukiah games. Yes, we beat Ukiah in the 1981 Cloverdale tournament on a last-second lay-up or something, but they beat AV the next year in Boonville the next season (Jerry and Zack’s senior year) by a bigger score (after falling behind early and coming back strong in the second half). That was the end of the series.

Anyway, hope you had a good Thanksgiving…

Norm Clow, Spring, Texas

AS SUSPECTED IN LOCAL ARMED ROBBERIES, BIG BOY HOLD-UP MAN BAGGED IN CLOVERDALE

Cloverdale police officers interrupted a robbery in progress Wednesday afternoon and arrested a man suspected of two other recent armed robberies.

About 1:13 p.m., a city resident reported seeing a vehicle that looked like the damaged white 1998 Oldsmobile sedan reported in the media as connected to the Sunday heists of a Lakeport grocery store and the Cloverdale Food Center.

Officers spotted the sedan in the Patriot Gas Station parking lot, at 690 South Cloverdale Blvd., and were moving in to arrest him just as dispatch received a hold-up alarm from inside the station, Chief Stephen Cramer said.

As he exited the station, officers took the man into custody, finding a loaded pellet gun in his waist band and approximately $700 from his jacket sleeve, Cramer said.

Jack Kendrick Owens, 36, of Cloverdale, was booked into Sonoma County Jail on suspicion of two counts of felony armed robbery and having an outstanding felony fraud warrant.

His girlfriend was detained and is cooperating in the investigation, Cramer said.

Cramer praised work of his officers and those in Lakeport in “investigating and apprehending this dangerous felon.”

“This apprehension closed out three armed robberies in the last four days,” Cramer said.

LITTLE DOG SAYS, "I told the lunkhead pit bulls next door not to eat turkey legs whole, that the bones would choke them. Of course they told me to mind my own business. Me? I eat turkey meat but not bones. I know better because I was raised right."

CANNA-CLAUS NOT COMING TO TOWN

Eureka Man Busted on Ohio Freeway With 71 Pounds of Xmas-Wrapped Weed, Extracts

From the Ohio State Highway Patrol:

A California man is facing felony drug charges after Ohio State Highway Patrol troopers seized 71 pounds of marijuana, worth approximately $330,000, following a traffic stop in Wood County.

On November 21, 2016, at 10:16 a.m., troopers stopped a rented 2016 Ford Expedition, with Washington State license plate registration, for following too closely on Interstate 80, near milepost 71. Troopers observed criminal indicators and a Patrol drug-sniffing canine alerted to the vehicle. A probable cause search revealed 10 gift wrapped boxes containing approximately 71 pounds of marijuana, 360 THC pills and a pound of hash wax oil.

The driver, Daniel A. Yates, 31, of Eureka, Calf, was incarcerated in the Wood County Jail and charged with possession and trafficking in drugs, both second-degree felonies.

If convicted, he could face up to 16 years in prison and up to a $30,000 fine.

(Courtesy, LostCoastOutpost.com)

* * *

A READER COMMENTS: Black Asphalt also has served as a social hub for a new brand of highway interdictors, a group that one Desert Snow official has called “a brotherhood.” Among other things, the site hosts an annual competition to honor police who seize the most contraband and cash on the highways. As part of the contest, Desert Snow encouraged state and local patrol officers to post seizure data along with photos of themselves with stacks of currency and drugs. Some of the photos appear in a rousing hard-rock video that the Guthrie, Okla.-based Desert Snow uses to promote its training courses.

Annual winners receive Desert Snow’s top honorific: Royal Knight. The next Royal Knight will be named at a national conference hosted in Virginia Beach next year in collaboration with Virginia State Police.

In just one five-year stretch, Desert Snow-trained officers reported taking $427 million during highway encounters, according to company officials. A Post analysis found the training has helped fuel a rise in cash seizures in the Justice Department’s main asset forfeiture program.

* * *

A BOONVILLE GUY told me a long time ago that his dope mule was an old guy in a Winnebago, complete with golf clubs and a Good Sam sticker. That guy also made a couple trips a year to buy cheaper prescription drugs in Mexico for local Seniors.

HE SEEMS NICE

Editor,

Who is this gushing volunteer who gets to voice her opinions without putting her name to it?

I also have briefly met the new manager and he seems nice. Considering he has been at the shelter 3 days, it is too early to assume anything about what kind of leadership he is going to provide. BTW, What is so bad about anthropomorphizing animals? When did that become crime? I talk to my pets and the shelter pets all the time. Call me crazy, I don't care!

Monika Fuchs

Boonville

CITY OF UKIAH TAKES STEP BACK TO MOVE COSTCO PROJECT FORWARD

by Justine Frederiksen

The Ukiah City Council recently approved the first step in getting the litigation-delayed plan to build a Costco warehouse in Ukiah back on track, with Vice-Mayor Jim Brown acknowledging that the action did appear to be erasing progress since the project’s development permit and Environmental Impact Report were negated.

“It sure looks like we’re taking steps backwards when we’re actually moving forward,” Brown said. “I know everyone is anxious for a Costco, and we’re doing everything we can to get it built as soon as possible, so bear with us.”

The City Council needed to set aside the previously approved EIR for the Costco Wholesale Warehouse Project and the site development permit granted for the project because of a semi-successful lawsuit filed by Davis-based attorney William Kopper more than two years ago.

The lawsuit was at first rejected by a Mendocino County Superior Court judge, but Kopper appealed that decision and won a partial victory when the First District Court of Appeal reversed that decision and determined the EIR should not have been certified.

City Attorney David Rapport said while the court dismissed nearly all of Kopper’s claims and found most areas of the EIR adequate, it did find that the analysis of the energy use of the proposed store was not handled correctly.

The city attempted to rectify the situation by adding “an addendum to address a new requirement, but the appeals court said the energy use section had to be included in the EIR before it was certified “and could not be adopted afterward.”

Once the EIR Energy Use Analysis is ready, it will be circulated for the required 45 days of public comment. Public hearings will then be conducted by the Planning Commission and City Council, during which comments will be collected in relation to the energy use portion of the EIR only.

“We are working hard to move the project forward,” Interim Planning Director Kevin Thompson said at the City Council’s Nov. 16 meeting. “There’s a lot of things in motion and we have a timeline and we’re determined to stick with it.”

However, Thompson said a large unknown at this point is how many comments would be received on the EIR once it is re-circulated.

“We could receive a lot of comments that we need to respond to, so that could delay things,” Thompson said, adding that he hoped to have the updated EIR distributed for public comment soon, then have it ready to present to the Planning Commission for approval in “early 2017.”

The City Council then unanimously approved setting aside the previously approved permit and EIR for the project.

(Courtesy, the Ukiah Daily Journal)

HELP WANTED

Housemate Wanted In Boonville

Elderly woman [body slowing down, mind sharp as a tack] looking for someone to share house in exchange for house cleaning and light gardening. You'll have your own bedroom, share bath, kitchen, living room. Ideal for a retired person who loves flowers, puttering in the garden, and the quiet life. Walking distance to the AV Health Center and downtown Boonville.

(no smoking or problem drinkers)

Wonderful situation for the right person!

Call Nancy at 895-3134

CATCH OF THE DAY, November 24, 2016

JOSE ALEJANDRES-BRAVO, Willits. Under influence, probation revocation.

DARREN BREW, Willits. Domestic assault, probation revocation.

CASEY BROWNING, Fort Bragg. DUI, domestic battery, suspended license, probation revocation.

PAULINE DUNGAN, Willits. Failure to appear.

DEVIN KESTER-TYLER, Ukiah. Elder abuse, probation revocation.

LEE LONG, Ukiah. DUI-drugs, misdemeanor hit&run.

LARISSA NOBLE, Ukiah. Under influence, probation revocation.

AMANDA PURCELL, Redwood Valley. DUI with drugs causing great bodily injury, child endangerment, paraphernalia, suspended license, probation revocation.

NELSON VOSE, Talmage. Probation revocation.

YO, LITTLE DOG, baby baby, point them glambams this way — we gotta girlfriend fer yoo, over here in Lake County nodoubtaboutit!

IT'S CALLED ADVERTISING

Sorry to be the one to have to tell you this, but we’ve had “fake news” for many years before there were social media websites. It’s called “advertising.” In fact, we long ago surrendered control of all our public dialogues to it. The original premise was that a bit of advertising would support “free” entertainment and news. But before long, entertainment and news was created to support the advertising.

Entertainment based on dramatized violence, sadism, juvenile sexual humor and “infotainment” is the result. Advertising’s cancerous spread is now the main driver behind the infection of social media with “fake news.” Most of that fake news is created specifically to attract visitors to websites to give the sites’ ads greater exposure. The point being that if we truly want to control so-called “fake news,” we’re going to need to assert stronger control over advertising.

Riley VanDyke, San Francisco

GERTRUDE STEIN: THE OBLIGATION TO LOOK LIKE THE PORTRAIT

by Manuel Vicent

Translated by Louis S. Bedrock

Gertrude Stein and her sister were still little girls when they were traveling from Pennsylvania to California by train and during the trip, they were leaning out of the window. In that moment a mishap occurred and her father hit the alarm button repeatedly and the convoy came to a halt. The passengers thought that something very serious has happened. The only thing that had happened was that the hat of one of the girls had flown off. The gentleman got off the train and after walking half a mile found the hat in a field of sunflowers. The little girl got her hat back, put it on her head, and with the problem resolved, the train resumed its journey. Events like this assured that the self-esteem of Gertrude Stein had a solid base from her earliest childhood.

One would have to wonder if anyone would be writing about this woman's life if Picasso hadn't immortalized her with a pointed chin in a famous pre-cubist portrait that was pretty far from reality because Gertrude Stein at that time was a young woman with a sturdy body, a broad face, and round cheeks.

—That looks nothing like me —exclaimed the model.

—Relax, in due time you will wind up looking alike —answered Picasso.

This sentence has gone down in history, but actually what the painter said was that it was her who had the obligation to look like the portrait. She didn't stop until she achieved this.

She arrived in Paris with her brother Leo, both North American Jews of Austrian extraction; both were wealthy; both were orphans and travelers. She had studied medicine in Baltimore without ever getting her degree because of pure boredom; he was running around lost in Florence in search of a variety of sensations.

Around 1903 they came together in Paris with the goal of experiencing as profoundly as possible the fascination of the new times; they set up living quarters at 27 Rue de Fleurus in the Latin Quarter, a building of two floors with a large study in the garden, and the two of them began to collect artists with which to adorn their lives of millionaire aesthetes. They went around waving their checkbook in front of them, they knew what they had in mind, but they had an advantage because in those days avant-garde artists were good and very cheap while intellectuals were bad and very expensive.

Their first catch was Picasso, who at that time was still living with Fernande in the Bateau Lavoir on the Rue de Ravgnan in Montmarte. He was fueling the stove with his drawings, had recently emerged from the poverty of the Blue Period and was entering the incipient glory of his Rose Period. Gertrude Stein was led there led by her instinct.

Neither of them would later remember in which year Picasso began her portrait, but he made her pose more than ninety times in his studio and it was during one of those sessions that Gertrude Stein, who had begun to write, thought that it was perhaps possible to do so in the same way as the painter, who like Cezanne, was arranging reality in juxtaposed planes.

At that time she was working on a literary portrait of the Negress Malanctha, who was her maid, which was to be included in her book Three Lives; she was obsessed with sentences without inner structure, with words dislocated from their meanings and repeated until they became profound and unintelligible, united only by different contradictory definitions that ran from the exterior to the interior of things. A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose, etcetera. Apparently, according to her, the last rose had already encroached upon the first. Picasso found the essence of his material in the same way.

None of the bohemian artists or writers she fed had the courage to contradict her. Like that train heading for California, this woman was already her own convoy, which started and stopped in the middle of Paris when it pleased her. It was loaded with avant-garde artists whom she manipulated according to her mood and there were many of them who were willing to fetch her hat although at times she behaved like a mother hen with everyone clinging to her corduroy skirt.

She lived with her secretary and lover, Alice B. Toklas — "Kitten", "Sweetie-pie", "Baby", "Little Grasshopper", as she called her, and their Sunday soirées in the study of 27 Rue de Fleurus began to make them famous. The voracity of this collector had no limits. In that study she displayed a painting by Matisse, La joie de vivre, which stirred the jealousy of Picasso, who would not stop hounding Gertrude Stein until she had taken down that canvas and replaced it with Las Señoritas de Avignon.

At that time, Gertrude Stein fluttered between these two painters, Picasso and Matisse, who opened the aesthetic compass of the twentieth century: one was the creator of new forms; the other the pioneer of brute color as an expression of emotion. The two geniuses respected one another in public, but secretly hated one another, and the mother hen always ended up imposing peace during their quarrels.

Gertrude Stein wanted to extrapolate cubism to literature. After the avant-garde soirées in the study of the house, overflowing with painters and their wives or lovers, she would save the night for herself. She would write until the birds began to sing. It may be she had more ambition than talent, but the idea of being misunderstood filled her with pride. With The Making of Americans, she attempts to recount over the large span of a thousand pages the history of her family.

Suddenly, the war came. It surprised Stein and her lover Alice in England. They got through the war with an enjoyable stay in Mallorca and when peace arrived and they went back to Paris, the scene had changed. Matisse was in Nice, Picasso in Antibes, and Apollinaire had died in battle. In the twenties, Stein stopped adorning her life with painters and began to do so with writers.

She forged a friendship with Sylvia Beach, the owner of Shakespeare and Company, and Beach began to bring North American men of letters to her study: Ezra Pound, Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson, but not the Irishman James Joyce, whom she hated perhaps because he had snatched fame away from that group of exquisite beings with the experimental literature that she had been looking for.

It was the Lost Generation, a literary definition attributed to Gertrude Stein. Actually it was the expression of the owner of a garage reprimanding a mechanic recently back from the war who had not been diligent in repairing a mechanical problem in Stein's Ford Model T. She applied the term to her friends, with whom she maintained turbulent relationships.

Gertrude Stein lived through intermediaries who were always famous. In fact, she obliged her secretary and lover, Alice b. Toklas, to take credit for her autobiography as her own work so, without blushing, she could embellish herself with every imaginable accolade.

After experiencing success with a series of conferences in North America in 1935, she returned to France and World War II fell upon her and her lover. Miraculously, she managed to save her fabulous collection of paintings from the Gestapo.

Later on she retreated to the countryside with her kitten, Alice and in 1946 she died in Neuilly-sur-Seine; but by then the historic avant-garde of Paris had already vanished because the Americans had carried it off to New York as spoils of war. The figure of Gertrude Stein remained like an ineluctable mirror that continued reflecting forever the bohemian splendor of the happy times of that Paris in which everything was permitted. As a matter of fact, when a body did not fit into a painting, its legs were cut off and painted alongside the ears. And that's also how she wrote.

SORRY, HILLARY CLINTON FANS. THERE’S ‘ZERO EVIDENCE’ OF ELECTION HACKING.

by Shane Harris

Democrats cried hallelujah when computer scientists reportedly pressed Hillary Clinton ask for recounts. But even those experts say an election hack is beyond unlikely.

Does Hillary Clinton still have a path to the White House?

That’s the provocative question posed by some computer security experts, who think voting results in key states could have been manipulated by hackers.

The emphasis here is on “could.” There’s no clear evidence that voting machines were rigged or that ballots were altered, but as reported Tuesday night in New York magazine, a group of computer scientists and election lawyers has urged Clinton to call for a recount in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, three swing states that Donald Trump won — to the surprise of just about every pollster, pundit, and journalist in America.

Clinton would have to win those states back in order to change the outcome of the election. And while it’s tempting to blame hackers, and not the failure of the political professional class, for Trump’s upset, experts warn not to get your hopes up for a shocking turnaround. For hackers to have changed the votes in three states would have been even more surprising than Trump’s victory.

“There is zero evidence of tampering right now. Zero,” David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, told The Daily Beast. The simpler explanation for why the vote deviated from expectations and historical trends was that Barack Obama wasn’t at the top of the ticket. The results for Clinton “only look off when you compare them to the Obama elections” in 2008 and 2012, Becker said.

The hackers would have had to begin their work in advance of the election. And in those states or counties that don’t use electronic voting machines exclusively, they’d probably have to be on the ground, infiltrating elections offices, and working up to Election Day if not on the day itself. Throwing the votes in these three states on the same day would have required teams of people working in coordination with a high risk that they’d get caught, Becker said.

“I don’t know how you’d plan for something like this even if you had George Clooney and Brad Pitt,” he said, referring to the Oceans movie franchise in which talented thieves pull of absurdly implausible heists.

Even one of the computer scientists reportedly urging Clinton to call for a recount seemed to downplay the notion that hackers stole the election for Trump.

“Were this year’s deviations from pre-election polls the results of a cyberattack? Probably not,” J. Alex Halderman, a professor of computer science at the University of Michigan, wrote in a post on Medium. “I believe the most likely explanation is that the polls were systematically wrong, rather than that the election was hacked. But I don’t believe that either one of these seemingly unlikely explanations is overwhelmingly more likely than the other.”

“The only way to know whether a cyberattack changed the result,” Halderman continued, “is to closely examine the available physical evidence — paper ballots and voting equipment in critical states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, nobody is ever going to examine that evidence unless candidates in those states act now, in the next several days, to petition for recounts.”

But that’s not entirely true, because in some states, officials routinely go back and look at vote counts in order to determine that laws were followed and voting machines worked properly.

Wisconsin, a state that Halderman flagged, is one of them. There, the law requires a random audit of each type of voting equipment used in the state, of which there are about half a dozen from different vendors and manufacturers, Michael Haas, the administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, told The Daily Beast.

“People go through and hand count the ballots and make sure that the equipment counted them as you’d expect based on how the ballots were marked,” he said. The elections commission will compile a final report by December 15 and provide it to an oversight body. Any petition to hold a recount is due by this Friday at 5pm. “We haven’t received any inquires from the Clinton campaign about a petition” to hold a recount, Haas said.

Becker said he was confident that the Wisconsin audit would detect any irregularities that could indicate vote tampering. “If there is a problem, we’ll know about it.”

But the auditing procedures in other states may give skeptics less comfort. In Michigan, there is no audit aimed at re-tabulating or counting ballots. Rather, officials conduct a review to ensure that local officials properly followed laws and procedures. Experts say it’s better than nothing, but isn’t a robust means for verifying that there were no shenanigans or errors on Election Day.

Michigan only uses optical scanning systems — voters make their choices on paper ballots that are tabulated by a machine. The state doesn’t use electronic voting machines, like those with touch screens that may rely on software downloaded from the internet, which could be vulnerable to tampering.

This doesn’t mean the election results couldn’t have been altered. But Fred Woodhams, a spokesperson for the Michigan Secretary of State, told The Daily Beast that the state has used the optical machines for more than a decade and that “time and again they have demonstrated their extreme accuracy and integrity.”

Official assurances count for something. But in the last state flagged by the researchers, Pennsylvania, it’s not clear that an audit would detect tampering in some parts of the state.

Pennsylvania is one of those states that gives election security experts heartburn, because the electronic voting machines it uses don’t print out a paper record of the voter’s selections. In effect, there is no way to verify that the machine accurately recorded the votes, experts say.

Experts have long pointed out that these paperless electronic machines would make a prime target for hackers. Pennsylvania does use paper ballots in some parts of the state, and it does conduct some post-election audits. But it could be difficult to detect tampering with the voting machines unless they’re directly examined.

A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of State said in a statement that officials are “aware of the report” in New York magazine. “The Pennsylvania Election Code includes a provision allowing an election to be contested in the courts. Such action must be taken within 20 days after the election. We will not speculate or comment on any potential litigation.”

The statement made no mention of an audit.

The bottom line is that there’s no evidence yet of election hacking, but there’s also no universal policy to audit results after an election. And that’s unfortunate, because regular audits would help build confidence that elections went off smoothly and weren’t targeted by hackers, said Pamela Smith, the president of Verified Voting, a nonprofit group that advocates transparency and security in U.S. elections.

“My feeling is audits should be done as a matter of course,” Smith told The Daily Beast, adding that states that don’t conduct them now could launch “a pilot audit” as a sign that they take the issue seriously.

“A state could say, we know this was a contentious election, we have that unusual situation where the popular vote winner didn't win the most electoral college votes, what the heck, let’s do an audit. I think that’s a perfectly legitimate thing to do.”

(Daily Beast)

LITTLE DOG’S COUSIN KEEPS WARM

WHY PEOPLE LOST THEIR MINDS

When A Brooklyn Store Played ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ "If “accusatory and condescending” sounds familiar, it should. Along with being called deplorable, Trump’s supporters (of which I was not one) have been treated in a way that is rare in American politics, and deeply troubling. The campaign that emerged from Brooklyn didn’t just attack the politics of people who don’t live in big cities. It attacked their entire way of life, and promised it was dying."

http://thefederalist.com/2016/11/23/brooklyn-grocery-store-played-sweet-home-alabama-everyone-lost-minds/

TRUMP'S HAIR

(1) The hair bothers me a lot more than the vulgarity. They’re symptoms of the same complete lack of self-respect, though, which is the most dangerous aspect of Trump. He’ll do absolutely anything for male approval.

I’m serious, that guy’s father must have been a bastard among bastards. Trump acts like a classic grown man who was cruelly abused emotionally as a child.

The hair is a dead giveaway. Anybody with any self-respect would just buzz it down short with a #1 or #2 clipper and call it a day. “Yes, god-dammit, I have male pattern baldness. And 10 billion dollars, and a hot wife. All in all, pretty good deal. Now, what were you saying?”

And no petty tweeting in the middle of the night about people you lose time and money even thinking about.

(2) He’s worn his hair funny since long before it started thinning. I think he believes it looks good.

Don’t all men who run for president have some kind of issue with their father?

Donald is not the junior in his family. He’s the second son, and his brother died young from alcoholism. That has to affect a man. I’m not a man, so I don’t pretend to understand the father/son/brother dynamic.

Obama was abandoned by both parents.

I don’t know why I’m getting into this.

PAPINI FOUND

Shasta County Sheriff’s Office release:

Sherri Papini who was reported missing on November 2, 2016, has been located out of the area. She is safe, in stable condition and receiving medical clearance at an undisclosed hospital. She has been reunited with her husband, Keith. Detectives from the Major Crimes Unit are currently interviewing Sherri Papini.

The Shasta County Sheriff’s Office will hold a news conference today, Thursday, November 24, 2016, at 2pm. The news conference will be held at the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office, 300 Park Marina Circle, Redding, CA.

The Sheriff’s Office is requesting the media not contact the Keith Papini and his family and more information will follow at the news conference. This is an on going critical investigation and we asking for the media’s cooperation. Please be patient as we do not want to compromise the investigation and more details will follow at the 2pm news conference.

PROPOSITION THAT THREATENED DELTA TUNNELS DEFEATED BY A NARROW MARGIN

by Dan Bacher

On November 22, the California Secretary of State’s Office announced that the voters narrowly defeated Proposition 53, an initiative requiring voter approval of revenue bonds over $2 billion, by a narrow margin of 50.9 percent to 49.1 percent.

Governor Jerry Brown and his staff are celebrating the victory because it would have required a public vote on his two controversial “legacy” projects, the Delta Tunnels and High Speed Rail.

“The defeat of Prop 53 is good news for CA and our future,” proclaimed Governor Jerry Brown in a tweet. “It means one less roadblock in solving our water and transportation problems.”

However, about 90 percent of the anglers, grassroots environmentalists and Tribal leaders that I discussed Proposition 53 with voted “Yes” on the measure because it would require a vote on the Delta Tunnels and other huge projects that pose significant threats to the environment.

For example, Kevin Wolf of Davis, a long time environmental activist, campaign organizer and advocate for openness and transparency in government, advised voting Yes on 53 in his Recommendations for the November 2016 Election.

“This would force the state to let voters decide if there would be a new Delta Twin Tunnels project or other large project funded by state revenue bonds,” said Wolf. “This could harm some good things in the future, but if it is a good enough idea, it should get passed as a proposition.”

While the votes were still being tallied, Dean Cortopassi, proponent of Proposition 53, who describes himself as a “libertarian Democrat,” issued a statement regarding the election results for the measure on November 9. Among other things, he said the “No on 53 campaign seemed analogous to German Panzer Divisions waging ‘Blitzkrieg on Poland in 1939” and described the measure's opponents as “Sacramento Gang Politicians and Porkers” in his statement:

"The closeness of the Prop 53 vote (currently 51% - 49%) means the final outcome will be delayed until 100% of all votes cast are reported.

In the interim, my personal congratulations to each and every one voting Yes on 53 (currently 4+ million Californians)! Funded by Sacramento Gang Politicians and Porkers, the No on 53 campaign threw everything at you that $20+ million could buy! Opposition included: hundreds of grant-hungry local entities; major funding from Special Interests who feed at the Public Trough; newspaper Editorial negativity; a barrage of blatantly false TV ads; and over the past three weeks, Governor Brown bombarding you with Robo calls and emails; statewide Press Conferences; and increasingly snide attacks on Prop 53 and me personally.

Taken as a whole, the No on 53 campaign seemed analogous to German Panzer Divisions waging “Blitzkrieg” on Poland in 1939. In the meantime, the Yes on 53 campaign relied on me providing personal interviews to journalists willing to consider Prop 53 on its merits; and two newspaper ads in major newspapers. That’s it! Of the total funds my wife and I contributed, 80% was spent on qualifying Prop 53 and less than 20% ($1 million) on promoting its merits.

Think about the disparity of $20 million to $1 million campaigns plus the additional political clout of the Governor’s Sacramento Gang?! By normal measurements, Yes on 53 should have been crushed by the No on 53 onslaught – but it wasn’t! And the reason is every one of you who voted Yes figured out the truth about the Debt Dragon that threatens Californians today and tomorrow!

I’m proud of each Yes on 53 voter and I hope we are in the majority when 100% of votes cast are counted. If we are not in the majority, don’t despair because the truth torches we lit together cannot be extinguished, and the Sacramento Gang’s Debt Dragon will be leashed! Whether Prop 53 ends up at 51% or at 49%, We have Won – Thank You!"

Proposition 53 would require statewide voter approval for state revenue bond projects costing more than $2 billion, closing a loophole that allows politicians to issue massive new debt for multi-billion dollar projects without voter approval. For more information, visit: www.YESon53.com.

Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, the Executive Director of Restore the Delta, noted that Prop 53 was “never a Delta Tunnels-only proposition. It was a proposition focused on revenue bond debt for large state projects, including High Speed Rail. That is why Restore the Delta, the largest Delta environmental organization, never took a position on Proposition 53.”

With the results now in, she issued the following statement:

“Despite the defeat of Prop. 53, the funding for the proposed Delta Tunnels is still highly questionable. There is no finance plan available for public review because it simply doesn’t exist. Westlands Water District, one of the major beneficiaries of the project, recently had its credit rating downgraded by Fitch credit rating service, and an independent economic analysis shows that even with a Federal and State tax subsidy, the project still does not pencil out for the big agricultural districts. Even if Proposition 53 is not approved, the long-term plan for the project will remain controversial,’ according to Fitch Credit Rating services.

Meanwhile, Southern California citizens will end up paying for the project four ways: property taxes; higher water rates; Federal and State taxes. Metropolitan Water District’s claim that all it will cost is $5 monthly per household is simply not true. Just look at how the Seattle Tunnel Project, a two-mile tunnel, is coming in at double the price, over $1.5 billion per mile. The twin Delta tunnels are actually a total of 70 tunnel-miles, and the State is only budgeting $500 million per mile.

“This is why presentations were made by Metropolitan Water District and Department of Water Resources employees at the Cutting Edge 2016, International Tunneling Conference, during the last several days of the election news cycle, are significant. Restore the Delta attendees learned that the State wants tunnel construction contractors to assume the risk of owning the tunnel boring machines and needed replacement parts as a strategy to keep costs down. But international tunneling firms will not want to assume this kind of risk.

This was part of CA WaterFix’s sales pitch to international contractors to buy into the project — a project that is still not permitted by the State or Federal government, a project that cannot meet Clean Water Act standards for the Delta, a project that will wipe out fishery economies up and down the west coast, a project that will leave hundreds of thousands of people with polluted drinking water, a project in which those who are supposed to repay the debt for the project can’t — a project presently being audited by State and Federal officials – a project that still has only 10% of the geotechnical data needed for tunnel contractors to begin construction.

Restore the Delta will continue unmasking the true financial and environmental costs to Californians of the Delta tunnels project and fighting its implementation through administrative processes, education and outreach, and litigation if necessary. We will prevail because the majority of Californians disapprove of the Delta Tunnels and backers have not proven the proposal makes economic or environmental sense.”

The results of the Proposition 53 vote are disappointing for those who care about salmon, the Delta and the public trust. However, there is no doubt that if an initiative solely requiring a public vote on the Delta Tunnels had been on the ballot, it would have been decisively approved by the voters.

Unfortunately, Governor Jerry Brown and the California legislative "leadership," while falsely portraying themselves as "environmentalists," for several years have failed to support legislation requiring a public vote on the tunnels, the most environmentally devastating public works project in California history. That's because Brown and his legislative allies know that the voters would overwhelmingly reject the Delta Tunnels, just like they defeated the Peripheral Canal in November 1982, if the project went to a public vote.