Mendocino County Today: Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2017

• Storm Reports
• Little Dog
• Doctor Search
• Community Sedation
• Woodhouse Euphemisms
• CEO Report
• Brain Police
• Courtney Renewals
• School Closure
• Anthropomorph Disappointment
• Yesterday's Catch
• Propaganda Outlet
• Lansdown Art
• Peer Review
• Grant Programs
• Heart Event
• Housing Report
• Belittling Superman
• Racism Goalposts
• Hollywood Hypocrisy
• Mendacious Politicians

TUESDAY’S RAIN, coming on the heels of the weekend storm, is expected to push the Navarro River to higher flood level than the weekend storm which shut down Highway 128 on Sunday. Clearing starting on Wednesday should bring the Navarro back to pre-flood levels for the rest of the week and more.

MENDOCINO COUNTY PG&E UPDATE:

PG&E reports approximately 6,000 customers remain without power in the north bay as of Monday morning. 50% of their damage assessment had been completed at that time. Most of the outages were located on the coast. However, there were a few in Redwood Valley and around 480 in Hopland due to a downed power pole. A crew is on scene and that repair is underway. PG&E had helicopters on standby to help repair downed infrastructure but were still grounded due to storm conditions.

Mendocino County Department Of Transportation (County DOT) has been out in force clearing debris from various roadways in the County.

AT&T reports no significant outages but are offering free phones (with some parameters) to customers who are out.

Per Cal Trans, Highways 1 at the Garcia River, 175 in Hopland, and 128 in Navarro are all still closed.

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AT&T crews are working on several storm related issues to get service back online as soon as possible. Customers can pick up phones at the nearest AT&T retail store such as the Ukiah store below which is participating in the GoPhone donations for customers impacted by the storms.

UKIAH STORE 3DOXG
516 East Perkins
Ukiah
95482

(Sheriff’s Office of Emergency Services)

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MENDO AREA CHP ALERT, 4pm Monday:

Highway 1 near the Garcia River mile marker 17 to 18.5 ****

Highway 175 from Hwy 101 eastbound to Old River Road at mile marker 0 to 1 re-opened around 8pm.

Highway 128 Navarro River from mile marker 0 to 11 still closed as of about 8pm Monday evening.

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THE NAVARRO AT PHILO GREENWOOD BRIDGE, MONDAY MORNING

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “I bury my special bones right here in this planter box. But those damn pitbulls next door keep coming over and digging them up for themselves!”

HELP WANTED: The Anderson Valley Health Center is looking for someone to replace the sorely missed Dr. Logan McGhan. The long-winded particulars of the ad tout The Valley “known for its pinot noir grapes and homesteading families…. Our patient population consists of about 40% seasonal and migrant farm workers of Mexican descent, 20% seniors whom are some of the original homesteaders of the valley and have a strong desire to age-in-place, and the rest of our patients who make up the valley’s diverse and creative population of back-to-the-landers, artists, farmers, foodies, truckers, loggers and more.”

https://www.theava.com/archives/64320#6

THE UNINTENTIONALLY hilarious ad, a minor masterpiece of evasion and lib-think, also mentions the Center was founded by Mark Apfel and his cousin Franklin. Mark Apfel is now a sprightly senior citizen who has certainly served the Anderson Valley well, making house calls even, and where else do you see a doctor doing that? But he and his excellent nurse practitioner can’t handle the present patient load by themselves.

THE DOCTOR WANTED AD should read: The job pays about $160,000 a year when all the jive government pay-backs are factored in. We’re sure you, dear applicant, know how to work the system. From modest beginnings as a storefront clinic treating their sexually transmitted diseases, the hippies now want to die here. The Clinic has since ballooned to the size of a small hospital with a dentist, a psychologist and lots of people walking around in white coats whose mortgage keeps it constantly in debt, not that it bounces checks. Yet. Pinot-Schmeeno. If you’re that far into wine, please don’t apply. We have more than enough boring people here already. The heavy Mexican patient load occurs because the wine industry of the Anderson Valley and Mendocino County takes zero responsibility for its employees while it sucks up all the water and douses its vines with heavy loads of lethal chemicals. They’ve killed all the frogs, and will kill all of us over the long haul. Our population isn’t any more creative than the population of any other place in America, but outside the oppressive cadre of yuppo-guppos who now dominate the public life of the Anderson Valley, there are lots of genuine and interesting people here.

HOW ABOUT YOU, Mr. Negative? Do you use the Boonville clinic? Yes, I do. I got a scrip a couple of winters ago for real cough syrup, the stuff that’s high percentage codeine, which I had to go to Rite Aid in Ukiah to actually get and where I had to listen to about ten minutes of bullshit from some learning disabled kid about how to drink it. And, after a life time of scrupulously refusing to kill spiders, one of the ingrates bit me as I lifted it from my bathtub. My finger swelled to where it slopped over on my keyboard so I hustled off to Dr. Apfel for relief. The doc, taking a quick look, gleefully plunged a needle into the ailing digit to drain it of spider fluid and I went back to work, cured. Ordinarily, in emergencies, of which I’ve had few for a person my age because I walk a lot, do a lot of push-ups and only get drunk one night a week, I head for St. Mary’s Hospital on Stanyan, San Francisco. They promise a free pizza if they don’t get to you in thirty minutes.  I’ve never waited more than ten.

THERE GOES SHAR. From the Advocate/Beacon FaceBook page: "Let them eat cake. Today is the day we release our beloved Supreme Commander (Publisher) Sharon DiMauro into the wilds of retirement. After 35 years in newspapers and 23 years at the helm of the Advocate-News and The Mendocino Beacon, Sharon hosted our last First Friday meeting under her command this morning. Tears were shed, gifts were exchanged and hugs were given. We'll have gluten-free carrot cake and cookies at the office (on Main, North of Taco Bell) from noon to 2pm for members of the public who'd like to stop in to help us wish her well and celebrate her phenomenal career. Please spread the word and join us for cake!"

THE ADVOCATE-BEACON is an odd operation for a newspaper of the post-modern era in a town with more than its share of wild people and events to match. But reading the soporific Advocate you’d think you were reading the latest edition of a mahjong club’s newsletter. Presided over by a pair of pleasant but vigilant old ladies who see their function as community sedation, Ms. Brewer (DiMauro) disallowed, as best she could, any comment that so much as hinted at the reality outside the office door.

I MET SHAR once at some phony baloney media panel (I only get invited once to these things) and complained directly to her. “Jeez, Ms. Brewer, How come you didn’t…” How dare you accuse me of censorship? she snapped before I got to the meat of my complaint about her paper. Not even the promise of a full body Boonville hug could ever redeem me in Shar’s eyes.

EUPHEMIZER OF THE WEEK, Captain Greg Van Patten of the Sheriff’s Department. Explaining why Woodhouse was released from custody after totally wigging out in a physical attack on his wife and the biting of the two cops who had to taze the berserk Third District supervisor into submission, Woodhouse was freed “because of a medical condition not sustained as a result of the struggle.” In fact, Woodhouse was released because he’s a high-ranking County official and a personal friend of Sheriff Allman.

THE ICO REPORTER who wrote up Woodhouse’s resignation, Chris McManus, further noted, “The Mendocino County website has been scrubbed of Woodhouse’s presence, with a former group photo of the Board replaced by individual photos of the four remaining supervisors, and references to the Third District now saying simply that the position is ‘Vacant’.” Which is totally within the Stalinist parameters of ordinary County personnel practice.

JUST IN FROM THE BRIDGE OF THE TITANIC

CEO Report, 10 January 2017

THE BRAIN POLICE

To Fred Gardner;

Your article: One Flew Over Harvard Med School (AVA, 1/4/2017) fits in well with what I’ve been reading this winter. These three books all touch on what you’ve brought up:

The Dehumanization Of Man by Montagu/Matson, 1983

The True Believer by Eric Hoffer, 1951

Nineteen Eighty Four centennial edition.

I appreciate you bringing up these terrifying and current projects being carried out by the descendants of Skinner and his ilk. They’re still going at it trying to modify behavior on the special, gifted, peculiar, and ultimately everyone.

Here’s a quote from The Dehumanization Of Man by a hard core Behaviorist, Peter Breggin, 1972:

“New methods are available to destroy parts of the brain by ultrasonic waves, electric coagulation, and implantation of radium seeds. The technique is promoted for the sedation of the elderly, to render their institutionalization less costly; for the control of hyperactive children; and to reduce erotic fantasies and the tendencies to gamble.”

Wow, that about covers everyone!

To paraphrase Aldous Huxley — he said that: “when the psychological revolution toward which we are rapidly moving, is complete; the human race will give no further trouble!”

Thank goodness for those humane new drugs that will save your teeth and skeleton while in the electric therapy lab. Where would we be without all the kind liberal technocrats!?

The military-industrial-university-complex is a long standing enemy of civil society, democracy, sanity, and life in all its forms. When the Behaviorists invade brains and grains for ill gotten gains, twisting thought and twisting food, twisting rain and water into crude, then the basic fabric of life is little but a tattered flag.

Again, thanks for your wise and well placed words.

Ross Dendy, Elk

MEMO OF THE WEEK

(In the nick of time. My grandson's back is killing him. Poor guy's only 19.)

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Dr. Courtney can renew your approval.

To all the patients of Dr. William Courtney,

One year ago, when Dr. Courtney moved to the Carribean, he was unable to renew patients until April of 2016. He has been able to renew patients by phone since then.

If you were a patient of Dr. Courtney, and could not renew your approval last winter, the good news is that he can now renew your approval. If you would like to renew with Dr. Courtney this year, please call our office at 707-961-1420. Nick will get you on the calendar.

Thank you all very much!

EXCUSES, EXCUSES. The Boonville schools were open, Abe Lincoln studied by candlelight, rain should stop anything but a snowflake.

RE: MUSD Schools Closed Tuesday, January 10th

From: "Jason Morse" <jmorse@mcn.org>

All MUSD schools will be closed on Tuesday, January 10th due to power outages, road conditions, and a severe weather forecast. The District Office will also be closed.

The Board Workshop that was scheduled for tomorrow has also been postponed.

BAD BRUCE! DOWN BOY!

Editor,

Really Bruce?

WOW is all I can say Bruce.

Deeply, deeply, disappointed in you. I thought we were friends. I thought you were a logical, intelligent, compassionate human being. Capable of critical thinking and not succumbing to manipulation.

No, I'm not taking it personally at all. You have not even witnessed the "tip of the iceberg."

You would faint in shock if you witnessed what I have. You're a journalist Bruce. So research!! Get your evidence--- FOR BOTH SIDES!

Unless of course, you don't believe cats and dogs are living things, deserving of food, comfortable shelter and love.

IT "SOUNDS LIKE"...that's the path you take. So just say that and be honest Bruce. Animals end up in so called shelters through no fault of their own. Because of irresponsible human beings. They ALL deserve a chance at a loving home.

Our shelter is NOT A NO KILL SHELTER BRUCE. Three healthy pittbulls were put down for no reason at all last week. Another two dogs were going to be put down for no valid reason last Friday. That's a kill shelter Bruce. I did not see anyone posting what you claim you saw.

I'm pretty good at catching these posts. Where was it? On Facebook? I haven't seen anyone say the 25 urgent were getting put down. Just that they were urgent (per Sage....by the way. )

They WILL kill the ones that don't go to rescue. Especially the pitties!!!!. Molinari is not a fan of pitties. THE REASON DOGS STAY TOO LONG IS BECAUSE SAGE AND AMY DON'T DO THEIR JOBS. PERIOD THE END. THEY ALSO INTERFERE WITH PEOPLE WHO ARE TRYING TO EXPEDITE dogs. I WAS ONE OF THEM.

A HEARTFELT NOTE TO A "SO CALLED" FRIEND.

That's it.’

Name Withheld

Ukiah

ED NOTE: In my defense, I want to tell all of you that when I was a small boy and a coed team of my peers was blowing up frogs with firecrackers, I told them to stop. And I treated my late dog, Cough, better than I treated my two-footed friends. I yield to no anthropomorph my commitment to the welfare of animals. I'm offended that you're offended.

CATCH OF THE DAY, January 9, 2017

CARLOS ALVAREZ, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

ALFREDO CHI, Fort Bragg. Grand theft, conspiracy, paraphernalia.

MICHAEL GULARTE, Willits. Domestic battery, false imprisonment, witness intimidation, unauthorized entry into dwelling, loitering, probation revocation.

VANCE MADSON, Boulder, Colorado/Ukiah. Burglary. (Repost with photo)

OLIVIA MIXON, Ukiah. Burglary.

TYLAR MOREHEAD, Fort Bragg. Grand theft, conspiracy, probation revocation.

RYAN PADGET, Laytonville. Appropriation of someone else’s property without attempting to return it, probation revocation.

DONALD STYRON, Lawton, Oklahoma/Ukiah. Burglary.

AMERICA V. THE DEEP STATE

by James Kunstler

The bamboozlement of the public is nearly complete. The Deep State has persuaded 80% of Americans that all news is propaganda, especially the news emanating from the Deep State’s own intel department. They’re still shooting for 100 percent. The fakest of all “fake news” stories turns out to be… “Russia Hacks Election.” It was reported conclusively Saturday on the front page of The New York Times, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Deep State:

Putin Led a Complex Cyberattack Scheme to Aid Trump, Report Finds

WASHINGTON — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia directed a vast cyberattack aimed at denying Hillary Clinton the presidency and installing Donald J. Trump in the Oval Office, the nation’s top intelligence agencies said in an extraordinary report they delivered on Friday to Mr. Trump.

You can be sure that this is now the “official” narrative aimed at the history books, sealing the illegitimacy of Trump’s election. It was served up with no direct proof, only the repeated “assertions” that it was so. In fact, it’s just this repetition of assertions-without-proof that defines propaganda. It can also be interpreted as a declaration of war against an incoming president. The second civil war now takes shape: It begins inside the groaning overgrown apparatus of the government itself. Perhaps after that it spreads to the WalMart parking lots that have become America’s new town square. (WalMart sells pitchforks and patio torches.)

Did the Russians make Hillary Clinton look bad? Or did Hillary Clinton manage to do that herself? The NSA propaganda was designed as a smokescreen to conceal the veracity of the Wikileaks releases. Whoever actually rooted out the DNC and Podesta emails for Wikileaks ought to get the Pulitizer Prize for the outstanding public service of disclosing exactly how dishonest the Hillary operation was.

The story may have climaxed with Trump’s Friday NSA briefing, the heads of the various top intel agencies all assembled in one room to emphasize the solemn authority of the Deep State’s power. Trump worked a nice piece of ju-jitsu afterward, pretending to accept the finding as briefly and hollowly as possible and promising to “look into the matter” after January 20th — when he can tear a new asshole in the NSA. I hope he does. This hulking security apparatus has become a menace to the Republic.

Whether Trump himself is a menace to the Republic remains to be seen. Certainly he is the designated bag-holder for all the economic and financial depravity of several preceding administrations. When the markets blow, do you suppose the Russians will be blamed for that? Did Boris Yeltsin repeal the Glass-Steagall Act? Was Ben Bernanke a puppet of Putin? No, these actions and actors were homegrown American. For more than thirty years, we’ve been borrowing too much money so we can pretend to afford living in a blue-light-special demolition derby. And now we can’t do that anymore. The physics of capital will finally assert itself.

What we’re actually seeing in the current ceremonial between the incoming Trump and the outgoing Obama is the smoldering wreckage of the Democratic Party (which I’m still unhappily enrolled in), and flames spreading into the Republican party — as idiots such as Lindsey Graham and John McCain beat their war drums against Russia. The suave Mr. Obama is exiting the scene on a low wave of hysteria and the oafish Trump rolls in on the cloudscape above, tweeting his tweets from on high, and perhaps it’s a good thing that the American people for the moment cannot tell exactly what the fuck is going on in this country, because from that dismal place there is nowhere to go but in the direction of clarity.

It won’t be helped by the official organ of the Deep State, The New York Times. Just look at the way they played the other big story last week, the one about the disabled man tortured by four young people in Chicago. Can anyone say what’s wrong with this picture?

(Support Kunstler’s writing by visiting his Patreon Page: https://www.patreon.com/JamesHowardKunstler?ty=h)

THE LANSDOWN FAMILY ART SHOW at the Cobalt Gallery in Mendocino will run from January 14 through March 3. Jessica Lansdown is a designer of memorable costumes and stage sets. Her dad Eric, a woodworker, specialized for many years in the construction of ornate, beautiful dollhouses and aviaries http://www.lansdown-arts.com/ As Khrushchev used to say, "I'm no art critic, but I know what I like." —FG

THE AVA WEBSITE ran much heavier comments on the subject of Electroconvulsive "Therapy" than did the New York Times. The Times ran an obsequious letter from a elf-promoting LA shrink named Procci: "Kudos to Kitty Dukakis for her courageous championing of the inestimable benefits that she has received from electroconvulsive therapy, and to The New York Times for bringing it to our attention. While this treatment has long been shrouded in controversy, it remains, when used selectively and judiciously, a very effective treatment for some cases of serious depression..."

The Times also ran a letter Jan. 6 protesting recent articles that showed Syngenta, the Swiss-based agrichemical manufacturer, pressuring scientists to find their products blameless with respect to Parkinson's and the collapse of bee colonies. The letter was signed by Erik Fyrwald, the CEO of Syngenta (soon to be owned by ChemChina). The boss played his ace in the hole, peer review as guarantor of The Truth:

"...The article tries to link the herbicide paraquat, used for half a century, with Parkinson’s disease. Syngenta’s studies, based on the most widely used experimental mouse model, show unequivocally that paraquat does not cause Parkinson’s-like pathology. These findings are published in science journals requiring peer review by scientists with no connection to Syngenta."

Peer review is the last refuge of a marketer. —FG

2017 FIELD OF INTEREST GRANT PROGRAM

Guidelines and Application

Deadline January 31, 2017

The Community Foundation of Mendocino County is pleased to announce $38,000 in available funding from its Field of Interest grant program. Field-of-Interest Funds are established to make grants in specified areas of interest (e.g., the environment or human services), or specified geographical areas, or both. This is the second year the Community Foundation has run this competitive grant program and includes two new funds (The Fund for Trails and Open Space and the Tilley Fund for Sustainable Forestry). Non-profit organizations from throughout Mendocino County are invited to submit proposals online by January 31, 2017 by 12:00 p.m. (NOON). Field-of-Interest funds are created with a specific area of interest in mind, but anyone can contribute to these funds. You can join with others who have a shared passion to help your giving go further together. In addition to the eight funds accepting applications now, there are many more Field-of-Interest funds to choose from, representing diverse areas of interest such as the arts, providing basic needs, and promoting animal welfare. Grants will be available from 8 different Field-of-Interest Funds thanks to the Jane Anderson Developmental Disability Fund, the Blood Bank of the Redwoods Legacy Fund, the Haigh-Scatena Youth Leadership, Empowerment, and Advocacy Fund, the John and Sandra Mayfield Family Economic Development Fund, the Judy Pruden Historical Preservation Fund, the Tilley Fund for Sustainable Forestry, the Fund for Trails and Open Space, and the Saturday Afternoon Club Endowment Fund. More information and a link to an online grant application can be found by considering one of the individual funds below:

• Blood Bank of the Redwoods Legacy Fund (High School Youth Grant Program)
• Fund for Trails and Open Space
• Haigh-Scatena Youth Leadership, Empowerment & Advocacy Fund
• Jane Anderson Developmental Disability Fund
• John and Sandra Mayfield Family Economic Development Fund (Small business, entrepreneurship and workforce development)
• Judy Pruden Historical Preservation Fund (Historical publications, marketing materials for historical tours, etc)
• Tilley Fund for Sustainable Forestry (maintaining and enhancing the economic, social, and environmental values of Mendocino County's working forests and range lands)
• Ukiah Saturday Afternoon Club Endowment Fund (supporting the economic advancement of women and girls in inland Mendocino County)

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Application deadline is: January 31, 2017 by 12:00 p.m. (NOON)

For more information about applying to the Field-of Interest grant program or about how you can make a gift to any of the Field-of-Interest funds, visit

www.communityfound.org

Questions? Contact Michelle Rich at (707) 468-9882 or via email at michelle@communityfound.org

EVENT OF THE HEART PSA-2017

Mendocino County AIDS/Viral Hepatitis Network presents the 30th Annual Event of the Heart from 5:30-7:30 on February 11 at the Ukiah Valley Conference Center. This benefit for persons affected by HIV/AIDS & Hepatitis includes a “Champagne Reception”, gourmet dinner, local wines, live & silent auctions and dance music by The Johnny Young Band. Tickets are $85 per person, available at the Mendocino Book Company or by calling MCAVHN at 462-1932.

DEVASTATING CALIFORNIA HOUSING REPORT

"California has produced fewer than 80,000 new homes annually over the past 10 years, according to the report. The projected need is for 180,000 additional homes a year. Home ownership is at its lowest since the war-torn 1940s."

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/01/08/editorial-devastating-housing-report-requires-california-action/

THUS LOVED NIETZSCHE

Written by Manuel Vicent

(Translated by Louis S. Bedrock)

Nietzsche was a fellow who was easily infatuated — and who practiced a unique form of misogyny. “Man loves two things: danger and play. For that reason, he loves women, the most dangerous of playthings.”

He ripped this aphorism from his own insides and placed it in the mouth of Zarathustra after meeting Lou Andreas-Salomé in Rome and receiving a veritable harvest of rejections.

Zarathustra was the prophet who launched the proclamation of Superman, a specimen, which according to Nietzsche’s theory, should be profoundly learned, beautiful, strong, independent, powerful, free, and tolerant as an Epicurean god: capable of accepting the universe and life as it is.

While this model of Superman was applied by Nietzsche to himself, in real life he drooled over any attractive woman placed within his reach and if she were blond and rich, he would compulsively ask her to marry him — it was almost a conditioned reflex. The ensuing rejection sparked an aggressive reaction against the female gender:

—Up to now we have been very courteous with women. But oh, there will come a day in which when one is dealing with a woman, he starts off by punching her in the mouth.

And once he had spewed out this literary invective, our Superman shut up.

His father was a Protestant pastor from whom he received a very religious education; when he died from mental illness, he left his four year old son Friedrich contaminated with the microbes of his disease.

During the childhood and adolescence of this philosopher in his birthplace Röcken — currently part of Germany, he was surrounded by an iron circle of women composed of his mother Franziska, his sister Elizabeth, his aunt Rosalie, and his grandmother Erdmunde. It was an oppressive family landscape and produced aftereffects from which Nietzsche would never recover.

In addition to Lou Andreas-Salomé, a gallery of women passed through his life: some as Platonic loves, some through erotic epistolary relationships, others with a kind of maternal love, and still others as impossible dreams. Each one of them formed a successive wave of one storm. He loved them all in practice, he abused them all literarily, and despite his misogyny, far from hating him, they all were attracted by his talent and his deranged kindness. However, in the end, they wound up being an impediment for him.

He was uncertain about his virility. For example, when one of his female friends, Rosalie Nielsen, met him in a hotel room and began to make advances on him, he had to escape by jumping out window.

Nietzsche studied theology at the boarding school of Schulpforta; imbued with religion, he later moved on to Greek philosophy in the universities of Bonn and Leipzig. His mind could not reconcile the explosive mixture of Christianity and Socratic beauty. Dazzled by the marble statues and buildings from a Greece he imagined, he became a Pagan and this compelled him to shout to the heavens the famous aphorism, “God is dead.”

Convinced that the crucified one was the leader of a religion of slaves, he embraced Apollo, the god of pure lineage, and Dionysus, the satyr of passion and orgies; they were counter-currents that struggled in the interior of his spirit. In the moment of dealing with a woman, the ideal of beauty struggled with willful convulsion. Dionysus, the god with the shepherd’s flute and the feet of a goat, always won.

Seriously ill with syphilis, in 1882 Nietzsche left the University of Basilea and divided his errant life between the snow of Switzerland and the sun of Italy. It was in Rome, in the mansion of Malwyda van Meysenburg, a famous German feminist who had opened a literary salon, where he met Lou Andreas-Salomé.

This eighteen year old Russian was a young woman who, after a mystical adolescence, had decided to follow — at any cost, a path to personal salvation that went beyond the practice of militant feminism. The collision between this liberated woman and the recalcitrant misogynist went as expected. Nietzsche yielded to her powers and asked for her hand in marriage with an affected and telluric declaration:

—Through the fault of which stars in the universe have the two of us landed here to encounter one another?

This poetic discharge merely provoked a smile from that extraordinary woman who, at the moment, was in love with Paul Rée, a disciple of the philosopher.

As a consolation prize, Nietzsche offered to share an aesthetic triangle with them through a love that transcended pagan idealism, and was realized in sunny Capri--with trips to Nice and Venice. But that idea didn’t go over well either. Lou Andreas-Salomé was a collector of famous, ethereal, exotic lovers, among whom were Rilke and Sigmund Freud. She was evanescent and uncontrollable; for her Nietzsche was only the bottom step in her ascent.

What’s more, his aesthetic paganism cost him the friendship of Richard Wagner, who traveled in the opposite direction. He abandoned the Nordic gods to return to Christianity, taking his wife Cosima with him. Cosima was another of Nietzsche’s impossible loves. Falling in love with a friend’s wife was a dangerous game that seemed to excite Nietzsche. Rejection would dislodge cruel aphorisms from his entrails.

On the door of a commode in a bar, someone wrote:

“God is dead.”

— Nietzsche.

Below that aphorism, someone else wrote,

“Nietzsche is dead.”

—God

Encountering these two inexorable sentences, Woody Allen commented,

—God is dead. Nietzsche is dead. And I’m not feeling very well myself.

It’s a clever way of belittling Superman.

MAKE AMERICA HATE AGAIN, by Josh Harkinson in Mother Jones.

Some far-right figures see a burgeoning online presence as key to moving the "Overton window” – changing the range of acceptable rhetoric and behavior by pushing its edges out to greater extremes. It's a fancy way of saying that what was once aberrant is now considered normal. "If you want to radically shift the Overton window, you need that far-right flank," says white nationalist Richard Spencer, who is widely credited with helping launch the alt-right. "Trump has been declared a deplorable racist, and [yet] he won," Spencer says. "So the whole PC game of 'we can call you the R-word [Racist] and you will vaporize,' that game has been shattered."

LET’S MOVE TO WHAT STREEP SAID next: ‘Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.’

At this point, I laughed out loud with incredulity.

Not at the words themselves, which are laudable.

No, it was at the hypocrisy.

You’d be hard-pushed to find an industry that encourages more disrespect and violence than Hollywood.

A place where rich powerful people make billions of dollars by regularly pandering to the lowest common denominators of sexism, racism, homophobia and misogyny.

And happily exploit ever more hideous, graphic violence to make a fast, easy buck.

And seethe from every tinsel-encrusted pore with the very kind of nasty, power-based bullying that Meryl Streep claims to be so incensed by in Trump.

So great though her censorious words indisputably are, they would be perhaps better directed at her own back yard.

To highlight just one example of Streep’s shocking hypocrisy, what about the 2003 Oscars when she leaped to her feet and gave child rapist Roman Polanski a standing ovation after he was announced as winner of Best Director for The Pianist?

— Piers Morgan

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Putin in cahoots with Wikileaks to make Hillary look bad? Somebody stop the presses (and apparently at the NYT, they already have). I haven’t heard the Clinton campaign deny the veracity of the leaks. Were they lies? The information made them look mendacious and calculating, which basically describes every politician since the dawn of time. If her campaign was fragile enough that the Comey FBI investigation was enough to tip it over the edge, she deserved to lose. Having voted 3rd party myself, whoever won was a matter of relative indifference to me. I think the chickens are coming home to roost no matter who is at the helm. With Trump, the adjustment may be just a little faster, but no less inevitable. I predict one last surge for the stock market as repatriated corporate profits are funneled into stock buy-backs (rather than hiring people or creating infrastructure), after which the plummet will begin. Take your earnings out of the market about April and invest in survival food and guns…