Mendocino County Today: Monday 5/20/24

Cool | Hills | Frost Fans | Gravesite Robbed | Challenging Dynamic | DUI Guilt | Speaker Rivas | Art Center | Palace Position | Pet Inky | Ukiah Institutions | Grandfather Rocks | Animal Care | Rate Increases | Atomic Test | Ed Notes | Yesterday's Catch | Farmworker Pay | JFK Quote | Dog Insurance | Clean & Sober | Illegal Weed | Debate Conditions | Flat Globe | Threat Response | Hung Laundry | Managing Hypertension | Mr Sketchum | Eurovision Neutrality | Billboard Painters

SLIGHTLY BELOW NORMAL TEMPERATURES expected through the week amidst a series of upper shortwaves and associated weak fronts. Strong coastal pressure gradient will reinforce gusty NW winds through Tuesday. Weaker winds and moisture advection may allow coastal stratus to redevelop in the second half of the week before potential for a more unsettled pattern into next weekend. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 47F under clear skies this Monday morning on the coast. Breezy again today then the rest of the week looks quiet. Cooling temps is all I see, & of course the fog will be looking to return.

SUNDAY, THE 19TH OF MAY. Frost fans at 5 am here in Boonville. Happy Pinot Sunday!

GRAVESITE ROBBED!

The final resting place of Marlee Rebecca Cluff located in the northwest corner of the Oddfellow's Cemetery was looted sometime between April 15th and Mother's Day! I say looted because items weren't just stolen, but damage was done. I am asking for the return of these precious items: windchimes, Catholic rosary beads, dreamcatchers, crystals, fairy figurines and trinkets, as well as a 3 ft x1ft planter full of tulips that bloom purple (the color of 9 year old Marlee's hair), geodes, agates and Buddhist statues. Any help would be appreciated. In 8 years nothing has gone missing. Thank you.

SUPERVISOR MULHEREN’S ‘BACK-TO-THE-LANDER’ PROBLEM

by Mark Scaramella

Supervisor Maureen Mulheren told the ‘Like It Or Not’ Ukiah Podcast dudes last week that there was a “really challenging dynamic” in the Board Chambers these days that “might be improved by two new members.” The two old members who are not running for re-election she’s referring to as “challenging” would be outgoing Supervisors Glenn McGourty and Dan Gjerde.

Asked to explain what she meant by “challenging,” Mulheren replied: “Differences in how we speak and get feedback and do the work.”

“How we speak and get feedback” are “challenging”?

Mulheren added, “Our staff doesn’t deserve to be caught in the crossfire. Everybody should be treated with respect.”

The “crossfire” is probably another of the classic sideways references common to the Supervisor regarding Supervisor Gjerde’s suggestion that a redundant position in Planning and Building should be deleted and Mulheren’s disagreement that it should even be discussed in open session. We doubt Gjerde’s suggestion is “disrespectful,” and we doubt that discussing it creates some kind of terrible “crossfire.” We can’t guess what Supervisor McGourty may have done to “challenge” Supervisor Mulheren, although lately he has tended to agree with Supervisor Ted Williams now and then when he disagrees with Mulheren.

Asked to name the top five issues facing the Board at the moment, Mulheren cited the budget, saying that the County is “$17 million under budget.”

Last we heard the County has a general fund deficit of around $4 or $5 million. We don’t know what “under budget” means. It would help if Supervisor could be more specific.

Mulheren went on to say that some “tough decisions” will have to be made involving “cutting programs.”

Asked which programs, Mulheren mentioned the Economic Development and Finance Corporation (EDFC) and West Company and the Resource Conservation District, none of which amount to anywhere near the multi-million dollar deficit even if they were completely eliminated. They would make even less difference if they were partially cut. We have seen nothing on any recent agenda about cutting the budgets for those non-profits. Nevertheless, Mulheren insisted that “Programs will have to be cut.”

Mulheren did not mention any staff cuts however, even though most of the County’s general fund goes for salaries, not “programs.”

The podcast dudes asked, somewhat awkwardly, “Why can’t you make more money?”

Instead of addressing the rather obvious tax collection deficit, Mulheren said the problem in Mendocino County is that there are “lots of back-to-the-landers” who put up buildings with “no permits, no anything!”

There are probably some pot growers who put up some unpermitted buildings many of which are now abandoned, but those growers are not of the back-to-the-land generation. Most “back-to-the-landers” are in their 60s or older now and very few of them are building buildings with “no permits, no anything.” (They may have done so in the past however, perhaps that’s what Mulheren is talking about.)

To solve this supposed back-to-the-lander problem Mulheren thinks the County might have to hire an outside firm to get those back-to-the-lander buildings on the tax rolls.

Trouble is, even if some perhaps mythical unpermitted back-to-the-lander buildings were added to the tax rolls it wouldn’t help the deficit much, especially not in the short-term.

Mulheren would do better to question staff about what they’re doing to collect unpaid taxes due. But Mulheren probably thinks that such direct questions would be “disrespectful” to staff, which might be interpreted as criticism or crossfire and therefore must be avoided at all costs.

Neither Mulheren nor the podcast dudes ever got around to asking about Mulheren’s other four top five issues they inquired about earlier.

MATHEWSON GUILTY OF MISDEMEANOR DRUNK DRIVING

A Mendocino County Superior Court jury returned from its deliberations late Wednesday morning to announce it had found the trial defendant guilty as charged.

Defendant Aaron Vaughn Mathewson, age 39, of Healdsburg, was convicted of driving a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol, and driving a motor vehicle with a blood alcohol .08 or greater, both as misdemeanors.

The defendant and his passenger were stopped just before 2 o’clock in the morning on October 1st of last year near the fairgrounds in Ukiah when their vehicle was seen drifting between lanes. The defendant performed poorly on field sobriety tests and subsequent breath tests indicated his blood alcohol level was .14/.13.

The law enforcement agencies that gathered the evidence last October and presented testimony at this week’s trial were the Ukiah Police Department and the California Department of Justice forensic crime laboratory.

The attorney who presented the People’s evidence to the jury was Deputy District Attorney Joshua Hopps.

Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Keith Faulder presided over the trial which took place over portions of three consecutive days.

THANKS FOR NOTHING, BOB

Editor:

California Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas threw 4 million households under the proverbial bus when he killed a bill to protect ratepayers like you and me. Now those 4 million households will see a $24 hike in their monthly utility bills (“Power bills to change next year,” May 10). And that hike has no cap, which means very likely more to come. Shut off all your lights, unplug all your appliances, etc. None of that will make a difference because this hike isn’t about how much electricity you and I use. This hike — a monthly flat fee — is about corporate greed, in our case PG&E.

Jane Bender

Santa Rosa

OPEN UP ABOUT THE PALACE, UKIAH

To the City Council/To the Editor:

Dear Ms. Duenas;

I am writing to ask that the Ukiah City Council include a free and open discussion regarding the fate of the Palace Hotel on the Agenda of the Council’s June 5 meeting.

Some want to demolish the Palace and others want to rebuild and improve it. I am frankly astonished that the Council has taken no public position; after all, the Palace is at the City’s downtown core — an area that the City is trying mightily to improve — and it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Do you really not care what happens to this historic structure? My position is no secret. I would like to see it restored.

Why not give the people who think that can be done a chance at it?

I don’t live in Ukiah, but Ukiah has been my County Seat since 1973. The City owns a conference table that I made. I bank in Ukiah, get health care in Ukiah, shop in Ukiah, eat in Ukiah and come there for entertainment. I want to have a say in this.

Thanks for your consideration.

Tom McFadden

Boonville

UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK

Inky is extremely affectionate and wants to make friends—but he’s a little insecure. The ideal home for Inky would be one where he has lots of time with his family, plus exposure to new people and experiences. Inky is working on his leash manners and he’s such a smart boy--it won’t take him long to figure out how to be a polite walking partner! Inky was very mellow in the Meet & Greet Room, where he quietly relaxed out with staff and volunteers. We think Inky would enjoy a canine buddy to play with in his forever home. This adorable dog is about 11 months old and 50 pounds.

To see all of our canine and feline guests, and for information about our services, programs, and events, visit: mendoanimalshelter.com  Join us every first Saturday of the month for our MEET THE DOGS Adoption Event at the shelter. We're on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/mendoanimalshelter/  For information about adoptions please call 707-467-6453.

LIBRARY, SACRED COW OF UKIAH

by Tommy Wayne Kramer

If any inattentive adult has any lingering doubt about the value of Ukiah’s library, some fog-clearing clarity is on its way.

Our library, subsidized by everyone, gets additional largesse from dim-witted feel-good patsies who keep dumping more money down its bottomless drain from a special tax giving those who run it even more money to waste.

Which brings us to a big special May 23 event to promote a promotion that needs no promoting: A movie about bicycle lanes and sundry fringe alternatives to streets, cars and sensible transportation.

A movie on the need for bike lanes in 2024. Jeez. Like it’s 1975 and no one knows about bike lanes and safety and helmets and yellow lycra pants to make your fanny look fabulous.

What next? “Library to Host Film on Recycling Benefits”? After that, “The Importance of Good Nutrition,” and “When Out at Night, Wear White!”

But what else can the library do?

Here’s a suggestion: Shut the doors, turn off the lights, make the bookmobile a food truck. Done. Quick, easy, cheap. If the Ukiah library weren’t useless why would it be trying to lure in customers with fingerpainting classes?

Technology changes things. There is a reason there are no more anvil factories in Mendocino County, and there are reasons there are no video rental stores. Check the Yellow Pages for TV repair shops.

How many telephone booth installation workers have lost their jobs in the last 30 years? Try buying a CB radio. Go get the new Taylor Swift album at the record store. Ask for a spare tire in your 2024 Chevy Impala.

Technology: love it, hate it, avoid it when you can, is forever disrupting everything society grows comfortable with. Newspapers have disappeared all across the land, and not because they ran out of reporters.

Is there some reason libraries should stand immune to these forces? Everyone knows there are more places to read than ever before, and on the list of reading outlets libraries rank very low.

Information? A library is the last place you’d go to find out anything, unless you didn’t have a computer or cell phone, which means you’re in jail or dead. Even people my age know about Google, but ask a 40-year old to explain the Dewey Decimal System or the card catalogue.

So, inevitably, we have Ukiah library employees screening free movies about the joys and necessities of bike lanes. Be realistic: If library staff were to hand out $10 bills, free snacks and lemonade to all who came to see the movie, one quart of lemonade would be sufficient. Two or three eight-ounce glasses. Two or three chairs.

Fun Fact: The movie makes a point of scolding the world (or at least those of us not riding a bicycle at the moment) about the dreadful increase in bike fatalities over the years. Then, and with no hint of irony, the filmmakers and their beanie-brained followers insist the future demands more bicyclists and more bike lanes.

---

‘FIRST, TEAR DOWN OLD STUFF’

For an example of city leaders at the peak of incompetence, consider the sad, sordid saga of the tin shed building at Perkins and Main Street, recent home of the Dragon’s Lair.

Some bank wanted a spot on East Perkins, so the city bullied the Dragon’s Lair out of its longtime, popular shop. The city sidestepped its own guidelines on historic properties, told lies about the building’s past, got the building condemned, then toasted themselves with crystal champagne flutes for a job well done.

Then the bank backed out of the deal that never was, and Ukiah gets left with yet another (in a long list) of old, historic, valuable properties standing empty. Good work. Someone at city hall just got a promotion and an “Employee of the Month” award.

Meantime, the best and only serious proposal to get the Palace Hotel off its collapsed foundation and rebuilt was developed over the past year. A woman with 24 carat credentials in resurrecting similar California hotels came up with the money and the plans.

Did the city step in to help the first offer in 40 years to save the Palace a reality? No, the city did not. The city didn’t offer to run interference to block the usual gaggle of dreaming whiners with no money. Nor did the city agree to make the building process as smooth and easy as it did to pave the way for the streetscape.

Instead it allowed yet another half-baked developer make a last-ditch pitch to knit together a hazy scheme involving Indian tribes and federal grants to generate free cash for his imaginary project. Same guy is many slow years into doing whatever he’s doing to fix the old Satellite Motel on South State across from the old BofA building (also empty for years).

BILL KIMBERLIN:

I am quite fond of these rocks which the local Indians called, "Grandfather Rocks". One time I came up and they looked like they had moved. But since that wasn't possible I ignored it. However, another time they had clearly moved. "What the hell". Earthquake? Took awhile to figure it out but I did. It was wild pigs pushing them around searching for truffles. With these oak trees at a certain time of year there are quite a few truffles growing.

TO ALL WHO CARE ABOUT WHAT OUR COUNTY ANIMAL CARE SERVICES IS DOING FOR OUR LOST, ABANDONED AND SURRENDERED ANIMALS IN MENDOCINO COUNTY.

Animal Care Services will host a Community Meeting on Thursday, May 30th, from 4-5 pm at the Mendocino County Board Chambers and on Zoom. This meeting aims to provide insights into departmental operations, including animal rescue and shelter management, and to gather feedback and suggestions to enhance our service to the community.

(Carol Lillis)

IMAGINE MY NON-SURPRISE WHEN…

Editor:

I received my PG&E statement and there was a California Climate Credit, which was a pleasant surprise. Additionally, there were five inserts — one of which was another “Notice of Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s Request to Increase Rates …” I have a rhetorical question: Is there ever going to be a time when our PG&E statements will not include a flyer about a rate increase? Just wondering.

Audrey J. Chapman

Sonoma

ED NOTES

TRUMP says Biden ought to take a drug test before their upcoming debates. Trump could stand some basic testing himself, but Biden did seem oddly animated for his state of the union address as he barked out a reality visible only to him and his Democrat doo wop chorus who lept to their feet for standing o's at every fantasy. Remember Doctor Feelgood who shot up celebrities with an invigorating potion of vitamins and amphetamine? Old guy like Biden can't do a whole lotta speed, but on special occasions when his handlers can't hide him…

WELL, the Biden-Trump debates, if they come off, are another measure of the radical rhetorical drop off from the Lincoln-Douglas arguments about slavery. Lincoln wanted to keep slavery from spreading to the new states, Douglas was for it, and to think that they wrote their own speeches.

THIS PROVOCATIVE REMARK wafted out of cyberspace the other day: “Old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting has been replaced by fake people who’ve never set foot in any of the neighborhoods they write about — because they don’t have feet.”

MARK SCARAMELLA of the beloved Boonville weekly has both feet and he gets over the hill to Ukiah every Friday, although he hasn't stopped in the supervisors or their hard-hitting administration lately because the on-line video is already about as much of them as he can stand. He still walks to many local Community Services District meetings however.

THE LOCAL JOURNALO-IRONY is that the average Mendo person is probably better informed these days, at least about his own neighborhood, than when he depended entirely on paper newspapers, television and radio, what with all the local blogs and other on-line bulletin boards. Thirty years ago, information on purely local Mendo affairs was available only through cringing community-based newspapers.

HOW WELL-INFORMED are locals about Mendo government? Not very, unless they're reading the ava. The grim media fact is that most people, here, there and everywhere get most of their information about the world beyond their living rooms from television, resulting, ultimately, in Trump vs. Biden.

A READER WRITES: “There's always at least one letter in each AVA that causes the darker ink to spill down the page and into the next column, although now that the ava is on-line you seem out of ed replies. I hope someone else gets it, but you're really being stubborn these days (or maybe I just noticed). It comes through clearly that you just don’t like the left as it is comprised around your locale. Don’t you have goofy right-wing people who believe goofy things who not only live there but run the place and publish the newspapers? Aren’t we all goofy? We Americans may be the most insular people who ever lived. We have too much time and money. Our bad choices don’t really hurt us all that much. We can be unemployed and still drink beer and watch football. We watch way too much TV. I think all of this contributes to a low national IQ and a country full of half wits. Why you focus on the goofiness of the left is interesting to me. Is it that you hold them to a higher sanity standard? It really just sounds like a personal grudge.”

ED REPLY: First off, there isn't a left here or anywhere in the United States in any organized sense of the much abused term, these days promiscuously applied to conservative Democrats and honest liberals alike by the nascent fascist movement represented by Trump. I do hold libs to a higher standard simply because they claim to represent the high ground and more often than not, don't, but your characterization of our fellow citizens as a bunch of slobs and half-wits too stupified by their own sloth and television to distinguish truth from untruth is not only untrue it belongs on the political right, not the left. As the American jury system should have demonstrated to all of us years ago, any group of random citizens is almost always able to sift the facts and arrive at the truth. It's grim out there, though, with rolling, unaddressed catastrophes gaining momentum, and the political choice is Biden-Trump, twin disasters, while the local libs, as they have since McGovern, gear up for Genocide Joe because Trump represents “the end of democracy,” as if it hasn't ended in a system where Bezos and Musk get a million votes and we have one to cast for No Choice but more of the same.

MARK SCARAMELLA ADDS: In addition, most, if not all, Mendocino County officials consider themselves to be “liberal” and therefore, as public officials, they and their supporters should be subject to greater scrutiny and criticism. It is nearly impossible these days in Mendocino County to get elected as any kind of conservative. (Remember Wendy Roberts, a registered Democrat who lived on the Coast who ran against Dan Hamburg? Even as a liberal woman, she lost because she wasn’t “liberal” enough for the Fifth District.) We have heard that Supervisor-elect Madeline Cline is a registered Republican, not that her politics came up during her election. I would challenge the reader to name one “liberal” thing that all these liberal local officials have done for the greater good of Mendocino County besides pro forma proclamations and self-serving statements. As the Editor has said the only liberal who tried to propose liberal things was the late Ukiah City Council Phil Baldwin and he seldom got the support of his fellow Ukiah liberals for his proposals. PS. Name one local liberal who has openly advocated for the California Medicare For All bill that recently failed to even make it out of committee in the liberal state senate.

OUR RESIDENT GRUMP, Harv Reading, wrote: “What’s the big deal about [Bill] Maher? He was a mildly humorous TV show host who got boring very quickly as I recall. I’m soooooo glad I canceled pay TV, back in 2011, when the satellite outfit tried to force me to go back to paying for junk I had trimmed out just a few months before. No more of the crap for me!”

I DON'T THINK MAHER was ever funny, and was surprised that Maureen Dowd came out so strong for a guy who is simply stating the political obvious. Of course compared to the other unfunny little ironists pounding on Trump every night, Maher is a virtual tower of truth, but like much of popular culture, I just don't understand his popularity.

THE LAST TIME I was in Lakeport, I'd hoped the used book store on the main drag was still open. It wasn’t. Next stop, the Standard Station. I asked the young woman behind the inside counter where I could find the road over the hill to Hopland. All my years here and I'd never driven it from the east. The clerk appeared to be in her early twenties. “I don’t know,” she said. If you don’t mind me asking, Miss, how long have you lived in Lakeport? “All my life,” she replied, smiling. “I’ve never been to Hopland.” Oh, my dear, what splendors await you! I said. She laughed. “I hardly ever go anywhere,” she explained. I wanted to ask her why she never went anywhere but two people were in line behind me. The Hopland road was about a mile from where we spoke.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Sunday, May 19, 2024

SAMUEL CALDWELL, Potter Valley. Gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, DUI causing bodily injury.

ARTEAGA DAMIAN, Cloverdale/Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs.

CHRISTOPHER GARCIA, Ukiah. Parole violation.

SANTOS GONZALEZ-ESQUIVEL, Ukiah. DUI, domestic abuse, probation violation.

SHANNON KIDD, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, parole violation.

FLORENCE MENDEZ, Willits. Domestic battery.

LINDSAY MOLINERO, Ukiah. DUI.

ROBERT MORENO, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, registration tampering.

RHONDA MOTTS, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, probation violation, resisting.

PHILLIP WINTERS, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, probation violation.

DAVID ZEGLINSKI, Leechburg, Pennsylvana/Ukiah. Probation revocation.

FARMWORKERS CALL FOR HIGHER WAGES AS GUESTS TASTE WINES AT HEALDSBURG EVENT

Workers and supporters passed out flyers calling for wages of $25 an hour or $250 for each ton of picked grapes

by Jeremy Hay

Farmworkers rallied Saturday against the backdrop of a signature high-end celebration of Sonoma County culture, calling for higher wages and disaster pay.

As hundreds of guests of the Healdsburg Wine and Food Experience — some of whom paid up to $4,500 to attend a full slate of the 3-day weekend’s events — sampled food and wine under tents set up near the city’s downtown Plaza, more than 100 farmworkers and supporters marched nearby with signs demanding “dignified wages.”

“My goal is for them to listen to the workers,” said Cecilia Rodriguez, who said she’d been working in the county’s vineyards since 1999. “We believe that what we’re asking for is fair: that they pay us the salary we deserve.”

Organizers of the march pointed to other developments as signs that their campaign of several years is having an impact: a $2 million Sonoma County disaster relief fund for lower-income residents including undocumented people and workers in low-wage sectors such as agriculture and tourism; a $328,000 settlement with a vineyard manager over illegal labor practices; and the adoption of hazard pay guarantees at several companies including Boeschen Vineyards in Napa.

On Saturday, workers and their supporters passed out flyers calling for wages of $25 an hour or $250 for each ton of picked grapes.

“It’s just putting real attention on where the wealth of this industry is coming from, right? It comes from farmworkers. And at an event that is celebrating wine, it’s really important that workers’ voices are heard,” said Davida Sotelo Escobedo, communications and research coordinator at North Bay Jobs with Justice, a labor rights coalition that helped organize the Saturday demonstration. “Workers aren't making enough in this industry.”

Reached by phone early Saturday evening, Kristen Green, a public affairs official with Healdsburg Wine and Food Experience, said she couldn’t comment at that moment.

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

YOUR DOG’S BREED COULD BAN YOU FROM GETTING HOME INSURANCE IN CALIFORNIA

by Danielle Echeverria

As many Californians scramble to find homeowners insurance coverage amid cutbacks by major carriers, they may have a surprising variable to contend with: what kind of dog they own.

Homeowners insurance often covers dog bite liability expenses, but some insurance companies will not insure homeowners with certain types of dogs. While it is not a new practice, it is not widely advertised, and the types of dogs banned are often hidden in insurance companies’ state filings. Some states ban the practice, but California does not.

A Chronicle analysis of state insurance filings found that most major home insurers in California ban some dog breeds, most often pit bulls, rottweilers, Doberman pinschers, Akitas and chows. Those that don’t ban dogs by breed instead ask for an individual dog’s bite history.

Brian Sullivan, a Bay Area insurance broker, said that it’s the property owner’s responsibility to know what their policy allows — though he added that before putting together a quote, a good agent will ask homeowners if they have a dog and, if so, what breed. Questions about dogs might also appear on an insurance application, he said.

Sullivan added that if a dog of any breed has a bite history, it is typically difficult to get any animal liability coverage while the dog is in the home.

Claims related to dog bites and other dog-related injuries cost homeowners insurers $1.12 billion last year, according to the Insurance Information Institute. California, the most populous state, has the largest number of claims in the U.S., with more than 2,000 last year.

Here are the major California insurers’ policies on dogs:

State Farm

Only bans dogs with a history of biting; those trained as an attack, guard, personal protection or fighting dog; or those that demonstrate high levels of anxiety or temperament. “While a dog’s breed may dictate what the dog looks like, how a dog reacts to people or situations isn’t guaranteed by breed or type. Most bites or serious injuries are a perfect storm of situation and circumstance,” the company said on its website.

CSAA

Bans “any vicious dogs, exotic and/or dangerous animals/pets (even if excluded from liability coverage).” It defines vicious dogs as those with an ancestry of Akita, chow, Doberman pinscher, pit bulls and pit bull type, which includes, but is not limited to, American pit bull terriers, American Staffordshire terriers, and Staffordshire bull terriers; Presa Canario; rottweiler; or wolf, wolf hybrid or wolf dog; as well as any dog used or bred for fighting or trained to attack people or animals. Excludes any dogs used as service or guide dogs.

Allstate

Bans any dog that has a previous bite history or displays vicious or dangerous tendencies.

Farmers

Bans dogs that are a purebred or hybrid/mix consisting of any of the following breeds: Akita, boxer, bulldog, chow chow, Doberman pinscher, German shepherd, mastiff/bull mastiff, Perro de Presa Canario, or rottweiler; pit bull (American pit bull terrier, American Staffordshire terrier, Staffordshire bull terrier, Staffordshire terrier); wolf hybrid; animals with a previous bite history; or dogs with a propensity for dangerous/aggressive behavior.

Liberty Mutual

Bans purebred or mixes with Akita, chow, Doberman pinscher, pit bull, Presa Canario, rottweiler, Staffordshire bull terrier, wolf hybrid.

Travelers

Bans pets that have previously bitten or caused injury and dogs of the following breeds: Akita, Alaskan malamute, American bull terrier, American Staffordshire terrier, chow chow, Doberman pinscher, mastiff, pit bulls, Presa Canario, rottweiler, Staffordshire bull terrier, any wolf hybrid or any mix or variation of these breeds.

Auto Club

Bans animals with dangerous propensities (animals with a natural inclination to be able or likely to inflict injury) including, but not limited to, dangerous wild animals (animals not ordinarily tame or domesticated that are able or likely to inflict injury); wolf-hybrids and guard dogs trained to attack; and the following purebred and mixed-breed dogs: any pit bull type of dog (also known as American pit bull terrier, American Staffordshire terrier, Staffordshire bull terrier, bull terrier, miniature bull terrier, American bulldog, Dogo Argentino, or alpha blue bulldog), Rottweiler, Akita, also known as Japanese Akita or Akita Inu, Canary dog, also known as Presa Canario or Perro de Presa Canario.

Mercury

Bans Akitas, Cane Corsos, chows, pit bulls, Presa Canario (Canary dog), rottweilers, Staffordshire bull terriers, wolf hybrids, zoo animals, exotic animals, or any animal with a biting history. Any “mixed breed” dog that has any unacceptable breed as part of the dog’s lineage is unacceptable. Households cannot have more than three dogs.

(SF Chronicle)

THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF ILLEGAL WEED

On May 16 the Justice Department formally moved to reclassify marijuana from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act to Schedule III. This move will not affect the legality of recreational use and sales on the federal level. It is, however, the biggest step yet toward abolishing the legal fiction that cannabis is as dangerous as heroin. And it puts marijuana — used more than any other illicit drug in the world — on a pathway for fully legal recreational use, which a majority of Americans support.…

nytimes.com/2024/05/20/opinion/marijuana-legalization-regulation.html

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

On the debates, I don’t think that Trump should allow Biden to dictate the conditions. If Jake Tapper on CNN, then Hannity on Fox news. Trump bellows that he’ll debate Biden anywhere, anyplace, anytime. The Democrats adroitly counter with their terms, putting Trump in a box. Trump could actually lose, after Biden is given his “state of the union cocktail.” Fox news poll says it’s Trump at 49%, Biden at 48%, whatever polls are worth. Truly boggles the mind that it’s so close after all that’s happened.

‘WE’LL SEE YOU AT YOUR HOUSE’: HOW FEAR AND MENACE ARE TRANSFORMING POLITICS

Public officials from Congress to City Hall are now regularly subjected to threats of violence. It’s changing how they do their jobs.

by Danny Hakim, Ken Bensinger and Eileen Sullivan

One Friday last month, Jamie Raskin, a Democratic congressman from Maryland, spent a chunk of his day in court securing a protective order.

It was not his first. Mr. Raskin, who played a leading role in Donald J. Trump’s second impeachment hearing, said he received about 50 menacing calls, emails and letters every month that are turned over to the Capitol Police.

His latest court visit was prompted by a man who showed up at his house and screamed in his face about the Covid-19 vaccine, Mr. Trump’s impeachment and gender-related surgeries. Nearly two years earlier, the same man, with his 3-year-old son in his arms, had yelled profanities at Mr. Raskin at a July 4 parade, according to a police report.

“I told the judge I don’t care about him getting jail time. He just needs some parenting lessons,” Mr. Raskin said.

Mr. Raskin was far from the only government official staring down the uglier side of public service in America in recent weeks. Since late March, bomb threats closed libraries in Durham, N.C.; Reading, Mass.; and Lancaster, Pa., and suspended operations at a courthouse in Franklin County, Pa. In Bakersfield, Calif., an activist protesting the war in Gaza was arrested after telling City Council members: “We’ll see you at your house. We’ll murder you.”

A Florida man was sentenced to 14 months in prison for leaving a voice mail message promising to “come kill” Chief Justice John Roberts.

And Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, refused to rule out violence if he were to lose in November. “It always depends on the fairness of the election,” he said in an interview late last month.

This was just a typical month in American public life, where a steady undercurrent of violence and physical risk has become a new normal. From City Hall to Congress, public officials increasingly describe threats and harassment as a routine part of their jobs. Often masked by online anonymity and propelled by extreme political views, the barrage of menace has changed how public officials do their work, terrified their families and driven some from public life altogether.

By almost all measures, the evidence of the trend is striking. Last year, more than 450 federal judges were targeted with threats, a roughly 150 percent increase from 2019, according to the United States Marshals Service. The U.S. Capitol Police investigated more than 8,000 threats to members of Congress last year, up more than 50 percent from 2018. The agency recently added three full-time prosecutors to handle the volume.

More than 80 percent of local officials said they had been threatened or harassed, according to a survey conducted in 2021 by the National League of Cities.

“People are threatening not just the prosecutor, the special counsel, the judge but also family members,” said Ronald L. Davis, director of the U.S. Marshals Service. Lisa Monaco, the deputy attorney general, said she saw “an environment where disagreement is increasingly tipping over” into “violent threats.”

It is still rare for those threats to tip into action, experts said, but such instances have increased. Some capture national attention for weeks. The mass shootings at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 and the Tops Friendly supermarket in Buffalo in 2022 were both carried out by perpetrators who expressed extreme right-wing views. Trump supporters’ riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was one of the largest acts of political violence in modern American history.

Others — including an Ohio man’s shootout with state troopers after the F.B.I. searched Mr. Trump’s home and shootings at the homes of Democratic officials in New Mexico — fall out of the headlines quickly.

Surveys have found increasing public support for politicized violence among both Republicans and Democrats in recent years. A study released last fall by the University of California, Davis, found that nearly one in three respondents considered violence justified to advance some political objectives, including “to stop an election from being stolen.”

“Although actual acts of political violence in America are still quite low compared to some other countries, we’re now in a position where there has been enough violence that the threats are credible,” said Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who studies political violence.

Violence — and the threat of it — has been a part of American politics since the nation’s founding. But experts describe this moment as particularly volatile, thanks in great part to social media platforms that can amplify anonymous outrage, spread misinformation and conspiracy theories and turn a little-known public employee into a target.

No politician has harnessed the ferocious power of those platforms like Mr. Trump. The former president has long used personal attacks as a strategy to intimidate his adversaries.

As he campaigns to return to the White House, to the White House, he has turned that tactic on the judges and prosecutors involved in his various legal cases, all of whom have subsequently been threatened.

Democrats by and large have been the loudest voices in trying to quell political violence, although many on the right have accused them of insufficiently condemning unruly left-wing protesters on college campuses and at the homes of Supreme Court justices. After Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, warned in 2020 that Supreme Court justices would “pay the price” if they eliminated federal abortion rights, Chief Justice Roberts called the statement “dangerous.”

Researchers say the climate of intimidation is thriving on political division and distrust, and feeding off other social ills — including mental illness, addiction and prejudice. Women are more commonly threatened than men, as are people of color, according to a Princeton University survey of local officials.

There is little research on the political views of those behind the onslaught of abuse. Some surveys show that Republican officeholders are more likely to report being targeted, often from members of their own party. Research does show, however, that recent acts of political violence are more likely to be carried out by perpetrators aligned with right-wing causes and beliefs.

Public officials at all levels are changing how they do their jobs in response. Many report feeling less willing to run again or seek higher office, and some are reluctant to take on controversial issues. Turnover among election workers has spiked since 2020; even librarians describe feeling vulnerable.

“These attacks are not coming from people who are looking for solutions,” said Clarence Anthony, the executive director of the National League of Cities. “They’re looking for confrontation.”

Joe Chimenti started getting death threats about a year after he took office as chairman of the board of supervisors in Shasta County, Calif., in 2019. The normally sleepy county in Northern California had been thrown into tumult by a wave of anti-government sentiment that started with the coronavirus pandemic. It grew worse after Mr. Trump falsely claimed that the 2020 election had been stolen.

Tired of violent threats and constant disruptions at meetings, Mr. Chimenti, a Republican, decided not to run for a second term. Elected in his place was a man who had repeated conspiracy theories about voting machines and who tried to hire a county executive who had called on Shasta County to secede from California.

Mr. Chimenti said he’d had enough of the abuse. “I got into this to make a difference, but I thought, Why do I want to put up with this?”

---

‘I Just Don’t Answer My Phone’

Fred Upton, who served as a Republican representative from Michigan for 36 years, was used to taking heat from the public. But he had never experienced anything like the backlash from his decision to vote to impeach Mr. Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

He received so many threats that he asked the local police to set up motion-activated cameras outside his home in Michigan. He installed panic buttons in his district offices and stopped notifying the public in advance of his speaking engagements. He also added a second exit door to his House office in Washington in case he or his staff needed to escape from an intruder.

After he voted in favor of President Biden’s infrastructure bill in late 2021, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a fellow Republican, called him a traitor and posted his office number on her social media accounts.

“I hope you die,” one caller said in a voice mail message he received soon after. “I hope everybody in your [expletive] family dies.”

When Mr. Upton left office after his district was redrawn, he assumed the threats would stop. But he continues to receive menacing calls and letters at his home in Western Michigan.

“I just don’t answer my phone anymore, ever,” he said.

Political violence in American is not new. Left-wing activists set off bombs in the Capitol in 1983 and in 1971; five lawmakers were shot by Puerto Rican nationalists in the House chamber in 1954; a pro-German professor planted a bomb in a Senate reception room in 1915. Four presidents have been assassinated.

For decades after the Civil War, it was common for white Southerners to threaten Republican lawmakers, said Kate Masur, a professor of history at Northwestern University. “It’s hard for us to imagine how violent the United States was in the 19th century.”

But researchers view the internet as a new accelerant. Nearly three-quarters of all threats are not made in person, according to a recent Princeton analysis, making it difficult for law enforcement to identify the source.

Technology has facilitated other forms of often-anonymous harassment as well. “Swatting” — making hoax 911 calls designed to set off a police response to a target’s home — has become more common, with a spate of recent incidents involving lawmakers, mayors, judges and the special counsel investigating Mr. Trump. In January, Jay Ashcroft, the Republican secretary of state in Missouri, was ordered from his house at gunpoint by armed officers responding to a bogus call that there had been a shooting at his home. No one has been charged in the event.

“Doxxing,” or publishing personal information online — thus giving people an opportunity to harass or threaten — has been used against a wide range of public officials and even jurors in the Trump cases.

For federal lawmakers, the prospect of physical harm has long been part of the job — one that was painfully illustrated by the shooting in 2011 that gravely wounded Gabby Giffords, then an Arizona congresswoman, and by the assault on the Republican congressional baseball team in 2017 by a gunman upset by Mr. Trump’s election. On Friday, the man who had broken into the home of Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker, and bludgeoned her husband with a hammer was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Many public officials say they have become accustomed to managing their fears and insist they are not affected. But there is evidence that the threats and intimidation can influence decisions.

Senator Mitt Romney, a Republican from Utah who is retiring at the end of this year, told a biographer that some G.O.P. lawmakers voted not to impeach and convict Mr. Trump after the Jan. 6 attack because they were afraid for their safety if they crossed his supporters. Mr. Romney did not identify the legislators by name and declined an interview for this article.

Andrew Hitt, the former head of the Republican Party in Wisconsin, agreed to go along with the Trump campaign’s failed scheme to overturn the 2020 election because he was “scared to death,” he told “60 Minutes.”

“It was not a safe time,” he said.

‘Who Is the WORST?’

Four days after Mr. Trump was indicted in August in a federal election interference case, the presiding judge, Tanya S. Chutkan, received an alarming voice mail message at her chambers.

“If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you,” the caller said, according to court documents.

Investigators tracked the message to Abigail Jo Shry, a 43-year-old Texas woman who was already facing state charges related to similar threats against two Texas state senators, a Democrat and a Republican.

Ms. Shry has a history of drug and alcohol abuse and “gets all her information from the internet,” her father testified. “You can get anything you want to off the internet. And, you know, it will work you up.” (Ms. Shry’s lawyer declined to comment.)

Mr. Trump has been relentless in attacking the judges overseeing the criminal and civil cases that have confronted him of late. Last month, he asked, “Who is the WORST, most EVIL and most CORRUPT JUDGE?” in a social media post that named the judges.

They are being inundated. At least three of them, including Judge Chutkan, have been swatted. In February, a woman was sentenced to three years in prison for threatening Judge Aileen Cannon, who is overseeing the federal criminal case against Mr. Trump involving mishandling classified documents.

Last month, a resident of Lancaster, N.Y., pleaded guilty to making death threats against Judge Arthur F. Engoron, who presided over a civil fraud trial against Mr. Trump in Manhattan this year, as well as threats against Letitia James, the New York attorney general, who brought the case.

The judges have been clear that Mr. Trump’s posts make an impact. “When defendant has publicly attacked individuals, including on matters related to this case, those individuals are consequently threatened and harassed,” Judge Chutkan wrote in a gag order trying to limit Mr. Trump’s public remarks.

The prospect of being a target for abuse has already deterred some from participating in cases involving Mr. Trump. During a February court hearing in Atlanta, former Gov. Roy Barnes of Georgia, a Democrat, said that Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, had asked him to lead the prosecution of Mr. Trump for election interference in Georgia.

Mr. Barnes declined, explaining: “I wasn’t going to live with bodyguards for the rest of my life.”

Ms. Willis has left her home amid threats, and the county pays about $4,000 a month for her new housing. Her staff was outfitted with bulletproof vests. This month, a Californian was indicted after threatening in the comment section of a YouTube video to kill her “like a dog.”

Intimidation Close to Home

Local officials are feeling the pressure.

Election officials — from secretaries of state to poll workers — have faced hostility and abuse after Mr. Trump’s false claims of fraud in the 2020 election, leading to resignations and difficulty recruiting and retaining staff members and volunteers. Such threats “endanger our democracy itself,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said this week.

Local libraries have also become targets amid a heated campaign to ban books and cancel events aimed at members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community. Bomb threats were reported by 32 of the American Library Association’s member institutions last year, compared with two the year before and none in 2021.

Carolyn Foote, a retired librarian in Austin, Texas, who co-founded a group that supports librarians, said her members had become used to being called “pedophile, groomer, pornographer.”

Proving that ugly and hostile language has crossed the line from First Amendment-protected speech to credible threat can be difficult. Experts say prosecutions became even harder last year after the Supreme Court raised the bar for what qualifies as a credible threat, ruling that the person making the threat has to “have some subjective understanding of the threatening nature of his statements.”

In Bakersfield, Calif., a lawyer for Riddhi Patel, the activist who spoke of murdering City Council members after urging them to take up a Gaza cease-fire resolution, said her statement was not a crime. She has pleaded not guilty to 21 felony charges.

“It’s clear that this was not a true criminal threat, which under California law must be, among other things, credible, specific, immediate and unconditional,” said Peter Kang, the public defender of Kern County, which includes Bakersfield. “Instead, what we hear are Ms. Patel’s strong, passionate expressions, which fall within the bounds of constitutionally protected speech.”

Local officials say they have become accustomed to dealing with vitriol and anger that they can do little about. In Nevada County, Calif., Natalie Adona, the county clerk and recorder, said employees received a barrage of threats in 2020 from people who did not accept the election results, and again in 2022 over a mask mandate.

Ms. Adona said the county secured a restraining order against one of three people who forced their way into the building. But her staff has had to learn to endure and defuse confrontations.

“A lot of what we have experienced falls into this gray area,” Ms. Adona said. “It makes you look over your shoulder.”

(NY Times)

EXERCISE FOR LOWER BLOOD PRESSURE

It’s not which workout you choose, but how you do it.

by Amanda Loudin

Hypertension affects more than half of America’s adult population. It is a leading cause of stroke and heart attack, and often comes with no obvious early symptoms.

One of the best ways to both prevent high blood pressure and lower it is by working out (as well as an improved diet). That’s in part because consistent and frequent exercise prompts your body to form new capillaries.

“It’s like producing extra release valves for your heart,” said John Bauer, the education content director for the International Sports Sciences Association. “So there’s less pressure on the existing blood vessels.”

But which exercises are the most effective? Numerous studies have found that yoga, wall sits and cardiovascular exercise are particularly helpful for lowering blood pressure. Tai chi is another gentle, low-stress exercise that some studies suggest is especially good for hypertension.

“Any exercise will help, but it’s the framework you put around it that matters most,” said Dr. Lili Barouch, the director of sports cardiology and an associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University.

This framework should follow a few rules around things like intensity, regularity and effective warm-ups, and include regular consultations with your doctor. Blood pressure spikes can cause health emergencies, though other effects are more subtle. If at any point you feel lightheaded or dizzy, stop immediately and check in with a health care provider.

Blood pressure dos and don’ts

If you are dealing with elevated blood pressure and you are new to exercise (or out of practice), take a longer warm-up than you might otherwise, Mr. Bauer said. Spend at least 10 minutes at that lower intensity, aiming for a perceived exertion level of about three out of 10.

“If you go right from resting to working, you’ll have a bigger spike in heart rate and also blood pressure,” he said.

But don’t be afraid to get your heart rate up once you are ready. “Unless you have severely elevated blood pressure, it’s OK go for a vigorous walk, for instance,” Dr. Barouch said. That could also mean walking faster, hiking on a trail or carrying weight.

Rather than focusing strictly on your heart rate, pay attention to how your body feels. This is especially true if you are on blood pressure medication, as some may blunt your heart’s response, throwing off your goals.

If you are concerned about blood pressure and new to fitness, don’t try jumping into high intensity interval training, which causes more rapid fluctuations in your heart rate and blood pressure. You also want to avoid exercises that require rapidly getting up and down from the floor, like burpees, said Dr. Melissa Tracy, a cardiologist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

“Burpees require a lot of muscles and changing positions, and you might not breathe properly through them,” she said. With consistent exercise and a normalized blood pressure, however, you can make burpees a longer-term goal.

The same holds true for heavy weight lifting, during which you might inadvertently hold your breath through your effort, Dr. Tracy said. “If you’re hypertensive, you decrease the blood returning to your heart and your blood pressure can drop,” she added. “When you release the breath, your heart rate then shoots up and your blood pressure can overshoot.”

Once your body becomes used to exercise, gradually increase the difficulty of your routine to allow for continual progress. “Over time, you can start picking up the pace, swinging your arms, adding inclines or finding other ways to increase your heart rate,” Dr. Tracy said.

When you have finished your workout, take extra time to cool down, allowing your heart rate and blood pressure to ease back to base line.

In general, aim to exercise for at least 30 minutes, unless you find that difficult to fit into your day. “If you need to break it up into smaller increments, like 10 to 15 minutes, you can still see some improvement to your blood pressure,” Dr. Barouch said.

Once you’re accustomed to exercising for 30 minutes at a time, working up to about 60 minutes’ worth of exercise may further enhance the benefit to blood pressure. “After that, there’s no harm, but probably no additional value as far as blood pressure is concerned,” Dr. Barouch added.

Setting goals

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends doing at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity, 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity or some combination each week. That can be your goal, but while you are getting started with a fitness routine, reaching that level may not be realistic. “For some people, exercising several times a week isn’t even in play at the beginning,” Mr. Bauer said.

And while you might be tempted to cram all of your exercise into the weekend, that’s not the best way to lower your blood pressure. Instead, aim to intentionally move your body on most days. “That’s a more effective approach than being a weekend warrior,” Dr. Barouch said.

Lastly, if you have hypertension, it’s important to consult with your doctor before trying any new exercise regimens, and remember that not everyone can manage it with lifestyle changes alone.

But if you are consistent, an exercise routine can start lowering your blood pressure in as little as four weeks. Research has not definitively proven that one form is better than any other, so choose the exercise you enjoy most — you’ll be more likely to stick with it.

(NYTimes)

NO ONE IS NEUTRAL COME EUROVISION TIME

by David Yearsley

The Eurovision Song Contest cannot be neutral. There is just one winner. That winner is chosen by combining the popular cellphone votes of millions of viewers with the tallies of the five-member juries in each country. There is just one contestant—whether a soloist or an entire band—from each nation that makes it into the finals. Viewers or juries are prevented from voting for the single contestant representing their own country since that would tip the scales in favor of the most populous nations.

The host country is that of the previous winner, though last year the event was held in Liverpool, England, since the 2022 laurels had gone to the Kalush Orchestra from Ukraine, still at war with Russia. Their folksy-techno number, “Stefania,” was a mash-up of traditional song and hip-hop, and could readily be heard, at least by this jaded Musical Patriot, as a performative enactment of Ukrainian reliance on American aid, musical and/or ballistic. The rocking rustics sang in their native tongue of leaving home, of broken roads, of strong storms, and of muzzles and bullets. These Artists of Allegory wouldn’t have been so obvious as to rap about shipments of Abrams tanks.

That year the professional Eurovision juries gave the Ukrainians low marks, but the overwhelming plebiscite vote swept the musical emissaries of the embattled nation to the winner’s podium. However meager the musical merits of the Kalushes, the European populace was not neutral on Russian aggression.

The previous Ukrainian triumph had come in 2016, within two years of Russia’s annexation of Crimea. The winning “1944” was performed by Jamala, a Crimean Tatar who sang both in English and in Tatar about the forced resettlement of her ancestors by Stalin during World War II. Objecting strenuously—and officially—to this this entry as a violation of the contest’s prohibition against political content, Russia’s own Eurovision voting also reflected that distemper. Perhaps surprisingly, both the Russian and Ukrainian acts (the former, a dystopian love song to an unnamed beloved, who might as well have been Putin) received massive popular support from Eurovision voters. But the jury counts shifted the winning balance to Ukraine.

More decisive was the Song Contest’s response—one that was, by inference at least, distrustful both of populism’s unpredictability and the panels’ professionalism—to the Russian invasion of Ukraine launched on February 24th, 2022. The next day, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which runs the contest and is based in Switzerland, banned Russian participation in the event.

The politics of (non-)neutrality continue to blur Eurovision. Sweden became a member of NATO just two months ago and they were this year’s host thanks to the 2023 victory of “Tattoo” as sung by Loreen, who became only the second two-time winner of the contest. Her performance, one that began with her sandwiched between two frigid, yet luminous walls exerting a stifling containment on her lithe form, admitted, as always, of diplomatic exegesis. Wedged between Russia and the West, this embodiment of the new Sweden clawed and crooned her way toward a new sound that would soon feature a beefed-up horn-and-howitzer section whose arrangements were made in Brussels.

But as the European Union’s own political travails have demonstrated, populism is not the answer to the world’s troubles, or the contest’s: heightened geo-political tension, ground and cyber wars, far right parties on the rise, and protests against Israel’s participation. In what looked to many like panic, the EBU went so far as to ban the waving of European Union flags at this year’s event.

Something was needed simultaneously to reassure and energize the masses—and to bolster the ratings.

It was time for the royals.

Last year’s official welcome was made by Kate Middleton from a grand piano in Windsor Castle playing along virtually with the cool kids of the Kalush. Last Saturday’s four-hour-long Eurovision broadcast of the 68th annual contest also began with a princess, her entrance fittingly announced by a Masterpiece Theatre-style trumpet tune boosted into the fray with martial timpani (this sonic pageantry composed not by Mouret but Charpentier—info provided here for the benefit of those fans tracking the billboard charts of the ancien régime on their Eurovision app).

After the high-culture fanfare, viewers rode on a carpet of shimmering synths into the Swedish Royal Palace. Once inside, we followed a handsome, immaculately manicured and coiffed woman proceeding down a long hallway past white marble statues and beneath glowing oil paintings of what one suspected were her regal forbears. She was filmed in slow motion, the cuffs of her salmon-colored Chanel slacks and cruciform pearl earrings dancing elegantly to the gently throbbing electro-echo of the soundtrack.

She brushed by a flower-stuff vase the size of a back-door barbecue, hushed past doors leading to spacious staterooms and galleries with views disappearing down the enfilade. Her steps silent on the checkered black-and-white stone floor, she pivoted with a deliberateness that suggested that she hadn’t yet emerged from slow motion, though she was now in real time—whatever that is. The caption now informed us who she was: “HRH CROWN PRINCESS Victoria of Sweden.” At last, she spoke: “Welcome … to … Sweden …… I hope you will all enjoy the show … and I wish all the competitors … good luck.”

From sumptuous rooms bathed in natural light streaming through the high windows of the palace, we were teleported into the mosh pit of the Malmö Arena and the brute realities of contemporary culture: partiers with inked skin and tinted hair brandished luminous dildos, but not EU Flags. The waving of the latter had been prohibited by the EBU. This lame and lambasted move spoke to a prevailing unease, not to say fear. However elusive, neutrality was still to be yearn for—in the air of song, and on the ground too.

And so, the winner had to come from that global symbol of neutrality, Switzerland. This Alpine nation’s posture accrues significant benefits as a banking haven for scofflaw corporations and oligarchs. Switzerland is also one of the top arms producers in the world, punching way above its weight relative to the small size of its population. This year, even with the world at war, the country’s armament revenues have plummeted by a quarter because of its ban on second-hand sales of its deadly products.

Switzerland is by any geographical definition in the heart of Europe, though not in the European Union or NATO. Hallowed Swiss traditions of neutrality can in many vital respects be seen as an exercise in semantics and public relations. For centuries Switzerland dispatched mercenaries to fight in European wars. The Swiss have long known that neutrality is a lucrative business.

The Swiss Guard at the Vatican is a quaint relic of that hallowed practice of profiting from conflict. Speaking of the Pope and his garrison: why, if Australia participates in Eurovision, isn’t the Vatican in the contest too? They’ve already got the costumes and charisma and theatrical flair. Funky Francis fronts a squad of break-dancing cardinals backed by a chorus of halberd-wielding, helmeted yodelers in stripy pajamas! This year plenty of Eurovisionaries on both sides of the binary gender equation wore dresses, and some non-binary performers did too. The celebs and celibs of the curia have been wearing dresses and gowns for centuries. Eurovision 2026 in Saint Peter’s Piazza!

Eurovision champ Nemo wore a pink skirt and boa-cum-cardigan, respectively one and two shades darker than Princess Victoria’s pantsuit. His song “The Code” was not a diaphanously veiled allusion to Swiss banking protocols, but rather a high-energy affirmation of non-binary identity. The opening lines offered a brave statement of their truth: “Welcome to the show, let everybody know / I’m done playin’ the game, I’ll break out of the chains.”

In an impressive display of balance and bravura, Nemo sang in the middle of the light-lashed stage from a large metallic disc set at a steep angle and spinning on its own axis. The singer’s performing position defied all orientations except that of pop’s pleasure surge. In the end, the disk flattened to the horizontal as an image of a solar eclipse and the sun’s corona shone in the darkness behind.

Nemo would not be eclipsed.

Directly after the big win, Nemo called for the Swiss government to reverse its recent rejection of calls to include a non-binary gender category on official forms. By Wednesday, Justice Minister Beat Jans, whose name has serious popstar potential, agreed to meet with the 24-year-old Eurovision star to discuss the matter.

The government asserts that the Swiss people overwhelmingly favor the male-female dichotomy—and not just on their official documents. Even as Nemo pushes for a new kind of neutrality within Switzerland, here’s betting that, in spite of unwavering pronouncements, that the country will never join NATO, the welcome to Eurovision 2025 in Zurich by Swiss President Viola Amherd will include the biggest geopolitical surprise of the night.

(David Yearsley is a long-time contributor to CounterPunch and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. His latest book is Sex, Death, and Minuets: Anna Magdalena Bach and Her Musical Notebooks. He can be reached at dgyearsley@gmail.com.)