Happy Thanksgiving

Hope it’s a lovely day with family and friends … if you’re into that sort of thing. Heh.

I’m a failure.

I tried to make fudge the old-fashioned way (cooking, cooling, beating, etc.). It won’t set. Waaah!

What’d I do wrong? Was the thermometer reading too hot or too cold? Did I completely screw it up when I accidentally added the vanilla early (my eye ran down the page too quickly when I was reading the directions)? What happened?

I’ve got Caramel Sauce when I should have Vanilla Fudge. And it’s taken me hours I’ll never have back. I hate wasting my time – life’s too short.

Too Cute!

Noah had a birthday yesterday!

What a handsome fella. And growing up so fast! Sigh.

Happy Birthday, little guy.

David Mobilio

I know a lot of folks have linked or blogged the Andy McCrae Web Confession™ already:

“Hello Everyone, my name is Andy,” the Web posting begins. “I killed a Police Officer in Red Bluff, California in a motion to bring attention to, and halt, the police-state tactics that have come to be used throughout our country,” said the message that was posted Monday at sf.indymedia.org.

Here’s the story as it reads locally:

From The Sacramento Bee

McCrae, who also uses the name Andrew Mickel, and whose most recent address is in Olympia, Wash., paid $85 on Nov. 7 to incorporate in New Hampshire as Proud and Insolent Youth Inc., to use the “destructive immunity of corporations,” the Web site message said.

–snip–

Before McCrae was arrested, he asked to speak to a local reporter, telling her: “I killed a police officer in Red Bluff, California, in an effort to draw attention to police brutality.”

He apparently also told her he came to New Hampshire, the state whose motto is Live Free or Die, because the state constitution specifies a “right to revolt.”

–snip–

The fallen officer’s father, Richard Mobilio of Saratoga, spoke eloquently of the son who called home every other night to ask, “Hey, Papa, what’s goin’ on?” He remembered how the young student who struggled with early learning difficulties had overcome them to become the police officer he loved being.

With his voice breaking he said, “So I will love him, and respect him, and miss him mightily for the rest of my days.”

–snip–

His Web site postings indicate he believed globalization was evil. According to Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, an act of violence by a left-leaning radical is not unusual.

Likewise, McCrae’s alleged belief that incorporating would save him from prosecution is an offshoot of a long-held theory by ultraconservative anti-government people.

“It sounds like a take of what we used to hear from the right, the sovereign-immunity people who would make themselves sovereign citizens and therefore not covered by any legal culpability,” Levin said.

“One of the things we’ve been seeing is this slight alliance between leftist anarchists and rightist anarchists, and sometimes they get together to protest government policies.

“Increasingly, we’re seeing violence from the left. No side of the political spectrum has a monopoly on violence, particularly against police officers. We’re seeing that from anti-globalization to anti-racist action and also the animal liberation types posing threats to law enforcement.”

From The Redding Record Searchlight

The letters, carried on sf.indymedia.org, said Mobilio was killed to protest corporate irresponsibility and complained that Americans’ individual independence “is rapidly being encroached upon and destroyed by the foot soldiers of our Law Enforcement Agencies.”

One of the letters, titled “The Declaration of a Renewed American Independence,” opened: “We apologize to the family and friends of the police officer that we killed in Red Bluff, California.”

The letter was signed “The American People.”

McCrae had told negotiators that he wanted to give a copy of the second letter to a reporter for the Concord Monitor newspaper who first spoke to him on the phone and then came to the motel, the Concord Monitor reported Tuesday afternoon.

The reporter, Sarah Vos, 27, told her newspaper that the first thing McCrae told her on the phone was “I killed a police officer in Red Bluff, Calif., in an effort to draw attention to police brutality.”

And, finally, from The Red Bluff Daily News:

Traffic will be at a complete standstill Tuesday morning in Red Bluff for the funeral procession of Red Bluff Police Officer David Mobilio.

From 8 to 11 a.m., no traffic will be allowed on Main Street to Antelope Boulevard from the staging area, at the old K-Mart parking lot on Main Street, for public safety officers and cars. The 2.6-mile procession, to honor Mobilio, is expected to last about an hour from the first car to the last.

As many as 3,000 police and public safety service personnel will be attending the memorial service along with a significant number of community members.

–snip–

Several memorial funds have been set up in memory of Mobilio.

* Red Bluff Peace Officers Association, Family of Police Officer David Mobilio Fund, P.O. Box 8367, Red Bluff 96080.

* David F. Mobilio memorial scholarship fund has been set up at Mid Valley Bank for his son, Luke. P.O. Box 1270, Red Bluff 96080.

* Tri Counties Bank has had a fund set up as a memorial for Officer David Mobilio for the DARE program of Tehama County. The account number is 66513701.

A Poll

What do you think of Blog Polls?

I love ‘em!I enjoy responding to polls, and I don’t think they detract from blog content at all.I’m ambivalent.I can’t decide! What was the question again?I don’t mind ‘em once in a while, but not every single freakin’ day, okay??God, no. Not polls. Doesn’t this page have enough crap on it already?Do it, and I’m de-linking you. This madness must stop! I hate polls, I hate puppies, and I hate you!Other … comment below

Free polls from Pollhost.com

Note: Thank you to Kevin for assistance in removing the excessive white space. Looks much better now!

Does this blog bog?

Just checkin’. I’ve got a couple javascript thingies going, and I’m curious if this page loads slowly or bogs down because of them.

No, I didn’t mean the content. Sheesh.

Barlow, Barlow … wherefore art thou, Barlow?

Is Ted ever coming back?

Read it.

Body and Soul is totally kicking ass this week.

Why are you still here? Go!

Blog of the Week: Antidotal

Yup, this post in response to an attack on the new Gore proposal for single-payer health care really got me riled. In a good way. Good stuff, as always, Eric – but this one’s got that BOTW Good Stuff. Heh.

IT’S HARD FOR ME to accurately express the extreme irritation I felt deep within the cockles of my heart when I read this gawdawful David Frum National Review column attacking Al Gore’s proposal to institute a Canadian-style single-payer health care system. There is already so much ignorance on this side of the border regarding other health care systems; the last thing anyone needs is for people to take seriously the opinions of a hack like Frum on the issue.

Frum argues that the main virtue of the Canadian health care system is that it is “hassle free”–nevermind that it costs half as much per capita than the U.S. system does; or that no one goes without health care coverage, as opposed to the 16% of Americans who aren’t covered; or that virtually no Canadians went bankrupt because of medical bills last year, whereas 500,000 Americans did; or that HMOs can’t pressure doctors into determining which procedures are necessary or not–but that this convenience isn’t worth the long waiting times that occur in the Canadian system.

Go on now. Read the rest of it.

Let’s hear it for Antidotal: Blog of the Week!

The Rest of the Story

Beyond this, there was another melancholic working on me today.

Some clients are more difficult to shake than others. For me, it’s usually the undiagnosed mentally ill client who’s making all the wrong choices, and getting sucked into The Cycle of Poverty™.

Today, I saw ‘Karen’*. I recognized her immediately – I saw her last week, as well, and she’s very, um, distinctive. She is a big girl, favoring very heavy makeup and a baggy sweatsuit. Karen is about 20 years old and homeless, with no support system. She is also (undiagnosed) mentally ill – fairly functional & trying really hard to stay on the same wavelength as the rest of us, but mentally ill just the same. She needed a couple of bus tickets (destinations: Probation Officer & Dental Appointment), asked where she could get makeup (’cause she’s almost out, ya see) and casually mentioned she thought she might be pregnant.

Sigh. Priorities. She asked about makeup refills long before mentioning how late her period was.

I needed a moment. I asked a few more questions, and suggested her first stop should be at Primary Care (the county’s indigent care clinic) for a pregnancy test.

"Better to know for sure, before you make any more plans."

Meanwhile, you know what’s going through my head, right?

"YOU’VE BEEN SCREWING AROUND WHILE YOU’RE ON THE STREET??? YOU DON’T HAVE A HOME OR A JOB OR A FAMILY TO HELP YOU & YOU’RE FUCKING SOME GUY WITHOUT PROTECTION???!!!!"

Judgmental? Yup. Unfair? Sorta. Reasonable? Maybe.

I don’t really know what’s going in her world. I have suspicions (there’s a guy she mentioned last week, she made the point of telling me ‘we’re just friends, he’s my friend’), of course (I think that ‘friend’ may have taken advantage of her need for some kind of emotional support). But nothing I can confirm.

BUT despite my immediate, visceral reaction (YOU DID WHAT?? ARRRGGHHHH!!!), and the odds being that I’m right, I have no idea what her story is. I don’t really know why she’s on the streets. I know she’s on probation, and I know she’s homeless. That’s about it. She may have been raped. She may have been seeing someone long-term & it fell apart. She may have gotten knocked up on purpose – thinking she’d get first choice on shelter beds or access to mother-baby housing. Or my instincts may be correct & she was screwing around with no thought to consequences at all, possibly in exchange for a place to stay or for drugs. Only Karen would know … and though she’s the best informed of us, by far, her perspective is not entirely trustworthy.

Mental illness pisses me off.

What happens to Karen? I don’t know. I’m hoping the test comes back negative – the stress of being homeless might just be throwing off her cycle. But if she’s pregnant, I directed her to some programs for homeless and indigent mothers-to-be. And Medi-Cal will pay for an abortion, if it comes to that. I asked her to come back and let me know what the test result was …

———————————-

*Not her real name, obviously.

[Edited to correct spelling error and to rephrase a couple of sentences.]