Badlands Journal

The Merced County Sheriff warned farmer Chad Crivelli of Dos Palos not to grow what he claimed was hemp. 

And when it was tested, the Merced Sun-Star reported:

"The THC content of the plants growing on the Crivelli farmland tested eight times the legal limit of what is allowed in hemp, according to Merced County Sheriff Deputy Daryl Allen."

After being declared the loser in his race for the 21st congressional district and election night and for three weeks later,  TJ Cox has pulled ahead of Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford.

The LA Times speculates that the reason for the slow surge is that Cox hung Trump around Valadao's neck. After Kern and Tulare counties' counts were updated Monday, Cox was ahead by 43 votes.

The scene first described in this pair of Guardian articles about Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke's roman-triumph arrival in Washington would have been enlivened with a little translation. Zinke's horse is called "Tonto," which means idiot or fool. The only problem with the image was that the fool the developer ion the White House has unleashed on the American environment was in the saddle, not under it. For "destructive ool" is one thing we call a person who accepts an office to defend the Public Trust and, in the worst faith, defiles that trust, breaking the environmental laws and regulations put  in place to protect the Public Trust. At another level, we call any person who behaves that way a fool for not seeing the science describing the global warming upon us and doing everything in his very powerful position to reverse the human behavior that has caused it ... like burning coal for energy.

“You just didn’t want to believe it,” Riofrio said. “We’ve gotten used to living in a certain way. We know that there’s been 14 murders. But we rationalized that it’s them killing their own people. They are not killing the good people.” -- Yesemia Amaro, Fresno Bee, Oct. 19, 2018

There is no "truth" about the migrants streaming through Mexico from the northern triangle of Central America to the US border. There are a numerous truths and layers of truths and complex truths, probably too difficult for us to grasp, no matter the danger. And what appears to be so far away may be quite close by. But one thing is true: this migration cannot be reduced to immoral racial slogans for the purposes of electioneering. 

NOT!^1.

After a lengthy and serious public hearing, pitting angry citizens and against techno-babbling consultants and the city council and the Invisible Few who are paying for their re-election campaigns, the council voted 5-2 for a rate-increase scheme in which lower income and lower water users subsidize higher income, higher water users. 

 One reason we will be reminded of this nightmare regime we want to forget and another reason our children will learn about it is the fine work on display below, thanks to Associated Press and investigative journalists Garance Burke and Martha Mendoza. They have made the banal horror of these authoritarian times live for us, always in danger of numbing down, and for historians in the future. This is an excellent first draft of the history our children and grandchildren should read because It Is Happening Here Now.

Bravo Garance and Martha! -- blj

10-9-18

10-8-18

The Guardian

We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN

 

(McClatchy CEO) Forman told an audience of about 13,000 digital developers and engineers at an Adobe summit in March that McClatchy’s new mission is to find products that “save you time, save you money or delight you in some surprising new way.” The company will “innovate with intention and less with pure speculative experimentation,” he told the Las Vegas Crowd... “We plan to continue our digital audience growth in the second half of the year by providing relevant journalism to our readers and viewers while explaining the benefits of subscribing to our digital products,” Mr. Forman says. -- Young, Comstock's Magazine, June 5, 2018

 Denham, R-Calif., and his wiry 32-year-old Democratic opponent are locked in one of America’s most competitive congressional races, playing out here in this almond-picking, culturally conservative swath of California’s Central Valley. And yes, Josh Harder was until last year a venture capitalist. -- Schleifer, Recode, Sept. 20, 2018

Yessiree, the Luck of the Denham is alive and well, and will be immeasurably aided by this piece of backstabbing, courtesy of the waspish Recode. an online newspaper based in cyberspace, which covers Silicon Valley.