Mendocino County Today: Sunday, Nov. 27, 2016

• DeShaun Davis
• Standing Rock Eviction Notice
• Obama's Inaction
• Irresponsible Parties
• Little Dog
• Highway Fatalities
• Scandalous Roadcut
• Castro/Cuba Memories
• After AF
• Darker Darknesses
• Fascist Donald
• HairForce One
• Marco Radio
• Library Events
• ¿Qué?
• Dream Doctor

JIM ARMSTRONG of Potter Valley tells us that DeShaun Davis, the young black man shot and killed on Monday by Steve Ryan, was at some point part of the troubled Mendocino College football program. Davis, 20, was listed on the football roster as 6-1 and 245 pounds. He had family in this area. As a high school student, he attended Lower Lake High School and before that Cape Fear High School in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Davis had one arrest for resisting, and that was in April of this year and occurred in the big box store area of Ukiah. From all we can learn, which isn't much at this point, Davis was not criminally oriented and was popular in Ukiah, where he lived with relatives. He was not homeless as stated in the Press Democrat. His FaceBook page says he was a "sawyer" (saw operator) a timber industry position he may have been interested in but was not known to have held.

ARMY CORPS SENDS EVICTION NOTICE TO STANDING ROCK

A Reader Writes: As Dorothy Parker would say, “What fresh hell is this?"

http://www.ecowatch.com/army-corp-eviction-dakota-access-pipeline-2111310242.html

OBAMA COULD FIX THIS

Dear President Barack Obama,

For the last 8 years you have been a President whom I can believe in. You and First Lady Michelle Obama have brought dignity and civility to the American conversation. I am disappointed however, in your inaction where the Standing Rock Sioux are concerned. We have watched in shock and disbelief as our Native American citizens have been treated unfairly, even brutally by law enforcement officers, for the crime of peacefully protesting for the protection of their land and water from certain pollution and damage. Citizens of Bismarck, whites, protested and were granted a diversion of the pipeline, away from harming their water sources. Shooting at protesters with water cannons in subzero temperatures is tantamount to attempted murder. Shooting with rubber bullets has not been done in any other peaceful protest situations in our country for some time, and it has severely injured people; children and elders have been injured. The whole world is watching, as no calm voice in the state of North Dakota has prevailed; this overreaction by law enforcement is upsetting to any decent law abiding citizen who wants to protect their property. Our children watch these events, as our country violates yet another treaty with Native Peoples. Where else can they live in peace and with life-giving water? Why should the state law enforcement be doing these violent things to people, in the name of protecting private business interests; on land they do not own, where due process was not observed in the planning and execution of those plans? I am very impressed that you have released many nonviolent criminals from prison earlier than unfair sentences dictate. What of clemency to the peaceful water protectors? They commit no crime save the protection of life-giving water and sacred burial sites. Imagine if this same pipeline were proposed to be built on the land that Arlington cemetery. No one would stand for that! What an ironic spectacle for our Thanksgiving time. Please use your every ability to make this horrible travesty stop! Please give a positive example for our children and grandchildren to see. Please make this humble former nurse and preschool teacher prouder than ever of your good work. The history books will have something positive to say for the upholding of Native American Treaty rights.

Blessings to you and your family,

Candace Carter, Clearlake

STANDING ROCK IN PERSPECTIVE, PLUS…

Dear Editor:

Standing Rock representatives say the Bismarck City Council protested the danger to their own water when the Dakota Access Pipeline would have been buried near that town, and got it moved over to the reservation fence line. The Enbridge line in Michigan leaked 843,000 gallons of crude oil into the marsh along the Kalamazoo River. About a month ago a pipeline in Oklahoma exploded. Of a 60 million acre treaty, never to be broken, the Dakota Reservation has 5 million acres left, and they are supposed to live with the same threat Bismarck was able to push back? They try to get the same consideration as the citizens of Bismarck and "security" brings out a machine that emits a ray which when trained on a crowd of people and turned on makes them all start vomiting their guts out.

This is not the 19th century. We have had decades of effort and goodwill toward establishing a sense of mutual respect and treaty recognition that people who lived across this continent since before Adam and Eve, and now this happens. The President of the United States says little more than he's going to "let it play out." It's unconstitutional! As of Monday, November 21, they were dousing them with water cannons on a chilly night just over 20 and I heard nothing further of the President.

At times like this the argument and gridlock over who is the more irresponsible party in Washington is too close to call.

Scott Croghan

Mendocino

PS: EVA, DAY & NEIL

by Scott Croghan

Ambrose Bierce was so absorbed in his own life in San Francisco, where he could work and play, but could not live because of asthma, and in Deadwood, South Dakota, where gold fever took him to the Black Hills after the suppression of the Sioux.

Molly Day Bierce loved him, but though a rich Dane was unsuccessful courting her, she allowed him to send her love letters, and she kept them.

Ambrose found one, and stormed out, never to return to "a house with a leaky roof."

Their oldest son, Day Bierce, 15, had wanted to leave home and get into the newspaper business, and Molly and Ambrose could not dissuaded him.

He found work in Red Bluff with the Sentinel, and met young Eva Adkins who worked in a cannery.

He moved into the boardinghouse in Chico where she lived with her mother and a man named Barney.

Eva was leading him on while she fancied his best friend, Neil, and when she finally told him, he was outraged.

He pulled out a pistol.

She cried that she was too young to die, and he demanded an engagement.

She implied consent, and after she defended him in court, that Barney had started a fight with him, Day planned to marry her on July 22.

But she married Neil in nearby French Camp on the 20th, and Day was wildly delusional.

Although they were forewarned of his condition, and Neil was forearmed, the couple returned to the boardinghouse where Day still had a room, four days later.

They came into the house, spoke with them "almost cordially," and went into his room.

He came back out shooting, mortally wounding Neil and grazing Eva's head.

Neil knocked him down and pulled her from the room, as Day cried, "My God, Neil, what have I done? Just put a cartridge in your revolver and kill me. Kill me, I'm not fit to live."

He went back into his room, lay on the bed with a chloroformed cloth over his face, placed his pistol to his temple and shot himself, yet remained alive.

In the middle of their second decade of life, both young men, thus finished, were taken to the hospital where Day murmured, "Send for my father. Send for my father."

They died within minutes of each other.

Ambrose Bierce went up from San Francisco and arrived sad and broken at the Chico undertaker's.

To his oldest son, self-killed on a marble slab, he said, "You are a noble soul, Day, you did just right."

As he took poor Day away on a train to St. Helena, and Neil Hubbs was taken on another train in the opposite direction, Eva Adkins, standing at the station, remarked to a reporter, "Now ain't that queer? One goes one way and one goes another, but here I am!"

When he learned that the poet George Serling was reading through his Prattle columns from the 1880s and 90s in the files at the San Francisco Examiner, Ambrose said, "There is so much in it to deplore, so much that is not wise, so much that was an expression of a mood or whim, so much that was not altogether sincere, so many half-truths."

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “I don't do politics much, because whenever I do someone says, 'What do you know? You're just a dog.' But I bet everyone agrees with me that the endlessly delayed Mendocino County vote-count is wacky even by Mendo standards!"

JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT early Saturday morning (Friday night), an as-yet unidentified 27 year old Lakeport man driving a 2009 Chevy Malibu north on Highway 29 just south of the Highway 20 intersection in Lake County and failed to negotiate a roundabout and collided with it head-on. The Malibu went airborne and landed on its roof in a walnut orchard killing both the 27 year old and his 29 year old Kelseyville male passenger. The CHP has not determined if drugs or alcohol were involved. Both individuals were wearing seatbelts. The incident is under investigation.

A READER WRITES: I took this picture this morning. It's been more than a few years since I sent you pictures of the same roadcut. The county government looks powerless to get the roadcut closed, and the roadbed replanted. This has become a scandal.

CASTRO was, natch, much admired by young lefties when I was a young lefty. As an old lefty I was always more drawn to a much more libertarian socialism than the Leninist reign Castro operated, I think he could have loosened the reins long before his brother finally let neighborhood barbers make a few private capitalistic bucks and allowed estranged Cubans to visit relatives. But I still admire the initial revolution he pulled off, didn't much admire what it became.

WAY BACK, as a starving student, I lived in a grungy San Francisco rooming house on Scott Street near Hayes. A beautiful building but stuffed with oddballs when I rented a room there for fifty bucks a month. It's a fancy inn these days. One rookie, "John," hurled himself down the stairs every night, occasionally battering himself severely enough to have to make a trip to the emergency room. We all shared a squalid upstairs kitchen where we kept our food in a common refrigerator. John, who was mute to where I thought maybe he was clinically silent, would down a bowl of Wheaties then throw himself back downstairs to his room. I was quite alarmed the first time I saw him do it, and a little more alarmed when a fellow tenant assured me, "He just does that for attention." He got mine but always refused post-plummet assistance.

MY NEIGHBOR in an adjoining room was Henry Cohen. Henry, a longshoreman and a communist, told me he'd fought with Castro in Cuba. Whenever I met him in the hallway, or outside on the street, he'd invariably say, "The problem with you, kid, is you're uneducated," a state of being I was acutely aware of. But Henry didn't mean educated in the usual sense; he meant unacquainted with Marxism, which he promoted as zealously as any Jehovah's Witness promotes the apocalypse.

HENRY was one of these "You looking at me, punk?" tough guys. He was always getting in beefs on the street with random belligerents. And he was always smacking his lips at strange women and saying stuff like, "Hey, baby, wanna come home with me?" Some did, which I still find astounding.

AFTER A FEW harrowing street adventures with Henry I avoided him whenever I could. But I always wondered if he'd fought in Cuba. I later learned there were Americans who had, the most famous of whom was William Morgan whose fascinating bio can be found in book form. (The Castro brothers were present when they killed Morgan as an alleged CIA agent, which he probably was.) But how could a crazy little tough guy like Henry have gotten himself from the US into Castro's revolutionary army? I wonder still.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Alexander_Morgan

THE LOCAL Castro angle: The old Spanish penal custom was to tattoo the hands of career criminals. That way Latin American police could tell at a glance who they were dealing with. In 1980, Castro gulled Jimmy Carter into accepting into the US "any Cuban who wanted to leave." Carter welcomed these freedom seekers to Miami as American cops watched a parade of dangerous psychos get off the boats from Havana. One of those tattooed bad boys made his way all the way to Ukiah were he stabbed his girl friend to death in broad daylight on South State Street.

VARIOUS MEMBERS of my family have gone to Cuba as tourists, a couple of them when you had to go through Canada to get there. I'd always wanted to see Hemingway's house until I learned only recently I can visit it on-line, which spares me the airplane experience but it's hardly the same as being there.

NO ON AF, ONCE MORE

Editor,

The No on Measure AF Committee extends its thanks and gratitude to the voting public for listening to our thoughtful arguments and voting to reject Measure AF. For some, economic considerations drove their decision; for others, it was unwanted neighborhood and environmental impacts.

But for all, the 2 to 1 defeat of Measure AF allows the community the opportunity to contribute suggestions to proposed regulation of the marijuana industry in an open public process, which is well along the way. The main goal of No on Measure AF was to allow public input to an environmentally supportive and enforceable regulation framework. We are hopeful that the result will be criteria that are attainable and affordable for the public while generating the funds necessary to ensure its viability.

If you want to get your input on the record, the Planning Commission will hold two meetings to hear the public and make a recommendation to the Board of Supervisors. The first informational meeting will be on December 1^st at 3 PM in the Supervisors’ Chambers. The second action meeting will be December 15^th at 10 AM in the same location.

The Committee had very diverse members working together for good governance and they will now go their separate ways. We anticipate that some commonalities of thought still remain, and may come forward as comments to the ongoing County ordinance process.

Hal Wagenet

Member, No On Measure AF Committee

CATCH OF THE DAY, November 26, 2016

(Unavailable due to server error at Sheriff’s Booking Log.)

ROAMING CHARGES: DARKNESS, DARKNESS

by Jeffrey St. Clair

A malign darkness has descended on the land and I’m not talking only about Trump. Look toward North Dakota, where petro-cops are committing atrocities daily with impunity, far removed from the cameras of the cable networks, beyond the salons of Washington now filled with frenzied chatter about how to adapt to the new dispensation, unnoticed by the remote-control protests outside Trump Tower.

Early this week, mercenaries armed with water cannons pulverized tribal protesters in the freezing night. There’s an arrogant symbolism to the image of rent-a-goons terrorizing tribal protectors of water with violent blasts of water. Across the decades, the targets of this kind of brutality don’t change much: Indians, blacks, Hispanics, the homeless, striking workers. And neither do the vicious tactics of repression: attack dogs, cages, numbered tattoos, mace, water cannons, rubber bullets. All these and more are being inflicted at Standing Rock.

A Lakota elder recounted his experience of standing in front of one of the mercenaries. “He smiled at me and then shot me in the kneecaps.” A 13-year old girl was shot in the face with a “rubber” bullet, knocked unconscious, her head bloodied and bruised. A female protester was struck by a concussion grenade, mangling her arm so badly it may need to be amputated. All in a night’s work for the thugs of big oil and their government cops. Still, the people refuse to be dislodged.

None of these outrages against tribal people, or the fragile landscape of the high plains, has aroused much attention from the press or political leaders of either party. Of the leading Democrats, only Bernie Sanders and Al Franken have spoken out against the crimes being committed before our eyes. The others have remained mute, marinating in money from the pipeline’s financiers. The sound of their silence is the sound of complicity.

As for Obama, he started his administration by bailing out banks and doing nothing for homeowners facing foreclosure. He ends it by sending eviction notices to tribal people fighting for their homeland.

The US Army Corps of Engineers eviction notice warns the Standing Rock protestors that after December 5th they will assume all liability for what happens next, which sounds very much like a shoot-to-kill order to me. At the very least, it is a green light for an escalation of violence on the part of the oil mercenaries, local sheriffs and National Guard. But what kind of long-term liability for their lives and their future do they assume if they agree to leave at this point?

+ As we begin to enter what may prove to be a darker darkness than the one we’ve been living in, I re-read Jean-Paul Sartre’s sobering long-essay, Paris: Under Occupation. It extends in more vivid and concrete terms some of the abstract concepts grappled with in Being & Nothingness, particularly the painful “nothingness” reflected when you notice the sudden absence of faces, fixtures at the Café Flore perhaps, that were familiar to you, other writers, troublemakers, dissidents, members of the Resistance picked up by the Nazis, who simply never returned. I found this passage, written in prose as direct as a Raymond Chandler story, particularly chilling:

“You would phone a friend one day and the telephone would ring and ring in the empty apartment. You would ring his doorbell and he wouldn’t come to the door. If the concierge broke in, you would find two chairs drawn up together in the hallway with German cigarette ends between the legs.”

As Trump gears up to unleash his Deportation Force across the land, I think of our Mexican-American friends and acquaintances and those familiar faces from the bus stops and the grocery check out lines. Will there come a day when we will suddenly feel the chill sensation of their absence from our lives, wondering where they’ve gone, how they were taken and what we could have done to protect them?

+ Recall when W. vowed during the 2000 campaign to retreat from the interventionism and “nation-building,” which were the hallmarks of his father and Clinton’s administrations, while at the very same time Cheney was quietly assembling a cabinet of rabid neocons? Same thing is happening now at the gilded aerie of Trump Tower, with Pence, Bannon and Jared Kushner vetting the players.

+ It came as no surprise that Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who is regarded by many of his former colleagues at the Defense Intelligence Agency as a borderline personality on the level of the Jack D. Ripper character in Dr. Strangelove, was tapped as Trump’s National Security Advisor. Like many generals in the post-World War II, Flynn is hellbent on earning a star during a world war, even if he has to help usher one into being. Flynn, who has called Islam a “malignant cancer” on the face of the planet, has co-written a book with the deranged Michael Ledeen, called The Field of Fight. In it, Flynn asserts that we are now engaged in a world war with Islam and “we [i.e., the West] are losing.” Flynn and Ledeen refer to this global conflict as an “apocalyptic war” that must be fought to the death.

Trump, and some of his anti-interventionist admirers, may do a double-take when they read Flynn and Ledeen’s views on Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which they see as a dictatorial state, which, in league with the Iranians, is leading “an international alliance of evil countries and movements that is working to destroy us.”

+ While Flynn was at the Defense Intelligence Agency, his office circulated a memo to female staffers called “Dress for Success,” urging them to “avoid the plain Jane look” and advising that “makeup to helps women look more attractive.” The memo also encourages women make clothing choices with the idea to “accentuate the positive/disguise the negative.”

Under a Trump regime, a cautionary codicil may have to be appended to the memo warning women employees that if they don’t want to have their pussy grabbed they should go for the plain Jane look, wear less makeup and accentuate the negative.

+ Staffers on the Hill refer to Trump’s pick to lead the CIA, Rep. Mike Pompeo, as Pompeo Maximus. Although Democrat Adam Schiff vouched for Pompeo as a “serious and smart” guy, his reputation in Washington is that of a political thug: a verbose bully who believes the West is engaged in a Holy War against Islam to save Christianity. “Muslims,” Pompeo said in a speech to an evangelical church in Wichita in 2014, “abhor Christians and will continue to press against us until we make sure that we pray and stand and fight and make sure that we know that Jesus Christ is our savior is truly the only solution for our world.”

+ If Pompeo is Trump’s Pompey Maximus, then Trump himself seems poised to be the American Imperium’s Marcus Crassus, the filthy rich general who lined the Appian Way from Rome to Capua – a distance of 104 miles – with the crucified bodies of slaves and gladiators during the Spartacus Revolt, before seeing his legions slaughtered by a much smaller force of Parthians at the Battle of Carrhae while Crassus ruled as Imperator of, yes, Syria. The mouth of Crassus’ decapitated head was filled with molten gold before being presented to the Parthian King Orodes II.

+ Gen. James “Mad Dog” Mattis is the leading contender for Secretary of Defense in a Trump Administration. Mattis, the former head of CentCom, implemented the disastrous COIN strategy in Iraq. A Marine, Mattis is known for his brutal tactics and harsh tongue. “The first time you blow someone away is not an insignificant event,” Mattis said a few years ago. "That said, there are some assholes in the world that just need to be shot. There are hunters and there are victims. By your discipline, you will decide if you are a hunter or a victim.” Mattis is one of those generals who seems to speak in out-takes from the film “Patton.”

+ Progressive icon Tulsi Gabbard made the now obligatory pilgrimage to Trump Tower to share her thoughts on Syria with the Trump High Command and flash her credentials for a spot on his foreign policy team, aka Wehrmacht West. Recall that Gabbard, like Trump, shamefully backs the GOP’s mean-spirited plan to block the entry of Syrian refugees into the US. Gabbard apparently views three-year-old Syrian kids as mini-terrorists.

Gabbard’s vaulting ambition has led her to seek to collaborate with known quantities like Michael Flynn, Flynn’s co-author the whacko Michael Ledeen, Maddog Mattis, and Pompeo. Liberals always seem to fall for war veteran pols who come home and criticize the prosecution of the ongoing war, like John Kerry or Tammy Duckworth, without really paying too much attention to the kind of war they are anxious to fight. In Tulsi’s case, it is very much the kind of war that we saw under the Carter administration, Third Way warfare, where proxy armies are used to keep US casualties and fingerprints at a minimum, fully modernized with the widespread application of drones. Who will join my “TulsiNotMyProgressive” protests?

+ Former Sanders PR flak Symone Sanders told CNN this week that “we don’t need any more white people leading the Democratic Party right.” Almost certainly true (depending on who the non-“white” person is), also almost certainly not the headline you want, if you ever desire to win blue-collar states, like Wisconsin, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, that are 75-80 percent “white.” My friend Michael Donnelly, who grew up in Flint, re-wrote Symone’s remarks in a more palatable fashion: “In my opinion, we don’t need rich people leading the Democratic Party again.”

+ There’s word that Trump has been skipping out on intelligence briefings since his victory, perhaps because of a scheduling conflict with new episodes of Project Runway. In any event, good for Trump. Those intel briefings are almost always a case of garbage in, drone strikes out…

+ For the first time in history, millionaires now hold the majority of seats in the US congress. Think of the financial sacrifices these selfless citizens are making just for the opportunity to serve their corp–, I mean country….

+ Obama will go down as a president who assiduously courted the favor of the opinion press and jailed the whistleblowers and truth-tellers.

+ Shortly after it was revealed that Julian Assange was beating Trump in the online poll for Time’s “Person of the Year” award, the NSA intercepted this message from Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin: “Goddamn it, Putin, I thought we had an agreement. Stop hacking the polls. The accolades are mine, I tell you, ALL MINE!”

+ What in the world is Jill Stein up to? She is trying to raise more $2 million for recounts in WI, Michigan & Penn, recounts that presumably aren’t about getting a bigger vote total for the Green Party, but trying to find “lost” votes for HRC. If HRC isn’t willing to stand up for her own voters (assuming there are lost votes) why the hell should the Greens? What’s the goal? To be able to say: “I didn’t cost Hillary the election, I tried to win it for her?”

This smells of Stein’s campaign manager David Cobb to me, who in 2004 really wanted the Greens to run a stealth campaign so as not to be tarnished by reelection of Bush. Shortly after the 2004, elections Cobb spear-headed an audit of the returns from Ohio, the state that sank John Kerry. Many of the Greens are simply disaffected liberals, who really want to be teleported back to the Democratic Party of the 70s and 80s.

Nearly 100 million eligible voters didn’t vote. Stein would be better served spending some of the $2 million turning them Green, organizing their own party, providing legal support for Standing Rock protesters, investing it in the Powerball lottery or almost anything other than auditing the vote for Hillary. But if, as with Sanders, Stein uses that $2 million (or even $200,000 or $20,000 or $2000 or $200) to help the candidate she rightly assailed as a threat to peace, the environment and working people during the campaign, then both Stein and her party will have defrauded the very people who supported her.

The end result, even if successful in revealing some hijinks in the voting machines, as in Ohio 2004, will be to make more “legitimate” the very electoral process that kept the Green Party off the ballot in many states and locked it out of the debates. I don’t see that as any kind of win for independent parties. It will only serve to improve and restore confidence in the two-party system that crushes every aspiration of the Green Party’s own members.

+ There are still calls to “wait and see what happens with Trump.” I think the lesson of at least the last two regimes is that if you wait to see what happens, the worst is certain to happen. Trump put his cards on the table by picking Bannon, Sessions, Pompeo and Flynn for his inner circle. There’s no disguising their venality. The rest is window dressing.

+ Ah, yes, Friendship Heights, Maryland! I know it well. Neither friendly nor especially high altitudinally-speaking, but the leafy neighborhoods of this DC suburb have housed economic Nazis (many of them working at the World Bank and IMF) for decades and is now entertaining the American facsimile of the real thing. Restaurants that host these little Nuremberg rallies are spreading moral salmonella with each plate of pasta…Of course, it wouldn’t count as a real Nazi-chic party without an opportunity to take a selfie with Tila Tequila.

+ A federal magistrate called John Primomo welcomed new US citizens down in San Antonio, Texas by warning them that if they don’t like Trump they should “go to another country.” In the spirit of full-disclosure, Judge Primomo could have also counseled them to go to another country if they wanted a job, health care, clean water or a pension.

+ With Mark Zuckerberg’s pledge to cleanse Facebook of “Fake News,” I wonder whose links he’ll abort first: the New York Times or the Washington Post?

+ 30 minutes of porn on CNN? Try 30 years!

+ The Nation magazine is planning a cruise where leaders of the “left” will try to figure out what went wrong in the election, still unaware that Nation cruises were one of the things driving what went wrong in the election.

+ If 6 was 9, Hillary might have won.

+ It’s looking more and more unlikely that Trump will jettison ObamaCare. No surprise here. ObamaCare was drafted by the rightwing Heritage Foundation. Then 1000 lobbyists went to work on it. ObamaCare started out bad and got progressively worse, not progressively progressive. If repealed, 100s of insurance company CEOs would be joining the protesters in front of Trump Tower. I say dump it fast and move on to single payer.

+ If Trump is really serious about confronting domestic security risks, he could start by an Extreme Vetting of people with NRA memberships, followed swiftly by the soulless folks who run HMOs.

+ Nikki Haley, Trump’s UN ambassador nominee, knows almost nothing about foreign policy. She got her degree in accounting, dabbled in the fashion industry and served as an unremarkable governor of an unremarkable state. In other words, she’s a vast improvement over the violent know-it-all Samantha Power.

+ You have to give a strange kind of credit to Trump. His election has served as kind of psychological magnet, pulling out into the open the secret bigotry of elected officials across the country. What was once subliminal is now explicit. These ultra right politicos suddenly feel liberated to post their racists rants and “sieg heil” selfies on Facebook and Twitter. Two days later they’ve been fired and publicly humiliated.

+ I hope Trump keeps up his late night Tweeting after he assumes power. It will be like reading the transcripts from the Nixon tapes in real time.

+ Lacan: “The Christian injunction ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’ must be ironic because most people hate themselves.” That explains a lot.

+ That old hack Robert Samuelson and Alan Greenspan, rising from his coffin at dusk, are making the rounds of the editorial pages promoting the privatizing of Social Security and Medicare, two old featherless vultures, feasting off the last bits of flesh on the bones of the New Deal and the Great Society.

+ The AFL-CIO has endorsed Nancy (Net Worth: $48 million) Pelosi’s bid to hold on to her position as Minority-Leader-for-Life. In a way, you have to admire the AFL’s stubborn willingness to go all the way down with the sinking ship, taking its members down with it….

+ Speaking of the walking dead, Henry Kissinger emerged from his cryogenic tank to re-assure the world that Donald Trump is “carrying no baggage” as he prepares to enter the White House. As with all pronouncements from Kissinger, believe the opposite.

+ A new report from something called the Journal of Counseling Psychology confirms the obvious (which is what these kinds of publications tend to do) in concluding that misogynists are more likely to be “mentally ill.” It is revealing that homosexuality was considered a mental disorder by the DSM for many decades, while misogyny was considered a standard condition for heads of state, corporations and households. Back to square one. Of course, we all know that misogynists cost Hillary the election, as well as its corollary disorder Misogyny-by-Proxy Syndrome, which clouded the minds of the women who voted for Stein, Johnson and Trump….

+ Tim Kaine, the Invisible Man, retreated back into the shadows last week. He had to issue a press release announcing his relocation a few days later because no one had noticed.

+ Thomas Friedman has a new book out titled “It’s All Going to be OK.” In an act of self-dealing worthy of the Trump Foundation, the New York Times reviewed it and found it to be, well, okay. Feel better? Dumb and Dumber…both wrapped up in the pages of one writer!

+ I’ve long thought that Søren K’s Fear and Trembling should be mandatory reading for all school children on Thanksgiving, since it’s a piercing mediation on the very first Thanksgiving, when Isaac said to Abraham, “Thanks for not slitting my throat, dad.”

+ As for Thanksgiving recipes, I think Lee “Scratch” Perry got it right in Roast Fish, Collie Weed and Cornbread. It sounds must tastier than turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes and with the collie weed you’ve met your daily minimum requirement for green vegetables.

+ If you dig Kamasi Washington (who will be playing in Stumptown in a couple weeks at the venerable Roseland) check out his pal LA trumpeter Josef Leimberg’s dynamic and intensely chromatic new cd Astral Progressions, which may remind you of the Bitches’ Brew / Jack Johnson era Miles Davis, with some hip hop thrown in to season the mix. Fabulous record. Washington himself comes in with a great solo near the end of this track.

Sound Grammar

What I’m listening to this week.

Girls in Airports: Kaikoura

Jeff Parker: The New Breed

Ash Walker: Echo Chamber

Kadhja Bonet: The Visitor

St. Lenox: Ten Hymns From My American Gothic

Booked Up

What I’m reading this week.

Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939 by Volker Ulrich

They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice Movement by Wesley Lowery

Paranoids by Ralph Steadman

The Necessity of Impurities

Primo Levi: “In order for the wheel to turn, for life to be lived, impurities are needed, and the impurities in the soil, too, as is known, make it fertile. Dissension, diversity, the grain of salt and mustard are needed: Fascism does not want them, forbids them, and that’s why you’re not a Fascist; it wants everybody to be the same, and you are not. But immaculate virtue does not exist either, or if it exists it is detestable.”

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

Trump is exactly what he appears to be, someone with the attitude that makes a fascist.” –CS

Yes, you have read your history.

Fascism attacks the press. Trump has already done that. In fascism there isn’t really truth, there isn’t enlightenment, there aren’t really facts and evidence. In fascism you start from will and emotion and fantasy and myth. It’s primarily an aesthetic idea, a vision of greatness. Fascism cannot really tolerate a culture where people are trying to figure out what is going on the basis of facts… so attack the journalists.

If there is not truth, then that opens the way towards the notion that everything is really a struggle, we can say what we want, words are just one more weapon in the struggle for fascist victory. Word don’t attempt to describe the world, just change the world, so that the world becomes more like this racial struggle that fascists think it really ought to be.

Trump is a fascist and all we need is a Reichstag fire (in our case an ISIS terrorist attack) to justify the dissolution of congress, the courts, the press, martial law, and the imposition of other extreme emergency measures. Trump becomes Chavez, Putin, etc. …, president for life.

THE ROAD TO THORGELLEN (or) Wasting a wish on wishing a wishbone worked.

"It never takes longer than a few minutes, when they get together, for everyone to revert to the state of nature, like a party marooned by a shipwreck. That's what a family is. Also the storm at sea, the ship, and the unknown shore. And the hats and the whiskey stills that you make out of bamboo and coconuts. And the fire that you light to keep away the beasts." -Michael Chabon

The recording of last night's (2016-11-25) KNYO (and, three hours in, also KMEC) Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show is ready to easily download and enjoy, via http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

In which we learn from writer and professional wedding videographer Alex Bosworth about Thorgellen, the ancient pagan festival of feasting, nudity, alcohol, pet sacrifice, fire, natural electricity and hallucinogenic mushrooms, not necessarily in that order, to honor the Great God Thor and placate his wrath. Also we learn some startling facts about the ungulates. Here's just one of those facts: Deer and antelopes, wherever they play, are more closely genetically related to whales than they are to horses! Meredith Smith advocates for Sanctuary City status. Richard Alcott and Cob Martin separately weigh in on the freezing water cannons and tear-gas and crippling crowd control weapons and roadblocks and so on being used against modern-day interpreters of the Ghost Dance. Also a history -to the present day- of Jim Crow. Astrophysics, mathematics, meta-ceramics, yada yada... Music by Nightcore (Chipmunk-like sped-up German-language Celtic metal used in Japanese anime), the Squirrel Nut Zippers, and Joe Romersa's indelible Leon Russel-esque rendition of One Meatball. The poetry of William S. Burroughs, Thomas Moore, Conrad Aiken, Anthony Hecht, Carl Sandburg, Matthew Arnold, and Juanita's little red parrot Melody, author of Chorteet Chort, an emphatic statement on both the injustice of others talking when she wants to talk and the joy of a hard noodle. (Parrots –from cockatiels to rosellas to African grays– are the only birds who use their feet to eat or to write with a crayon.) And a couple of pithy educational films. In fact, the recording begins with Alcohol Is Dynamite! Alcohol is a violent narcotic that will humiliate you, ruin your life and the life of anyone foolish enough to care about you or even ride in a car with you, and then you end up on Skid Row prostituting yourself for a bottle. Don't give in to the taunting and daring of your jazz musician schoolfriend; he will teach you things you're better off not knowing. There's nothing wrong with jazz, but alcohol is dynamite.

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

Spectacular starling murmuration, with sound. The best I've seen yet. Even better than Fresno when I was a little boy. It's like giant sky-filling ocean waves made of silky smoke that’s a million dancing birds. http://boingboing.net/2016/11/24/starling-murmurations-as-you.html

Homemade fire tornados. http://boingboing.net/2016/11/21/how-to-make-fire-tornados-the.html

And a new easy way to use the most effective tool there is to influence the government, besides being born out-of-control rich or assassinating someone or martyring yourself by blowing the whistle on the intestinal fauna of the elephant in the room.

http://tinyurl.com/CleverCallerApp

Marco McClean

memo@mcn.org

http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

LIBRARY EVENTS

Ukiah author and naturalist Kate Marianchild will conduct a free reading and discussion group centered on her popular book, Secrets of the Oak Woodlands: Plants and Animals among California's Oaks, at the Ukiah Library on Thursday, December 8, 6 pm. She will read from the book's first chapter, "Acorn Woodpecker," pausing every few paragraphs for discussion with the audience. She will have copies of her book to sign, and will also have close-focusing binoculars and oak identification cards for sale. Get ready for Computer Science Education Week the second week of December! Kid's Minecraft Hour of Code will be Friday, December 9th 3:30-4:30pm for grades 2 and up (first come, first served).

Things coming this week...

http://mendolibrary.us11.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=3696d38b68efac10f9e33fa9a&id=df2fc76dae&e=a3c5eb703b

Knitting/Crochet Club

Sundays at 2 pm

Take a break for yourself & join us to knit, crochet, and chat with fellow crafters. Bring your ongoing projects or gather ideas for future projects. There are limited supplies to get you started if you are new to knitting or crocheting, as well as some basic instruction. We encourage you to bring your own supplies for projects you wish to take home.

http://mendolibrary.us11.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=3696d38b68efac10f9e33fa9a&id=abc5bbccaf&e=a3c5eb703b

Wednesday, Nov. 30th @ 6:30 pm

Wines & Spines Book Club

Adults 21 & over are invited to join our monthly book club Wines & Spines for a reading of Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore at the Enoteca Wine Bar on W. Church St.

Studies show reading for pleasure reduces anxiety & increases our capacity for compassion. For a list of our ongoing book club selections & more information please contact Melissa at the Ukiah Library: 467-6434 or carrm@co.mendocino.ca.us

First Friday Art Walk & Friends of the Library Book Sale

Friday, Dec. 2nd, 5 pm-7:30 pm

Stock up on holiday gifts at the Ukiah Library! Make a tile coaster or pick up a bestseller at our Book Sale. And...Live Music with Kim Monroe!

http://mendolibrary.us11.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=3696d38b68efac10f9e33fa9a&id=a8ecdd6c34&e=a3c5eb703b

Make a Picture Frame & Word Art -a Holiday Gift-Making Event for Teens

Wednesdays, 12/7 & 12/14: 2 - 5 pm (picture frames)

Saturdays, 12/3 & 12/10 (word art)

Looking for that special gift for your friend or relative? Teens are invited to make a Picture Frame & Word Art at the Library’s free holiday gift-making events. Snacks are provided, along with art & craft supplies. Pre-registration is required & space is limited! Please call us at 463-4490 to sign up. For more information, please contact Melissa at the Ukiah Library:

467-6434 or carrm@co.mendocino.ca.us

Sponsored by the Ukiah Valley Friends of the Library.

TRUMP'S "MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN" SLOGAN is nearly impossible to translate into Spanish?

http://qz.com/845744/inside-the-nearly-impossible-quest-to-translate-make-america-great-again-into-spanish/

A WEARY LOOKING MAN comes into the psychiatrist's consulting room, sits down and says:

“Doc, you've got to help me. I'm exhausted. Every night I dream I'm driving a truck from New York to Chicago. When I get to Chicago, I turn around and drive back to New York, and no sooner do I get back to New York when the alarm rings and I've got to get up and go to work.”

“Hmmm,” responds the doctor. “Well the next time you have the dream, call me when you get to Chicago. I'll fly out to Chicago and drive the truck to New York while you sleep.”

“Great! Thanks a lot Doc.”

A little later, another exhausted looking man comes into the consulting room and tells of his problem:

“Doc, you have to help me--I'm near the end of my rope. Every night when I go to sleep, I dream that three beautiful women come into my room: a blond, a brunette, and a redhead. They oblige me to make love with them. By the time I finish with the redhead, the alarm goes off and I must get up and go to work.”

“Okay. The next time you have the dream, call me when you've finished with the blond. I'll come over and take care of the brunette and the redhead.”

“Really? That's great, Doc. Thanks a lot.”

A week later, the second man returns and he looks terrible--even worse than the first time. He's emaciated, pale, and has deep rings under his eyes.

“What on earth is the matter?” asks the doctor.

“Doc, it's the three women--they're killing me.”

“But I told you to call me and I'd come over and take care of the brunette and the redhead!”

“I did, Doc, I did call; but your answering machine said you were driving a truck from Chicago to New York.”