Bratton… It’s election time!… Greensite… on State Density Bonus Shell Game… Steinbruner… back soon! … Hayes… Land Atonement … Patton… Say A Little Prayer … Matlock… snake pit…exhaustion…the finish line?… Eagan… Subconscious Comics and Deep Cover… Webmistress serves you… Historical photos meet AI Quotes on… “Burnout”
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Dateline: October 23, 2024
T MINUS 11 DAYS AND COUNTING… We’ve been over this, and we are rapidly running out of time. Do you know if your voter registration is up to date and your information is all correct? Are you sure? Be that as it may, The California Secretary of State has a website where you can go check, just to be certain: voterstatus.sos.ca.gov
Here you can:
- Check if you are registered to vote.
- Check where you are registered to vote.
- Check your political party preference.
- Check your language preference for election materials.
- Check the status of your vote-by-mail or provisional ballot.
- Find your polling place.
- Find information for upcoming local and state elections.
- Find contact information for your county elections office.
- Choose how you want to receive your state and county voter guides before each election.
So go verify – what can it hurt? Do it now though, putting it off will only make it too late, and then you will live with the regret for a long time.
More new movies soon.
BILLIONAIRE ISLAND. Netflix series. (6.3 IMDB). We learn from this drama that Norway is the world’s salmon producer. Because of this there’s a ruthless woman rival who works very hard and only partially honestly to take the Salmon farm and business from her. It also tells us the difference between farmed and wild salmon. There’s lots of rich people living their lives with golf and generally focusing on making more money. Interesting but not compelling.
NOBODY WANTS THIS. Netflix series (8.1 IMDB). Adding a so called “romantic comedy” is rare for BrattonOnline but this one has a 8.1 IMDB AND THAT’S RARE. It stars Kristin Bell as the shiksa (now 44 years old) and Adam Brody as the Rabbi. It’s all in L.A. and it’s fast paced and focuses on the relationship between LA Angelenos and the large and influential Jewish population. Plus the gay population gets their share of the comedy in their 25 minute programs.
Just a reminder…
SLOW HORSES. Apple series. (8.2 IMDB)
There’s been five seasons or series of Slow Horses so far and the reviews are stupendously great and RARE. Slow Horses is British slang for “slough house”. And Slough House is where the wild, clever talking M15 British agents who have made professional mistakes hang out between cases. Gary Oldman is the lead and he’s a perfect fit as are Kristin Scott Thomas and Jonathan Price. Set aside some down time and watch this one. It’s been nominated for 9 Emmy awards.
CIVIL WAR. Max movie (7.1 IMDB) Has some fine scenes, but falls apart en toto. Kirsten Dunst, Jessie Plemons and Wagner Moura lead the cast. It really is about a new civil war right here in the USA. Reporters, photographers and politicians all race around headed to Washington D.C. to talk to and change how the president is thinking. Texas and California withdraw from the union and more hell breaks out. Watch it only if this seems and looks like a nightmare to you.
THE DELIVERANCE. Netflix movie. (5.1 IMDB) 
Glenn Close leads the first part of this haunted house re-hash and she does a fine job. Then all the other characters turn it into the old Hollywood scary movie vehicle and take the thrills and fun out of it. As apparently required nowadays the racial issues are thrown in to give us some thoughtful stuff to focus on. Avoid this one.
THE PERFECT COUPLE. Netflix series. (6.6 IMDB) It takes place on Nantucket Island in Massachusetts. Nicole Kidman, Live Schreiber and Dakota Fanning are the lead stars. A big and important wedding is about to happen and there’s a murder of all things. So the movie is all focused on whodunit! Suspicious darts are thrown and there really isn’t much of a surprise left to care about. It’s about a blah movie and you’ve seen it many, many times before.
BREATHLESS. Net series. (6.3 IMDB) This Spanish production centers and details the business side of running a hospital. It deals with, and carefully exploits the union angles of labor managing, it revolves around the constant conflict between medicine and money. There doesn’t seem to be much difference between Mexican and United States in hospital operations
KAOS. Netflix series. (7.5 IMDB). 
Even after viewing this one I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be a comedy or a semi serious religious Greek drama. Jeff Goldblum and David Thewlis play their darndest at being Zeus and Hades stomping around Olympus trying to influence any survivors who’ll listen to them. Read a good book instead.
SLOW HORSES. Apple series. (8.2 IMDB) There’s been five seasons or series of Slow Horses so far and I never watched any of them. Slow Horses is British slang for “slough house”. And Slough House is where the wild, clever talking M15 British agents who have made professional mistakes hang out between cases. Gary Oldman is the lead and he’s a perfect fit as are Kristin Scott Thomas and Jonathan Price. Set aside some down time and watch this one. It’s been nominated for 9 Emmy awards.
MONSIEUR SPADE. Netflix series. (6.9 IMDB) Clive Owen is either paying off a bet or simply forgot how to act…he plays at being the Dashiell Hammett character Sam Spade in this political drama set in France in 1963. He lives in the south of France and is supposed to be 60. A priest, an investigator, a mess of a cast all looking for a young girl named Teresa, don’t even think about this one!
HORIZON: AN AMERICAN SAGA. HBO series (6.8 IMDB) Kevin Costner (who must have had some lifting of face) not only directed this saga but is one of many featured costars along with Sienna Miller, and Luke Wilson. There is a murder in Montana during our civil war and the movie features a large focus on “Native Americans” being careful to respect them as important humans in a rare drama.
THE WATCHERS. Max movie.(5.7 IMDB) An incredibly puzzling movie set in Ireland with Dakota Fanning delivering a parrot to a more than unbelievable and invisible bunch of humans hiding out in an impossible part of a forest. Full of legends, myths, and puzzles, it’s worth your time.
AMERICAN MURDER: Laci Peterson. Netflix series. (7.0 IMDB) 
It’s a documentary about a murder that happened in 2002. Laci Peterson was murdered and her husband Scott was convicted, and more than 20 years later he and his family are still working to disprove his involvement. It takes place in Berkeley and Modesto and gives us some concept of how big a role the media plays. There’s more documentaries being produced on the Peterson case and we are advised to wait for a better version.
October 21, 2024
State Density Bonus Shell Game
The photo was taken this week. The building under construction is the Riverfront project on Front Street. When finished, it will be seven stories tall, with the obligatory commercial on the ground floor and 175 condo units above. This construction at even half its completed height shows how much morning sunshine on Front Street and beyond will be lost with an equivalent loss of afternoon sunshine on the levee side of the buildings.
When this project first went before the Planning Commission, members of the public drew attention to the loss of sunshine on the levee. In response, a commissioner cautioned that we need to protect ourselves from the sun so this new shade would be positive. I won’t name him to save embarrassment.
We are only at the beginning of this state-mandated transformation of Santa Cruz. If the building frenzy continues without a recession or WW111 interfering with development plans, in a decade the town will be largely unrecognizable. If comments on the various new project zooms, Facebook and Next Door are any indication of community sentiment, most residents are aghast at the outsize scale of these developments, including people not directly impacted by having a six or seven story, massive, dense structure a few feet from the back fence of their single- family home.
The stock response to community angst is that we have no choice; that the state has indeed taken away local land-use control, but for a good cause and that is to encourage the development of affordable housing. This is usually sufficient to shut most people up. But is it true?
Consider the following entry from Tuesday’s (10/22/24) council meeting agenda where they will be discussing the Downtown Extension Plan. The staff Agenda Report contains the following:
State Density Bonus Law
The State Density Bonus is a State law that allows housing proposals to be larger and denser than would otherwise be permitted under local regulations in exchange for reserving some amount of the housing for very-low, low, or moderate income households (or for certain targeted groups like students, veterans, and seniors).
A reasonable person reading that description, also prevalent in the local press, would conclude that the city is getting affordable housing units in exchange for a project that can legally be seven, ten, twelve or twenty stories high with reduced setbacks, reduced open area and minimal or no parking, the so-called waivers. Some may conclude that is a reasonable quid pro quo or at least one not worth opposing. Except that it is not true. It is a sham; a cleverly worded misconception designed to blunt criticism and make you think that there’s a trade-off. There isn’t one. Let me explain if you haven’t already figured it out.
The City of Santa Cruz, like other cities and counties has an Inclusionary Housing Ordinance. This local law requires developers of housing projects larger than five units to set aside a percentage of the total units for less than market-rate rents or sale price. In the City off Santa Cruz the Inclusionary rate is twenty percent. The city also has eight Resolutions extending from 1984 until 2018 stating that such Inclusionary units be made available only to extremely low, very low and low- income earners. In practice but not in law, the city has added Moderate to the mix so you will read about projects that include this higher income level as fulfilling their Inclusionary requirements. One of the Grand Jury Recommendations was for the city to resolve this contradiction and state exactly which income levels qualify for Inclusionary Housing. The city disagreed and gave a word-salad evasive response to the Grand Jury but that’s another story.
Prior to Density Bonus law, let’s say in a part of town that is zoned for a maximum of four-story building heights, such as the proposed Downtown Extension Area, I want to build a four-story project with 100 units. I would be required to include twenty percent or twenty units of Inclusionary Housing. City Code would require them to be rented to residents or local workers, another Grand Jury Recommendation the city misrepresented and ignored. But that’s another story.
Along comes the Density bonus law which has been on the books since 1979 but only recently dusted off and enforced. Now I can ignore the zoning height limit of four stories, increase my project to 175 units, increase height to ten or twelve stories, reduce the setbacks, reduce open area, offer no parking, and am required to include…. twenty units of Inclusionary Housing.
The city, the community, the renters are getting no more affordable housing in exchange for larger, denser, taller, impactful buildings. What we are getting is more market rate housing and only more market rate housing. That simply raises the Area Median Income. The negative impact of the imbalance between affordable and market rate housing aggravates an already precarious situation for lower income renters. The Density Bonus law worsens this imbalance. That is the trade-off. That is the exchange.
Time to stop fooling the public and for the public to stop being fooled.
| Gillian Greensite is a long time local activist, a member of Save Our Big Trees and the Santa Cruz chapter of IDA, International Dark Sky Association http://darksky.org Plus she’s an avid ocean swimmer, hiker and lover of all things wild. |
Becky says she’ll be back, and in the meantime:
WRITE ONE LETTER. MAKE ONE CALL. READ YOUR VOTER GUIDES CAREFULLY AND VOTE!
MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE THIS WEEK BY JUST DOING SOMETHING.
Cheers!
Becky
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Becky Steinbruner is a 30+ year resident of Aptos. She has fought for water, fire, emergency preparedness, and for road repair. She ran for Second District County Supervisor in 2016 on a shoestring and got nearly 20% of the votes. She ran again in 2020 on a slightly bigger shoestring and got 1/3 of the votes.
Email Becky at KI6TKB@yahoo.com |
Land Atonement
Very slowly, we must move in the direction of becoming at one with the Land. All that we eat, all that we breathe, all that we drink comes from the Land.
What is your opinion of how people have treated the land around us?
Have we damaged it, or made it better? How do you know?
Big Sur: Whole or Shattered?
The Santa Lucia Mountains…Big Sur, to our South. On one hand, we see picturesque beauty, “wilderness,” a rugged, sparsely settled landscape, millions of flowers, huge trees, and a rich marine environment. On the other hand, there is a land devoid of much of the wildlife that once called that place habitat, the native peoples that called it home and stewarded that place are mostly gone (but still there!), wildfires ravage the landscape too hot and too frequently, roads and other development bleed soil and pollution into streams, and hordes of poorly managed visitors negatively impact the richest ecology, where the land meets the sea.
Monterey Peninsula: Zombie Ecosystems or Well-Managed Parks?
An ecological treasure, the Monterey Peninsula has rare pine and cypress forests, chaparral, and coastal prairies. Millions of humans visit to play golf, shop, drive fancy cars, visit art galleries, taste wine, or do tourism at an aquarium and historic sites. Nature there is fragmented into isolated parks which have no chance of long-term health. With lots of exposure to disease and human disturbance, with no chance of natural interactions with wildlife or fire, the parks represent zombie ecosystems, seemingly alive but really walking dead as they slowly decline with species after species winking out.
Tilled Valleys, How do You Fare?
The Salinas and Pajaro Valleys frame the central Monterey Bay, rich alluvial soils that support Agriculture, the nation’s salad bowl. Farming is an economic engine, sustaining jobs and communities and feeding people vegetables, never enough helpings per capita in any given day. The effluent flowing out of that engine creates the most polluted surface water in the US, pools of eutrophic, stinking rot. Ancient rich soil is disappearing, lost with the rain, in floods, and in the wind. Groundwater is being contaminated with pollution or by sea water intrusion caused by over pumping groundwater.
Santa Cruz and the North Coast, Loved and Smothered
On the other side of the Bay lies Big Sur North, a tamer landscape, thickly inhabited, worn. Tourism, Silicon Valley settlement, and education rule here. Surf and mountain bike culture are ‘natural’ tourism while hordes of cotton candy fueled tourists amble in the relatively cool beachy haven that contrasts so readily with the increasingly baking inland. Millions of feet pummel the beach sand substrate, crushing the food chain of flocks of would-be shorebirds; the remaining birds scatter, no longer comfortable foraging on these overrun beaches. Similarly, most meadows and canyons zip with such continual disturbance that wildlife families flee….fewer places left to hide. In the built areas, hundreds of fossil fuel formulations leak from engines, pesticides ooze from landscapes, headwater rivers and streams are diverted for toilet flushing and carwashes, downstream they receive and convey pollutants into our treasured Bay.
How do We?
How do we atone for the ongoing damage we are causing to the land around us? In ecological terms we call this restoration. In social terms, we call this reparation. In economic terms, we call this re-investment. Do you see enough of this going on? I cannot believe that you do.
Ecological Restoration
We must make room for all of the species of plants and wildlife to flourish if we ourselves are to survive. We read such things, but do we believe them? Do we act on them? Are there things individuals can do to make this happen? Many of us can vote for those who have this vision. Many of us can learn about ecological restoration and tell others about the ways forward around here. There is good fire to put back on the landscape. There are ecological linkages to restore, across roads, through development. There are invasive species to control. And, there are many species of wildlife that need to be better managed, monitored, and restored with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife at the helm.
Reparations
We live on unceded lands. We are surrounded by people displaced by greed-fueled governmental policies, including war. The nation owes its current wealth to people terribly taken advantage of for generations. What are we doing for reparations? Anything at all?
Re-Investment
The way we do it, every new home, every new development creates a heavier burden on our already strapped local municipalities. The way we have done it for generations, businesses have profited from extraction from Nature, most recently including agriculture, water use, and tourism in natural areas. Some suggest it is time to increase the taxes of landowners to enable more tourists to overrun our natural areas…’investing” in new trails and repairing old trails degraded by millions of tourists to keep local businesses thriving. How did this become part of a re-investment proposal?
A Path Forward
Whether you take part in restoration, reparations, or re-investment, each of us must do our part. I’m sure that none of us want to leave the world worse off than it was before we enjoyed the water, the air, and the food that Nature made possible. We regularly eat meals…taking. We regularly drink water…taking. We regularly travel through Nature…taking. We regularly purchase things and throw away things…taking. What are we regularly doing to give back, to atone for all that we are taking from Nature, from each other?
I hope that you will think about that debt when you vote this Fall. And, I hope that you will plan at least one activity in the next little while that gives something back. Make such giving a regular practice, please.
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Grey Hayes is a fervent speaker for all things wild, and his occupations have included land stewardship with UC Natural Reserves, large-scale monitoring and strategic planning with The Nature Conservancy, professional education with the Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve, and teaching undergraduates at UC Santa Cruz. Visit his website at: www.greyhayes.net
Email Grey at coastalprairie@aol.com |
Sunday, October 20, 2024
As November 5th gets closer, I tend to be thinking, more and more, about the upcoming election, and I have been remembering an article about the Trump campaign that appeared in the September 2024 edition of The Atlantic. The article I am thinking of, by staff writer McKay Coppins, was titled: “The Most Revealing Moment Of A Trump Rally.” The most revealing moment, Coppins says, may well be the prayer that comes at the start.
Coppins suggests that it’s pretty normal for prayers to play a role in political campaign events, and outlines some common themes. For instance, it is typical that prayers offered at political events ask God to guide the candidate, and to help the candidate follow God’s word as the candidate takes office. As Coppins reports:
Bradley Onishi, a scholar and former evangelical minister who studies the intersection of politics and Christianity in America, told me that prayers at political events have traditionally fit a certain mold. God is asked to grant the political leader inspiration and wisdom, to help him resist temptation and lead the country in a righteous direction. “It was always ‘We pray for him to have the strength to do God’s will, to have character, to be the man we need,’ ” Onishi said.
Coppins, though, who has obtained a copy of and has read every prayer ever offered at one of Trump’s campaign rallies, says that things have significantly changed as the current campaign has progressed:
Onishi, like several of the other experts I asked to read the prayers, was struck by how many of them take Trump’s righteousness for granted. “No one prays for Trump to do right; they pray that God will do right by Trump” …
Indeed, rather than asking God to make Trump an instrument of his will, most of the prayers start from the assumption that he already is. Accordingly, many of them drop any pretense of thy-will-be-done nonpartisanship, and ask explicitly for Trump’s reelection. “Lord, you have a servant in Donald J. Trump, who can lead our nation,” a woman offering a prayer in Laconia, New Hampshire, told God at a rally on the eve of the state’s Republican primary. “Help us to overcome any obstacles tomorrow so that we may deliver victory to your warrior” (emphasis added).
Most disturbing, Coppins says, is that once it is accepted that Trump is “God’s warrior,” those who are supporting Trump’s election believe that when Trump is elected, it will be Trump’s place to bring down God’s retribution on all those who have failed to support him:
Joel Tenney, a 27-year-old evangelist with a shiny coif of blond hair and a quavering preacher’s cadence, who offered a prayer at a rally held in Coralville, Iowa, preceded his prayer with a short sermon for the gathered crowd of Trump supporters. “We have witnessed a sitting president weaponize the entire legal system to try and steal an election and imprison his leading opponent, Donald Trump, despite committing no crime,” Tenney began. “The corruption in Washington is a natural reflection of the spiritual state of our nation.”
For the next several minutes, Tenney hit all the familiar notes: He quoted from 2 Chronicles and Ephesians, and reminded the audience of the eternal consequences of 2024. Then he issued a warning to those who would stand in the way of God’s will being done on Election Day.
“Be afraid,” Tenney said. “For rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. And when Donald Trump becomes the 47th president of the United States, there will be retribution against all those who have promoted evil in this country (emphasis added).”
“I Say A Little Prayer” is a song written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David for Dionne Warwick. According to Wikipedia, the song originally peaked at number four on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 pop singles chart in December 1967. You can click right here to hear Dionne Warwick sing the song, live, on the Ed Sullivan show. According to Wikipedia, the song was originally intended to convey a woman’s concern about her man, who is serving in the Vietnam War.
In 1967, I was an active and outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War, and I refused induction into the armed forces in 1968. Maybe that is why I have retained a memory of the song in my mind, after all these years. To be honest, though, as I sat down to write this blog posting, the song popped into my mind, unbidden. I had forgotten (if I ever knew) the connection between “I Say A Little Prayer” and the Vietnam War.
But…. having read about the kind of retribution that Trump supporters are praying for, I think that Joel Tenny’s recommendation has a lot of merit: “Be Afraid.”
Be Really Afraid.
Be afraid, and “Say A Little Prayer.”
And… maybe even better than saying that little prayer…
VOTE!
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Gary Patton is a former Santa Cruz County Supervisor (20 years) and an attorney for individuals and community groups on land use and environmental issues. The opinions expressed are Mr. Patton’s. You can read and subscribe to his daily blog at www.gapatton.net
Email Gary at gapatton@mac.com |
MONUMENTAL SUBJECTS, PREDICATES, NOUNS AND VERBS
Presidential candidate Kamala Harris walked into the snake pit inappropriately named Fox News last week, to be ‘interviewed’ by Bret Baier, who is now a nearby neighbor of Donald Trump’s in Palm Beach, Florida. Evidently, he likes to be near his friends…in his very own $30M manor house. However, the ‘interview’ turned into more of a debate as both participants sparred, talking over one another to make their points, with Harris getting her wish of being able to defiantly speak to the largest MAGA audience in the cable news world. Baier tried to make the immigration system his battering ram, with Harris admitting that the system needs repair, and that she and Walz will support and enforce federal law. She went after Trump for his opposition to the bipartisan border security proposal simply to deny the Biden administration a victory in the lead-up to election day. Baier then pointed out that she and the former president are split in the current voter polling, asking her if she thinks 50% of Americans favoring Trump are “misguided” or “stupid.” “I would never say that about the American people. In fact, if you listen to Donald Trump, if you watch any of his rallies, he’s the one who tends to demean and belittle the American people. He’s the one who talks about an ‘enemy within,’ talking about locking people up because they disagree with him,” she replied. To counter her answer, Baier shows a clip of Trump responding to Fox News host Harris Faulkner’s question regarding his ‘enemy’ quote, which drew this answer: “I’m not threatening anybody.” Kamala firmly retorted, “Bret, I’m sorry, and with all due respect: That clip is not what he has been saying about the ‘enemy within’ that he has repeated when he is speaking about the American people. That’s not what you just showed. He has repeated it many times, and you and I both know that. You and I both know that he has talked about turning the American military on the American people.” She also made it clear that her presidency would not be a continuation of Biden’s administration, that “…like every new president, I will bring my life experiences, my professional experiences, and fresh and new ideas. I represent a new generation of leadership.” Baier tried to play ‘gotcha‘ for Harris’ support for Biden’s mental fitness as a president, but was quick to parry with, “Joe Biden is not on the ballot, but Donald Trump is. He’s unfit to serve. He’s unstable. He’s dangerous. And people are exhausted.” And so is The Donald, it seems, with his cancellation of several appearances.
MSNBC’s ‘All In’ anchor, Chris Hayes, criticized Fox News for showing a misleading clip of Trump’s “enemy within” comments to Kamala, when The Don referred to Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff as enemies, showing only his charge about “phony investigations.” Hayes believes that on his Fox News show, Harris Faulkner was offering Trump a chance to back off from his fascist rhetoric, but “Trump wouldn’t take it. He never takes it because he actually believes and wants to do what he says he wants to do.” Baier complained to his Fox colleagues that he sensed that Harris “was going to be tough to redirect without me trying to interrupt,” and that she showed up fifteen minutes past the 5:00 p.m. start time, like “icing the kicker” in football parlance. Harris has suffered through criticisms that she was unable or unwilling to sit through tough interviews, but she showed her mettle, and her team was pleased with her face-off with a hostile Fox News interviewer, a dicey move. Billionaire investor Mark Cuban, a Harris supporter, praised her showing at standing up to Baier, saying, “She used examples of policies. She gave a real world context. When Baier went hard after her, she didn’t call him names, she didn’t quit the interview, she didn’t make things up. She never once complained the questions were tough, she never played the victim card, she didn’t lose her temper. She didn’t take the bait to diminish or talk down to Trump supporters.” She was able to convey to 7.1M viewers her messages of affordable housing and small business expansion, while showing off aspects of her personality, with salient comments regarding Trump. Jesse Lee, who served in both Obama and Biden administrations commented, “I think to some extent the fact that she was so combative and just kind of vigorous and strong was a big contrast to Trump looking feeble and like he’s trying to limp past the finish line. There’s not a lot of things that are going to change undecided voters at this point, but I think that contrast is one of those things.”
MSNBC’S Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski called Bret Baier’s interview tactics “embarrassing” and “rude” as he attempted to derail her answers with interruptions “every three words.” Willie Geist claimed, “Bret Baier conducted that interview as if he had something to prove to the former president of the United States,” as Harris constantly repeated, “let me finish!” Geist said, “Kamala Harris went on Fox News, and took all those questions, and hung in there, and kept her calm, and didn’t attack the network or the interviewer or whine things were unfair. She talks policy, and she gave answers to tough questions. It goes without saying that Donald Trump would not be given the same treatment, talked over, not allowed to finish the questions.” Brzezinski added, “It was supposed to give viewers an opportunity to actually hear her plans as President. Instead, it almost immediately devolved into an embarrassing, bad-faith effort by a once-respected host to play to an audience of one…the host’s constant, rude interruptions were designed to distract from the issues and facts that Trump and his acolytes try and twist and distort every day.”
Satirist Andy Borowitz, in his The Borowitz Report, writes, “In a harsh rebuke to the Democratic presidential nominee, Fox News Channel asserted on Friday that Kamala Harris had ‘flagrantly broken’ the network’s ground rules for her interview by speaking in complete sentences. ‘Vice President Harris was hell-bent on uttering sentences that contained both a subject and a predicate,” Bret Baier, who conducted the interview, said. ‘I tried to prevent her from doing so by interrupting her, but she rudely continued.’ Baier added that Harris ‘stubbornly made nouns and verbs agree’ and ‘said things that she knew to be verifiably true. Our fact-checkers determined that on multiple occasions she used facts, in clear violation of Fox policy,’ Baier said. ‘President Trump would never do that.'”
Matt Gertz of Media Matters for America wrote: “Fox’s ‘news side’ has been in steep decline since Trump took over the Republican Party and the network rebranded as his personal propaganda outlet. But even by those standards, the partisan divide it displayed on Wednesday was striking and would be catastrophically embarrassing to Fox’s employees if any of them were still capable of humiliation. While [Bret] Baier has long enjoyed a largely unearned reputation as a credible newsman, he lives in palpable fear of his viewers abandoning his network. His subsequent performance was what you might expect from someone worried primarily about letting down Fox’s pro-Trump audience. Fox’s ‘news side’ always functioned as a cog in the right-wing media machine that laundered its talking points into the mainstream press, and its claim to independence was demolished during Trump’s presidency. But at this point the network seems to have all but given up even pretending to employ a credible news apparatus.”
Meghan McCain, daughter of the late Senator John McCain, in an attempt to force Democratic candidates to stop citing her late father’s memory while campaigning, threatened to release what he really thought abut VP Kamala Harris. She fired off on social media, “Now, I know democrats want to reinvent history and turn my Dad into any illusion you guys need him to be depending on the political moment you need to bastardize his memory for…but please don’t make me start sharing what I remember him ACTUALLY saying about Kamala Harris…And consider this my final warning shot, I will start spilling tea.” Democratic strategist Cliff Schecter who has ‘spilled tea’ on JD Vance regarding his past comments about Donald Trump, said he had some tea of his own to spill about her. “I wrote a book about your dad in ’08, as I’m sure you know, Meghan. So go ahead and do it, nepo,” he countered. “Then I’ll share what your father’s advisors [and] others close to him told me he really though about you. Things I had no reason to publish except to be cruel, but will happily share now in light of what you’ve become. You go first.” In later post Schecter said, “Meghan McCain doesn’t just get to threaten Dems [with] her unearned platform.” All’s quiet to date…
Former NBC executive John D. Miller has written a lengthy apology/editorial printed in U.S. News and World Report, that begins with him saying, “I want to apologize to America” [because] “I helped create a monster.” He goes on to explain how in developing Trump’s reality show, ‘The Apprentice,’ the creators used highly selective editing to make Trump appear much more intelligent, thoughtful, and decisive as a businessman than he is in reality. “I learned early on in my dealings with Trump that he thought he could simply say something over and over, and eventually people would believe it. He would say to me, ‘The Apprentice’…America’s No. 1 TV show.’ But it wasn’t. Not that week. Not that season. I had the ratings in front of me. He had seen and heard the ratings, but that didn’t matter. He just kept saying it was the ‘No. 1 show on television,’ even after we corrected him. He repeated it on press tours too, knowing full well it was wrong. He didn’t like being fact-checked back then either.” Miller was surprised about Trump’s political entrance, where he would continue his lying about immigrants, the COVID pandemic, and the 2020 election results. He adds, “While we were successful in marketing ‘The Apprentice,’ we also did irreparable harm by creating the false image of Trump as a successful leader. I deeply regret that. And I regret that it has taken me so long to go public.”
Georgetown University Law Center professor Neal Katyal wrote in a New York Times editorial, and explained later in an interview with MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, that only one complicated congressional law could stand between the Oval Office and Donald Trump, according to his analysis. He warns that the nation should prepare itself for a legal brawl if Trump loses to Harris on November 5. “The rogues are no longer amateurs. They have spent the last four years going pro, meticulously devising a strategy across multiple fronts…state legislatures, Congress, executive branches and elected judges…to overturn any close election.” Several actions could be taken toward seizing power, such as challenging ballots in swing state lawsuits, sowing chaos on local election boards and forcing fake electors on allies in state legislatures, before taking up the one through Congress. Katyal says, “The Congress has the power to swing the entire election. The rules are complex…even as a law professor I can barely make sense of them.” He offers one possibility, a 2022 law, that makes it more difficult for a Congressional member to object to a state’s vote by mandating 20% of members in both houses sign on to the challenge, which then must win a simple majority in both chambers as well. He cautions, “The rules are so complicated that they could be stretched, wrongly, to give Congress the power to select the next president by sustaining bogus objections. Don’t get me wrong, such maneuvering is totally inconsistent with the 2022 law. But it can be attempted and create chaos.” He is not optimistic that certain Congress members will put correct legal interpretations above party loyalty to their party’s presidential nominee…the Republican Party, according to Katyal, can no longer be trusted to hold democratic norms as sacrosanct. “We have much to fear…but if either candidate wins the Electoral College decisively, any dispute will be rendered academic,” he concludes.
Donald Trump charges Kamala Harris with lying when she says she worked at a McDonald’s restaurant when she was in college, so to nullify or diminish her claim he arranged to work at the French fry station in a McDonald’s last Sunday, an everyman’s job…no one is sure what this proves, but whatever he comes up with is bound to be good! On his show, Jimmy Kimmel says, “This is a win-win for Trump because working a deep-fryer will give him a new skill he could potentially put to use in the prison cafeteria.” This poke in the face is likely to fry Trump’s brain since he is still steaming from the remark Kimmel used during the Academy Awards in March, when Trump posted a wisecrack on social media about the show. Kimmel responded, “Thank you, President Trump. Thank you for watching. I’m surprised you’re still up. Isn’t it past your jail time?”
After Trump, for ten minutes, made disgusting ‘locker room’ remarks about golfer Arnold Palmer’s impressive body part at a recent rally, satirist Andy Borowitz writes, “Donald J. Trump told supporters at a rally on Monday that if elected he will rename the Washington Monument after the legendary golfer Arnold Palmer.” Borowitz quotes Trump as saying, ‘Unlike Arnie, George Washington had no body parts worth remembering. He had wooden teeth, which, quite frankly, were disgusting. Get him out of here!’ An aide commenting on the former president’s performance said, “At this point I think we’re better off just playing music and having him dance.”
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Dale Matlock, a Santa Cruz County resident since 1968, is the former owner of The Print Gallery, a screenprinting establishment. He is an adherent of The George Vermosky school of journalism, and a follower of too many news shows, newspapers, and political publications, and a some-time resident of Moloka’i, Hawaii, U.S.A., serving on the Board of Directors of Kepuhi Beach Resort. Email: cornerspot14@yahoo.com. |
EAGAN’S SUBCONSCIOUS COMICS. View classic inner-view ideas and thoughts with Subconscious Comics a few flips down.
EAGAN’S DEEP COVER. See Eagan’s “Deep Cover” down a few pages. As always, at TimEagan.com you will find his most recent Deep Cover, the latest installment from the archives of Subconscious Comics, and the ever entertaining Eaganblog.
Burnout
“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes—including you.”
~Anne Lamot
“There is a fine line between challenging yourself and overwhelming yourself.”
~Brittany Burgunder
“We’re totally guilty of doing too much at once, all while trying to manage the noise in our heads that says we’re not doing enough.”
~Vanessa Autrey
“It’s also our collective delusion that overwork and burnout are the prices we must pay in order to succeed.”
~Arianna Huffington
“Burnout is what happens when you try to avoid being human for too long.”
~Michael Gungor
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This is one of those things where I can not for the life of me decide whether this is super cool, or super creepy… 😀 WHat do you think? |
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