The Eel River and Code Enforcement

Heraldo has some details and thoughts about John Cassali’s appeal to the Code Enforcement Task Force last Friday. KMUD had some coverage as well Friday evening, but I never got around to putting a post together about it.

So is the Task Force empowered to address issues of effective enforcement as well as investigate and report on potential abuses of power? One of the issues requiring clarification is the Task Force’s mandate, which has been the underlying issue of contention for a few meetings now.

The Lessons of 1968

I may have posted this link to Dissent Magazine before, but I’ve just gotten around to reading the articles. Some good reads.

Dissent’s editors asked a number of leading writers and intellectuals of the left to respond to the following questions: “Nineteen sixty-eight was one of the most tumultuous years in the history of the modern left. In this, its fortieth-anniversary year, we ask, What is living, what is dead, and what is hobbling and wheezing, in the many-faceted, transcontinental legacy of ’68? Please don’t reminisce (or don’t only reminisce) or recount your personal engagements. Tell us instead what might be learned from ’68 for the future of the left. What did ’68ers get right? What did they get wrong? How is knowledge of their successes and failures useful to us today?”

Marshall Berman, Robin Blackburn, Mitchell Cohen, Ralf Fuecks, Vivan Gornick, Michael Kazin, Enrique Krauze, Lillian B. Rubin, Christine Stansell, and Michael Walzer.

Addendum: It may be that people are unclear on the concept. The media is drawing a lot of parallels between 1968 and 2008, among them plans for some alleged left wing idiots to tear Denver apart in “protest” of whatever. There’s even a new version of the old Stephen Nash song about coming to Chicago. Hence, the discussion.

As former KPFA director Pat Scott once remarked about the attempt to revive the Peoples Park demos in the 1990s, “we had the old left, the new left, and now we have the what’s left.”

Call me a “sellout” I guess, but history will be made inside the convention this year. It’ll be passing up what’s happening outside.

Campaign responses to Paris Hilton’s attack video

McCain: “It sounds like Paris Hilton supports John McCain’s ‘all of the above’ approach to America’s energy crisis – including both alternatives and drilling. Paris Hilton might not be as big a celebrity as Barack Obama, but she obviously has a better energy plan.”

Obama: “Whatever.”