Mendocino County Today: Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018

• Firefighter Dies
• Shelter Closed
• Bosco Bailout
• Mendo Bay
• Danco Project
• Cannabis Hour
• Boonville Speeders
• Blackberry Festival
• Janice Blue
• PV Diversion
• Margaret Withdraws
• Little Dog
• Anti-Depressants
• Police Marathon
• Taproom Investigation
• Yesterday's Catch
• Poor Writing
• Latino Politics
• Fires Past
• Evil Notsees
• Acting Auditions
• Knucklehead Antics
• Trojan Mike
• Socialism Bad
• Government Bureaucracies
• Forbidden Bookshelf
• Yearsley Wanted

FIREFIGHTER FROM UTAH DIES BATTLING MENDOCINO COMPLEX

A firefighter from Utah died Monday battling the largest wildfire in recorded California history, marking the latest fatality in a fire season that has taken a grim toll on first responders. The firefighter, who was not named, was injured while working on an active portion of the Ranch fire within the massive Mendocino Complex. He was airlifted to a hospital, where he died. Authorities said “fact-finding on the accident” is underway. “We are extremely heartbroken for this loss. We are dedicated to investigating what happened,” said Sean Kavanaugh, an incident commander for the complex, at a brief news conference. “We mourn as we also battle California’s largest wildfire that continues to to burn extremely steep and remote terrain.”

By Monday evening, the Mendocino Complex, made up of the Ranch and River fires, had scorched more than 328,000 acres, destroyed 139 homes and left two firefighters injured. It was 67% contained. Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman urged residents who have defied evacuation orders to leave. “These are very dangerous areas,” Allman said. “If this could happen to a firefighter, it certainly could happen to citizens. Today, tomorrow and the next year, we will mourn the loss of a true hero.”

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CALFIRE'S MENDOCINO COMPLEX UPDATE (Tuesday 7am): 354,410 acres; 68% containment.

"Today fire crews on the Ranch Fire will continue to engage an active fire front. Fire crews will continue operations on both the east and west flanks of the fire, working to protect the communities of Lake Pillsbury and Stonyford. Fire crews are working in difficult conditions and terrain to bring the fire around threatened communites and back into the Mendocino National Forest. Firefighters are actively engaging in structure protection where the fire has already reached structures and communities. The south side of the fire has had no significant events and remains in a suppression repair status with patrol. The River Fire had no movement. Suppression repair along with patrol will continue on the River Fire."

cdfdata.fire.ca.gov/admin8327985/cdf/images/incidentfile2175_4005.pdf

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FIREFIGHTER DIES IN MENDOCINO COMPLEX FIRES

pressdemocrat.com/news/8630913-181/firefighter-dies-in-mendocino-complex

CLOSURE OF SHELTER AT MENDOCINO COLLEGE

On Friday August 10 at 5 PM, Mendocino County closed the Mendocino Complex Fire Evacuation shelter which was located at Mendocino College, 1000 Hensley Creek Road. Mendocino County Health and Human Services Agency (HHSA) is continuing to provide support and services to Mendocino County residents still under current Evacuation Order. If Mendocino County residents under Evacuation Order require assistance they can contact Mendocino County HHSA’s Adult Services at 707-463-7900. Lake County continues to operate shelters for Lake County evacuees. Lake County residents requiring sheltering or assistance should contact Lake County for assistance or check the CAL FIRE incident update page at cdfdata.fire.ca.gov/incidents/incidents_details_newsreleases?incident_id=2175 for a list of shelter locations.

Mendocino County would like to express our immense gratitude to Mendocino College for partnering with the County to provide sheltering and in assisting fire evacuees.

(Sheriff’s Press Release)

BEHIND THE TRAIL BILL: THE BOSCO BAILOUT

Jake Bayless of Sonoma County-based news website Empire Report writes:

The Great Redwood Trail.

NCRA needs to go bankrupt first.

Why? Because behind this big new genius push to have a huge (and VERY awesome) trail there's a hidden engine that they don't want you to scrutinize: The Doug Bosco machine.

That's right. The political push to get NCRA "rescued" is so that Doug Bosco will be enriched by the State of California (you) because of his interests in Northwest Pacific Railroad (the contractor that operates and maintains the track).

This whole thing exists to make sure Doug's bad business decision (investing in NWPRR) doesn't go bankrupt. Hence: the petition that is circulating right now (below) is asking the Governor to rescue NCRA before it goes bankrupt so that it can pay off Doug Bosco fully.

Let's play connect the dots:

Doug Bosco was a congressman (some say a slimy one).

Jason Liles was Doug's DC staffer.

Jason Liles met Mike McGuire on Healdsburg City Council.

Mike McGuire ran for Sonoma County Supervisor .

Jason Liles was Mike McGuire's campaign manager.

Jason Liles became Mike McGuire's Planning Commissioner (for Sonoma County).

Mike McGuire ran and won CA State Senate race.

Guess who was Mike's campaign manager? Yep, Jason Liles.

Jason Liles was Mike McGuire's Chief of Staff in CA Senate.

Jason Liles left his Chief of Staff position in 2018.

Jason Liles is now lead consultant to the "Great Redwood Trail."

All the while, Jason Liles has carried Doug Bosco's political water - attempting to get friendlies elected. Remember "Who Is Stacey Lawson?"

So much dirty business happening behind the scenes.

Super clever, Doug & Jason. “California’s state government is already on the hook for the NCRA’s liabilities one way or another." Meaning: “Let’s do this now so I get paid full price for my boondoggle, rather than whatever the bankruptcy court negotiates.”

Super clever - Folks: that's what this is about. Paying Doug Bosco.

* * *

The Petition:

Dear Governor Brown,

The Great Redwood Trail Act is a wonderful idea and long overdue. Please approve the funding needed to get started turning the unused rail line into a real asset for our communities.

For decades, the North Coast Railroad Authority (NCRA) has failed either to restore freight rail service to the North Coast or to protect the Eel River and its fisheries from the impacts of its rail line.

SB 1029 will dissolve the NCRA and prioritize non-motorized trail development along the rail right of way between Sonoma County and the Humboldt Bay. California’s state government is already on the hook for the NCRA’s liabilities one way or another. This bill would turn an environmental and fiscal liability into a public asset.

The Great Redwood Trail will connect the North Coast’s diverse landscapes and rural communities with healthy opportunities to explore the great outdoors by bike, foot and horseback, and will bring much needed tourism revenue to the North Coast region.

We urge you to find the financing necessary to resolve the NCRA’s liabilities in order to clear the decks for the Trail!

* * *

Mr. Bayless passes along the relevant text from SB1029 text (note the language in paragraph (b):

Link to bill’s text.

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB1029

(Photo by Susie de Castro)

A READER WRITES:

Regarding the Danco project.

https://www.danco-group.com/projects/the-cottages-at-cypress

The 15 Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) units would include supportive services that are voluntary, can be accessed 24 hours a day/7 days a week, and are not a condition of ongoing tenancy. Am I wrong in saying that substance abusers could move in and not accept the services offered but instead continue with their lifestyle and do so having a house furnished for them? The housing includes those with substance use disorders, so they can live there and not try to get off the booze or drugs. This means that seniors who are on a waiting list of up to six years will continue to be on the waiting list.

Seems to me that every time housing issues are brought up it turns into an issue that takes the focus away from local people/seniors and vets in need and instead focuses on those who for the most part come here to get what you are offering at the expense of seniors on a 6 year waiting list.

Approved in January 2018: Thirty single-story affordable senior residential cottages ranging from 616 to 830 square feet (8 two-bedroom units and 22 one-bedroom units), a 1,200 square foot commons building, a 440 square foot common utility building, walkways and a 30-space parking area and associated driveway; and Seven market-rate two-story, residential duplex units with 14 units ranging from1,000 to 1,200 square feet each (2 and 3 Bedrooms), landscaping and a 28-space parking area and associated driveway.

Now changed to: 14 units of Market Rate (Workforce) Housing; 15 units of Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) for homeless seniors and homeless disabled people and 15 units of Affordable Senior Housing.

Linda Jo Stern manager of Street Medicine Program in Fort Bragg, said that there are only six homeless veterans and only two homeless seniors in Fort Bragg. Thus a PSH program that focuses exclusively on homeless senior veterans would not serve Fort Bragg’s homeless population. Danco has since modified their preferred approach to give first priority for the 15 units of PSH to homeless seniors and second priority to homeless disabled people, who could be seniors or people of other age groups. Disabilities would include both physical and mental disabilities.

IS A PUBLIC CANNABIS BANK FEASIBLE? It is certainly needed. Hundreds of millions of dollars must change hands in cash every day in the California cannabis industry. That’s because banks open themselves to government seizure by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) if they choose to do business with anyone in the cannabis trade. This month, California State Treasurer John Chiang commissioned a study to probe the feasibility of a public cannabis bank. On the next Cannabis Hour, host Jane Futcher will interview Treasurer Chiang and public banking advocate Marc Armstrong on why a state bank might be the answer to the cannabis industry’s banking woes. That’s Thursday, August 23, at 9 a.m. on KZYX. Join us!

AN INFORMAL COUNT conducted from the porch of Boonville’s beloved weekly over a half-hour on a Sunday afternoon, told us that roughly one-in-three passing vehicles on 128 were traveling at unsafe speeds for conditions, those conditions being lots of people on foot through our combined residential and commercial neighborhood. The CHP puts in an occasional appearance but not occasionally frequent enough to slow the speeders. Odd, that back in the early 70’s, and even at earlier intervals, a full-time CHP officer was assigned to the Anderson Valley when traffic was light. Many of us have fond memories of Burl Evans, The Valley’s CHP guy for several years who singlehandedly and impartially tagged speeders, among them locals who somehow felt they were exempt from the traffic laws by royal dispensation — birth in Boonville. And for a too-short while we enjoyed the services of Rick Rajeski before he retired. The volume of traffic through Boonville at all hours is at least double, probably triple what it was in 1970. Maybe our new supervisor, Mr. Williams, will help agitate for a return of a full-time CHP presence.

SUMMER UNDER THE ARBOR:

Covelo’s 36th annual Blackberry Festival: Aug. 18-19

The 36th annual Round Valley Blackberry Festival will be held on Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 18 and 19, at the festival grounds in downtown Covelo. The festivities will kick off at 10 a.m. Saturday with master of ceremonies Mickey. Come check out their new arbor teeming with arts, crafts, food booths and blackberry delicacies. Mendocino County wines will be available for tasting while listening to live music both days. There will be a climbing wall for children of all ages. Hours are Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free; no pets allowed. Come join the community for a fun square dance on Saturday at 7 p.m., and for the car and motorcycle show on Sunday.

COULDN'T HELP but be intrigued by the following post on the MCN Chat Line. I'm pretty sure I know Blue's back story, and if I have it right, and I think I do, it's an Only-In-Mendo classic that begins with this post on MCN: "Anton Tewilt is visiting the area…. He is looking for a Northbeach beat poet woman goes by Blue who is rumored to have moved to the coast about 10 years ago. She is about 72, she shot and killed her boyfriend many years ago in the Bay Area, she supposedly recited poetry at the Headlands Coffee Shop some years back. Wild and notorious, she is nonetheless hard to find. She is a friend of the family and Anton has been tasked with finding out anything he can about where she is now, even if it leads to a gravesite. If found alive there is an invitation to visit and possibly help traveling if necessary; Judy really wants to find her. Yes he is looking up ruth weiss even as I write this."

THE LATE MAX CRAWFORD, a well-known novelist and author of the 60's cult classic, "The Bad Communist," was an acquaintance of a woman named Marlene. Marlene was divorced from a Stanford professor. Max knew her through his connections to deluded people who'd convinced themselves they were revolutionaries, murdering a few strayed "comrades" and placing pipe bombs in the bathrooms of enemies of the people. Marlene was a member of one of these groups who fit right in with the rest of the nuts. One day in Palo Alto she shot and killed a young mother who was her upstairs neighbor. Marlene said she thought the young woman was an FBI agent. Marlene was then confined as criminally insane at Napa State Hospital. While there she led a much publicized revolt against the drugging the inmates and in favor of healthy food rather than the carb-loaded institutional fare inmates were fed. While at Napa, Marlene met Leonard Cirino, subsequently a poet based in Albion and a member of Mendocino County's Mental Health Board. Leonard was at Napa for beheading his daughter with a machete, hence his bona fides for advising Mendo on mental health policy. Upon Marlene's release, circa 1990 she, also a poet, moved to Fort Bragg where she legally changed her name, perhaps to 'Blue.' Crawford was startled one day to spot her in Mendocino and told me and another close friend of her back story.

THAT CLOSE FRIEND RECALLS, "The thing is, Max’s Marlene would have been closer to his age. She would be in her mid to late seventies by now… if she’s still alive. I met her several times; once accompanied by some Black Panthers somewhere in SF with Max. I think one of the guys was her boyfriend. I first heard of her via Max’s wife Sue in Palo Alto. One day Marlene went nuts in a Cafe and would not leave. The police were about to extract her when Max showed up. He didn’t have his pork pie hat on. It made her even more crazy, but when he put his hat on she immediately became normal and left with Max and Sue. She was also a cab driver in SF. One night she ran out of gas on 101 driving a fare to Palo Alto. Or so she said. She abandoned her cab on 101 and climbed over a wall in Menlo Park, which unbeknownst to her had an alarm system — advanced in those days. She showed up at Max’s house on Addison street claiming that the cops were after her. I was there. Maybe, I thought at the time. Maybe not. A person who would know more about this woman is Andrew Moss, an old English Rad and friend of Max’s. I think he still lives in SF. Fred Gardner is friends with Moss. He also may have known Marlene. The thing is, Bruce, Cirino’s arrival in happy land may predate that of Marlene’s. Then again, I’m old and imagination and memory are mixed as one."

WAS “MARLENE” JANICE BLUE? “Janice Faye Duff, also known as the poet Janice Blue, of Fort Bragg, California died November 7, 2017 at home. Born January 1, 1942 in Blandville, Kentucky to Henrietta and Leslie Adams, she was 75 years old.”

PG&E SAYS it wants to sell the Potter Valley Diversion, that thin reed by which the water fates of at least a million down-streamers depends. The Mendo supervisors has named a committee of two, McCowen and Brown, to put together a local group of crucial water agencies to buy it. The kicker is that Sonoma County owns most of the diverted Eel River water stored at Lake Mendocino. SoCo is happy with things as they are, as are the noble sons of the soil represented by Supervisor Brown. What’s needed here is a regional water agency and a fundamental re-write of Mendo’s water deal with Sonoma County. As former supervisor John Mayfield, commenting on Mike A’Dair’s fine reporting on the issue for The Willits Weekly, put it, ““This is the most important and critical issue Mendocino County has faced in the 62 years I have been involved in county politics.” It is.

MARGARET'S OUT

Dear Community,

After much consideration, I have decided to withdraw my candidacy for the MCDH board.  There are three 4 year seats open and three superbly qualified candidates to prevail in the election, beating incumbent Kevin Miller.  My candidacy simply divides the votes further.  We will have a majority on the board if John Redding, Amy McColley and Jade Tippett are elected.  I support these candidates 100%.  I also support Karen Arnold for the MCDH 2 year term.    To all those who sent kind words of encouragement and support, I give my heartfelt thanks.  What we are all in agreement about is the need for capable people to turn the hospital around.  At this point, it looks like that just might happen.

Margaret Paul

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “Had to laugh when I overheard the boss say he's entering a floral arrangement called ‘Geranium Jubilee’ in this year's Boonville Fair. Geraniums? I don't want to discourage him, but the old ladies are gonna laugh harder than I am.”

EXPLOITING STYRON'S GHOST

by Fred Gardner

"I've been through a lot, good and bad, I've seen government rise and fall and scientific theories rise and fall, and I think there's a breadth of mind which, provided the brain is healthy comes with age." —Oliver Sacks

Eli Lilly got FDA approval to market Prozac in December 1987. The company had a brilliant strategy for making it a blockbuster: promote not the drug so much as the disorder — "Clinical Depression," a supposedly widespread "mental illness" that, by the way, Lilly's new "Selective Serotonin-Reuptake Inhibitor" could supposedly treat.

Lilly's peer-reviewed publicists made many false claims. A major one was that shame kept millions of Americans from getting a Depression diagnosis (and proper medication). 'Overcome your shame' worked as a sales pitch then and it's working still — witness the publication in the NY Times August 5 of “The Great God of Depression,” an article about the novelist William Styron by a woman named Pagan Kennedy. It begins:

Nearly 30 years ago, the author William Styron outed himself in these pages as mentally ill. “My days were pervaded by a gray drizzle of unrelenting horror,” he wrote in a New York Times Op-Ed article, describing the deep depression that had landed him in the psych ward... why, he asked, were depressed people treated as pariahs? A confession of mental illness might not seem like a big deal now, but it was back then.

Not true. Discussion of melancholy has always been acceptable among those who could afford to discuss it. The reason millions of US Americans didn't make "a confession of mental illness" until Prozac came along is that they didn't define their unhappiness as mental illness.

In the 1990s I reported on the marketing of Prozac for the Anderson Valley Advertiser, and with Alexander Cockburn, wrote a comprehensive piece on the subject that was rejected by the LA Times.  Based on 100 phone interviews (in response to a classified ad in the San Francisco Bay Guardian), we concluded that "Clinical Depression is invariably a function of loneliness and/or insecurity — plain words that suggest social rather than chemical causation."

We noted that William Styron and Mike Wallace filled an important niche in Lilly's marketing campaign, being prime examples of men who were famous, respected, well-to-do... and yet prone to Clinical Depression! We knew that both Styron and Wallace suffered from loneliness, broadly defined. Styron's beloved mother died when he was 13 after a many-years-long ordeal with cancer. Boys who watch their mothers suffer and then lose them can feel the loss forever. That's not a medical disorder, it's lifelong grief. Mike Wallace's handsome, talented son Peter died at age 19 in a mountain climbing accident. Was the father's enduring grief an illness?

Psychiatrist Frederick Goodwin, former head of the National Institute of Mental Health explained in a phone interview that an episode of major depression is one of "relentless duration — week after week. You can have a grief reaction that can be every bit as intense as a clinical depression. But it doesn't last. Depressions stick around..." A key to defining depression, Goodwin reiterated, was "duration, measured in weeks and months rather than days."

Cockburn and I wrote: "Weeks and months? Is that 'relentless duration?' We don't know about you and your friends and patients in Washington D.C., doctor, but in our circles grief reactions last for years, decades, lifetimes, generations!"

Reading "Darkness Visible" I was surprised to learn that William Styron didn't see himself as a man who had endured and been affected by years of anguish. His first novel, "Lie Down in Darkness," is excruciating. His most famous, "Sophie's Choice," was grim, to put it mildly. My favorite, "Set This House on Fire," is the lightest — but it's pretty heavy.  Memoir "Darkness Visible" is stylishly written and almost light in tone until page 83 when Styron describes the death of his mother and the tone changes and he expresses unresolvable loss, grief, and rage. Who told him he was sick?

I met Styron and his wife Rose in the mid-60s through their Martha's Vineyard neighbor Lillian Hellman, who I was interviewing for a possible biography. From my a glimpse of their social circle, I doubt the Styrons heard anyone dissing the psychiatric establishment. Years later Bill Styron needed a sensible friend and instead he got a brain scientist. Pagan Kennedy writes:

"His famous memoir of depression, 'Darkness Visible,' came out in October 1990. It...  demonstrated that patients could be the owners and describers of their mental disorders, upending centuries of medical tradition in which the mentally ill were discredited and shamed. The brain scientist Alice Flaherty, who was Mr. Styron’s close friend and doctor, has called him “the great god of depression” because his influence on her field was so profound. His book became required reading in some medical schools, where physicians were finally being trained to listen to their patients...

This past year, I have been working on an audio documentary about Mr. Styron and Dr. Flaherty (a longtime friend of mine).

Pagan Kennedy (@Pagankennedy) is the co-producer of “The Great God of Depression,” a serial podcast from PRX's Radiotopia; the author of “Inventology: How We Dream Up Things That Change the World”; and a contributing opinion writer.

The Anti-Depressant Epidemic

We tend to think of the 1990s as the Prozac Decade, but sales have continued soaring ever since. Between 1999 and 2014 antidepressant use in the US rose by 65%, according to a US Center for Disease Control and Prevention study.

By 2014 about one in eight Americans over age 12 reported recent antidepressant use. Women were about twice as likely as men to be using. A quarter of the people who had used in the past month had been on anti-depressants for 10 years or more.

When the CDC report came out, CBS news asked a New York psychiatrist named Ami Baxi to explain the steep, steady rise in anti-depressant use. Baxi credited FDA approvals for more indications and  "a sign of decreasing mental health stigma," where more people feel comfortable asking for help against depression and anxiety.” More people overcoming shame! Keep on the sunny side!

Implications for cannabis clinicians and users

The medical marijuana movement/industry has been the accidental beneficiary of Big PhRMA’s campaign to vastly expand the definition of the “medical use” of drugs. The American people have been taught that there is a medical disorder called Clinical Depression that results from a chemical imbalance in the brain and is treatable by drugs. Physicians have been taught to prescribe anti-depressants readily. (The political implication is that the spreading mass misery is just so many individual cases of ‘chemical imbalance,’ correctable by drugs.)

The use of anti-depressants — including cannabis — can divert attention from the causes of a person's unhappiness. The responsible cannabis clinician issuing a Depression (or Anxiety) diagnosis should discuss with the patient the possible source(s) of his or her "disorder.”

(Fred Gardner’s “Notes to the Society of Cannabis Clinicians” are online at beyondthc.com.)

PS: Knausgaard got nothin’ on Eleanor Cooney

MSP RECEIVES ANSWER FROM NORTH COAST BREWERY TAP ROOM OVER TURNING FIREFIGHTERS AWAY THURSDAY

There has been a LOT of discussion on MSP about the following post Thursday night:

“Please tell me that the North Coast Brewery did not ask the approx. 20 firefighters to leave today, as they were taking up too many tables. If they did - then shame on you.”

MSP emailed, then called the brewery Friday who said they’d get back to us after “diligently investigating these charges.”

This was the answer we received@ 1:24 pm Monday.

CATCH OF THE DAY, August 13, 2018

SAMAYA CLEARWATER, Willits. Domestic abuse, disorderly conduct-alcohol, probation revocation.

GERALD FULLER, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

JEFFREY JANES, Fort Bragg. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

JUAN JIMENEZ, Healdsburg/Ukiah. Probation revocation.

ANGEL MILLER, Ukiah. Parole violation.

ANA RENTERIA, McKinleyville. DUI.

WESLEY SIMMONS, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

DARRELL WILLIAMS, Hopland. Failure to register as sex offender.

PAUL ZELLMAN, Ukiah. DUI.

"IF YOU'RE A GENIUS but a poor writer, please don't deprive me of your genius."

This line was near the end of yesterday's post, in violation of newspaper custom, which puts the important stuff at the top. Style, grammar, usage--all that stuff is important, but content is the meat. If you use double negatives but have discovered The Meaning Of Life, lay on with the double negatives! I ain't got nuthin better to do than to listen t'what you tell me, cuz I ain't no genius, and I wanna have what it is you know.

I remember William F. Buckley, that odd contradiction-in-terms, the conservative (reactionary!) intellectual. His vocabulary was brobdingnagian, his grammar impeccable and his style sans pareil. He was a super-snide One-Percent pain in the ass if ever there was one, proof that elegant diction can be used for the most offensive and useless purposes. Buckley was what today we call a "troll," lying in wait on his tv show "Firing Line" for the poor progressive person who could be intimidated by his fancy-schmancy diction and then humiliated because Buckley snidely deconstructed whatever the guest's best-loved opinions were.

So my poorly written column yesterday was like wagging my naggy finger at the reader about writing right, when it was less the quality of writing I was worried about than the quantity of it. If people withhold their contribution because they feel their writing skills are lacking, who knows what they're not putting out there? In fact, the cellphone explosion and texting are changing the nature of literacy. It's as much about digital dexterity and how fast you can tickle those keys as it is about how properly you speak your piece.

But texting is too limiting. It'll take more than a few quick words on a tiny screen to right this badly leaning ship. Facebook is an ideal platform for people to exchange ideas on. It would be good if it were more about that than vacation pix (though I'm a helpless consumer of pictures).

(Mitch Clogg)

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Never say never. The Atlantic, one of those publications I normally and gleefully piss all over, printed a coherent, RATIONAL article and not just because I agree with what it sez.

It was by a chap with the surname Salam. It said basically that Democrats ought to beware. Why? Because they take for granted that Latinos will be forever content to be humble lettuce pickers and cheap domestic help (i.e., an American underclass), that automatically and reflexively vote Democrat, that they won’t aspire to the goodies that the bi-coastal White Over-Class has. You know like money and power.

I’ve said the same thing myself, that prospects for Latinos and other immigrants suck the Big One because of decades of off-shoring. Ocasio-Cortez is the first indication coming from the left side of the political spectrum that all isn’t ok in the Democrat scheme to keep power by playing the race and identity card. Latinos, like I’ve said a multitude of times prior, have got a full set of intellectual faculties as is abundantly evidenced by their spectacular civilizational achievements. And they ain’t gonna be happy to forever pay obeisance to bi-coastal White elites that want to hog all the good stuff and keep brown skinned people in their place at the bottom.

But if there’s a “left” in the roil of politics among Latinos, there’s also a “right” as Salam points out. If poorer Whites aren’t happy to have immigration spigots open full-bore for the sake of Chamber of Commerce and Democratic Party interests, then neither will Latinos be happy about it once immigration of desperate people from Africa and south Asia ramps up. Look for lower class Whites who are already pissed about losing livelihoods and lower class Latinos to make common cause to shut the borders.

I’ve said it a hundred times, elite Whites are too confident by half of keeping their place in the pecking order, thinking they can divide and rule by fomenting strife among their perceived lessers. I mean, they lost to Trump, of all people, someone that represented the interests of that broad swathe of the country hammered by the Fortune 50 and Wall Street. Trump is normally presented as “nationalist-right”. Now, imagine someone off-white with a Spanish surname in Trump’s political space. Can’t happen? Trump couldn’t happen either.

NOT SO LONG AGO, the people of what is now called California lived with and by fire. It was the element that allowed them to thrive in an environment that did not give up its riches easily. They harvested new grasses and fresh forbs out of burnt lands. Using fire, they sculpted landscapes in which they could hunt their prey, predominantly mule deer, and, of course, they cooked by its heat. Lightning-struck wildfire, when it came, found landscapes where fuel loads had been limited by this careful management of food plants, the creation of hunting meadows and the clearing of tangled woodlands where particular trees were privileged over the competing biomass. Elsewhere, perhaps in the rocky hinterlands thick with chaparral or heavy with ancient redwoods, wild fires ran their course; but this was not land in which the native peoples lived, except in those favored spots along the tumbling creeks that were laced across the wild.

John Davis

THE NOTSEES

Editor,

There are none as blind as those who do not see.

Those who deliberately do not see, I call them Notsees. They are the true enemies of the people.

Most of Trump’s base fit into this category.

They do not see that a U.S. Federal Judge has ruled that Trump’s policies of separating children from their parents is illegal and unconstitutional.

These Trump notsees are so blind, that they see no problem in treating refugees like the enemy, but then say "God bless trump".. Bad notsees!

God was very clear about this, we are to treat the less fortunate with respect and kindness.

Trump’s demonizing of refugees is immoral and his policies are illegal and unconstitutional.

This is not a liberal vs. conservative issue, but rather a clear moral one, good vs. evil.

The Trump degeneracy is so evil that it's shifted the war on terror to the war on the poor refugees. Those who bless this evil behavior are they themselves cursed and damned by the very God they claim to believe in.

God also told me to mention that Trump has now made 4,229 false, misleading or outright lies in his statements over the past 558 days, according to the fact checker. Evil!

Best Regards,

Rob Mahon

Covelo

AUDITIONS...

Auditions for the sixth show of MTC's 2018 season, A Happy Journey: Three Wilder One-Acts by Thornton Wilder, directed by Dan Kozloff, will be held tonight, Monday, August 13th and tomorrow, Tuesday, August 14th, at 6:30 pm in the theatre on Little Lake Street.  The production, which runs 11/8 through 12/9, will feature three one-act plays by Thornton Wilder (author of Our Town): Childhood, The Happy Journey, and The Long Christmas Dinner.  Roles are for two-or-three pre-teen girls and adults of various ages; we embrace non-traditional casting.  Many of the actors will appear in two roles.  Some of the casting strategies will depend on who auditions.

N.B. The roles of Billee and Arthur are pre-cast.  Actors are asked to arrive promptly by 6:30 pm on one of the two evenings. All are welcome to audition! For information, phone Pamela, 707-937-2718, or go to our website, mendocinotheatre.org/auditions/

CLOSE UP & LONG SHOT

by James Kunstler

Be careful about what you see in the foreground of the news vis-à-vis what’s in the background. Sunday, the cable networks were on fire over the 30-or-so white nationalists marching across Washington DC — with much larger hordes of masked, black-clad Antifa street-fighters following them around, and an army of DC cops in fluorescent green riot vests following the Antifas and the white nationalist knuckleheads.

The event was a billed as an attempt to commemorate the clash that happened between the same contestants in Charlottesville, Virginia, a year ago in the uproar over Confederate statues. That fiasco ended in the death of a bystander named Heather Heyer. Not a whole lot has changed since then, except perhaps the Left has become more strident in its calls to penalize white people for their crimes of “privilege,” no doubt further inflaming the Unite-the-Right crew. (And the anti-statue campaign has dropped down the memory hole.)

There was plenty of “hate” to go around on both sides Sunday. But those who were waiting for a climactic bloodbath in Lafayette Park must have been disappointed after a long day of tension when a big blob of rain hunkered over the District at suppertime and the theatrics concluded. Both the Antifas and the Unite-the-Right marchers had to go home and get out of their wet clothes. At least they could agree on that.

The cable TV anchors had issued the usual calls for “national unity,” exhorting President Trump to emerge from his Bedminster, New Jersey, golfing bunker and “bring the country together,” a sadly fatuous proposition. There is nothing to come together within. There’s nothing left of an American common culture besides a few Disney movies and that’s not nearly enough. That’s what happens when you opt for multiculturalism as your number one political principle. It automatically negates shared values, so why even expect any agreement between groups contending for dominance?

The animosity will only grow sharper, and it will happen because of things that are roiling in the background now — namely, the unraveling global financial system. Some fireworks commenced at the end of last week when the Turkish Lira slumped. Who cares about the currency of a second-rate player in the global economy? A lot of SIFIs (“systemically important financial institutions”) otherwise known as Too-Big-To-Fail banks. That’s who. Deutsche Bank’s stock dropped over 6 percent when the Turkish Lira tanked on Friday.

Turkey’s nickname since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the 1920s has been “the sick man of Europe” and Deutsche Bank in the post-2008-crash era is widely regarded as the sick man of SIFI banks. One analyst wag downgraded its status a year ago to “dead bank walking.” Its balance sheet was a Cave of Winds littered with the moldering skeletons of malinvestment. If the European Central Bank (aka Germany) has to bail out DB, all bets are off for the Euro, which was showing serious signs of distress Friday. And who is going to bail out Turkey? If the IMF is your go-to vehicle, then you mean US taxpayers. Anyway, Turkey’s Lira is only one of several Emerging Market currencies whose hands have been called at the global poker table, where the four-flushers are getting flushed out. The Russian ruble was another one, ostensibly to the delight of America’s Destroy-Russia-at-All-Costs faction.

China is also having to play a round of super Three Card Monte with its currency, the yuan. President Trump’s tariff monkeyshines are shoving the Chinese banking system up against a wall of utterly irresolvable insolvency problems and threatening the stability of Xi Jinping’s one-party government. The Chinese export trade is at the heart of the world’s current economic arrangements. If you pull it out of the globalism machine, the machine will stop. It is going to stop one way or another anyway, but the gathering crisis of autumn 2018 will hasten that.

All of this is happening because the whole world can’t handle the debts it has racked up, and the whole world knows it. And knowing it, they also know that their debt-based currencies are worthless. And knowing that, they also know that absolutely everybody else is broke and unable to meet their obligations. That is some dangerous knowledge. For the moment, this dynamic appears to be working in the USA’s favor, with our dollar rising and what remains of credible foreign wealth seeking shelter here. But the time will come when that delusion goes up in a vapor, too, and the USA will find itself without the means to carry on, just like everybody else.

In the meantime, we entertain ourselves with the antics of Unite-the-Right and Antifa, two acting troupes composed of young people who have no idea what they will do with their lives when the economic condition of the land reveals itself to be more desperate than they ever imagined. The truth is, they’ll be fighting ever more desperately, not over abstractions but over the table-scraps of history.

(Support Kunstler’s writing by visiting his Patreon Page.)

“Beautiful. It would look terrific in the situation room.”

THE GREAT FEAR…

Editor:

A chronic sickness spreads and engulfs our lives. It’s called democratic socialism. It is spread by the socialist left, fake news, intimidation, violence, harassment and advocating a false view of financial security. It advocates that production, distribution and exchange should be regulated by governments. Socialism goes against our country’s foundation — freedom to work, worship and speak.

These freedoms come, not from government, but from God. Socialism is just pre-communism. It will be imposed, not by a majority, but a minority.

When a country and its people are suppressed by this sickness, they cannot escape its terrible sting. It is, as the Bible calls it, the mark of the beast. Schools, especially colleges, have professors who believe and indoctrinate students with socialist ideas. Most have not competed in the real world.

Some radical socialist hoodlums have taken to the street to burn, assault and attack others. There is only moderate or no criticism from the left.

Socialism does not work. Never has. Never will. God help our country in midterm elections.

Harold Bowling

Cloverdale

ED REPLY: Social Security? Medicare? University of California? Norway?

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE WEEK

Someone stated that the government bureaucracies are inept. I disagree. The bureaucracy I deal with is very efficient from my view. Medicare and Social Security work very smoothly. I have never had a problem with the post office or the IRS. The FAA seems to get the air travel piece well enough. I do not care for TSA but I have never had a problem with them. The interstate highways seem in fair shape all things considered. The National Park system generally keeps the parks in ok condition. So what is the problem? The problem is a complete collapse of good manners, dignity, ethics, honor. It isn’t the government that is causing our problems, but it is us. We want Mr. Rogers but we get a Manafort, a Trump, a Clinton. There ain’t no Mr. Rogers around. Don’t look for one. We are at the mercy of corporations who exist for their own welfare. Even in WWII some of them played on both sides. They are the ones who flood our lives with pollution, perversity, scams et al. Without a functioning govt it could be a lot worse.

NYU PROFESSOR LISTS 5 IMPORTANT BOOKS THE DEEP STATE WANTS BURIED

"We don’t ban books. The first amendment prohibits it. But there’s more than one way to skin a cat, and in fact, hundreds of books on crucial subjects, indispensable books, books full of truths that Americans really ought to know have been undone in one way or another. Threats of litigation, for example, by powerful interests, reviewers ‘freezing out’ certain titles, or, what happens most often is, books are written off as ‘conspiracy theory’."

collective-evolution.com/2018/08/11/nyu-professor-lists-5-important-books-the-deep-state-wants-buried/

WHO IS MISSING THE PRESIDENT?

by David Yearsley (for AVA News Service)

An arrest warrant has been filed by the US Department of Justice for American organist and music historian David Yearsley, long-time columnist for the radical Northern California weekly the Anderson Valley Advertiser, as well as for the leftist website, CounterPunch. After being subpoenaed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Yearsley found himself at the center of new developments in the ongoing Russia probe having to do with his alleged role in sabotaging the blockbuster thriller, The President is Missing, written by former U. S. President Bill Clinton and the world’s richest author, James Patterson.

Before dawn on Wednesday special agents of the Department of Justice’s Arts & Leisure Division entered Yearsley’s home in Ithaca, New York in hopes of seizing his laptop, mobile phone, sheet music, and clavichord — an eighteenth-century keyboard instrument popular among the Bach family whose musical works make up an important theme of the blockbuster novel now wracked by controversy. Bach’s music is said to be crucial to Mueller’s inquiry.

However, the raid brought few if any results, admitted Claude Raines, head of the DOJ’s Literary Espionage unit. Raines told a hastily convened press conference that, “We have come to believe that Yearsley played a vital part in helping a Russian-sponsored ghostwriter infiltrate the Clinton-Patterson organization in an attempt to make this important novel far worse than it already was. It seems that Yearsley used the Russian ghostwriter to funnel in bogus Bach research right to the top of the book’s organization in an initiative carefully planned by the SVR [Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service] and code-named Operation Phiction. The idea was that the Bach bits would seem so blatantly the work of a ghostwriter so as to sap all credibility of Clinton and Patterson as legitimate novelists in their own right.”

Kenneith Psmith, a spokesman for the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, appeared on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show last night arguing that, “If the allegations against Yearsley indeed prove to be true, as we suspect they will, this would count as a grave assault on American democracy and the New York Times’ Best Seller List. It would be the most troubling incursion into American letters since the Chinese hacked Dan Brown’s Kindle at Yaddo back in 2012.” Meanwhile, Yearsley attorney, Zack Anderson, told Sean Hannity of Fox News, “Admittedly, my client has low literary standards, but even he wouldn’t dance to the Clintonite drum.”

Yearsley had apparently fled Upstate New York last week directly after Mueller issued his subpoena. The suspect cleared out his residence and drove west along I-90. At his press conference Raines showed a PDF of what appeared to be a receipt signed by Yearsley for a Mocha Frappé at a McDonald’s in Bismark, North Dakota. Yearsley continued on to Seattle where he took a flight to Europe. Several eyewitnesses sighted him at SeaTac international airport, claiming he stood out among the crowds of travelers because he was wearing a straw hat and carrying a light blue cello case. Under an assumed name he seems to have played an organ concert on Thursday evening European time in the Danish coastal city of Helsingör, fabled site of Hamlet’s Castle and of the church where Dieterich Buxtehude was once organist. That Buxtehude was a one-time teacher of Bach was itself possibly incriminating, claimed Mr. Raines.

Armed with assault weapons and an international arrest warrant known as a Red Paper, Interpol officers raided the beer and cheese reception after the concert, but Yearsley had apparently been tipped off and escaped the organ loft with the aid of a rope strung from the belfry. He then stole a bicycle and pedaled thirty miles south to Copenhagen where surveillance cameras recorded him disappearing into the Ecuadoran Embassy shortly before 2a.m. European Daylight Savings Time this morning.

Yearsley’s name first came to the attention of federal authorities because of his forthcoming book, Sex, Death, and Minuets: Anna Magdalena Bach and Her Musical Notebooks. The Clinton-Patterson book features a Serbian-born assassin called Catherina Dorothea, the name of Johann Sebastian Bach’s eldest child. This highly-trained and remorseless killer is referred to as “Bach” by her terrorist clients. She wears a shiny bodysuit that shows off her breasts, referred to in the book as “her girls” and calls her high-tech matte black sniper’s rifle “Anna Magdalena,” the name of Johann Sebastian Bach’s second wife. While on the job the assassin listens to recordings of Bach’s music played by her brother Wilhelm Friedemann. In the climactic scene at a rural Virginian hideout she chooses an aria from a Bach cantata whose text in translation runs, “I swiftly end my earthly life; I long at this time to depart with joy.” As the moment of truth approaches still closer, she clicks on a movement from the St. Matthew Passion.

According to sources within the Mueller investigation, it is believed that the Russians planted a ghost writer named Denise Rodmanova in the Clinton-Patterson organization. Investigators were led to her because she was apparently in the same Suzuki violin class with Chelsea Clinton in Little Rock in the 1980s. Rodmanova was hired for the President is Missing after receiving an MFA in Very Creative Writing from the University of Arkansas. The global violin method founded by the famed Japanese pedagogue, Dr. Shinichi Suzuki, also makes a veiled appearance in the novel where it is introduced to explain part of the childhood trauma of the assassin. Suzuki International condemned the characterization of it soon after the publication of the blockbuster and the group continues to threaten legal action against the publisher, Little, Brown and Knopf.

Mikey Spillane, Jr., Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and expert on literary spying offered context for these latest developments. “Those of us who have been paying attention to these matters, have long known that the Russians have been planting trolls, spooks, and ghostwriters throughout the major Hollywood talent agencies and studios, as well as in leading magazines, blogs, and best-selling book fiction.” Indeed, there has not been this much talk of literary double and triple agents since the days of Senator Joseph McCarthy, the Hollywood Ten and HUAC. In the aftermath of recent disclosures and the hunt for Yearsley, former FBI Director James Comey reportedly purged his whole team of writers working on the screenplay version of his recent book, A Higher Loyalty. Tom Cruise has optioned the property, reportedly to be filmed under the title Loyalty for Hire. The diminutive star is also set to play the lank Comey on the big screen.

In his work as columnist for the AVA and CounterPunch, Yearsley has relentlessly attacked what he has called the “sonic misdeeds, both military and political, of Clintons, Bushes, Obamas, and Trumps.” Yearsley’s lawyer, Anderson, said, “Not only have the Clintons now weaponized Bach, but they have criminalized critique.”

From within the Ecuadoran Embassy Yearsley issued this statement earlier today:

“No, I wasn’t the Bach errand boy for the Clinton and Patterson headliners. Their people did come calling, but I was already committed to a foraging cookbook with Bernie Saunders called Vermont Greens: Bitter Leaves and Better Lives for All (signed copies now available through our website 2020visionforsustainablesoupandsaladsolutions.com — for $9.99 coupon off the cover price of $79.99 type in RUN BERNIE RUN when you order your copy now!). The only bit of Bachiana in our book, one that I have legitimately, and, I hasten to add, without the help of ghost writers, co-authored with Mr. Saunders, is in the winking reference we threw into our recipe for Woodland Sorrel Single-Payer Salad about this dish being ‘ticklish on the fork’ – a turn of phrase plucked tenderly from a bawdy romp by old Johann called the Quodlibet (BWV 524). And no, I am not a Russian agent, even though all I’ve been doing the last couple of weeks is Rushin’ around to get the OHS, NSA, ATF, CIA, FBI and AGO off my back — and off my Bach, too!”

Kremlin spokesman, Leon Googlev responded to the allegations of Russian interference in the President is Missing by saying, “If the American literary and security establishment wants to give us credit for helping flesh out, as it were, the best character in a shit novel, a book supposedly written by a draft-dodging ex-president and the richest hack in the history of the printed word that serves up dangerous terror-fighting fantasies in the foolishly fictional person of an ex-Army Ranger and Iraqi POW as U.S. Commander and Chief gone rogue, we’re more than happy to oblige, even while we vociferously object to having that same character shoulder and caress a big black, phallic death toy of a sniper’s rifle that is the very symbol of a phallic impotence.”

(David Yearsley is a long-time contributor to CounterPunch and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. His recording of J. S. Bach’s organ trio sonatas is available from Musica Omnia. He can be reached at dgyearsley@gmail.com.)