Mendocino County Today: Tuesday 5/28/24

Clearing | Ravens | Memorial Day | Community Lunch | Old Lie | Railcars | Fred Hakewill | Basehore Birthday | Featuring Chezidek | City Declarations | Windfan Movie | Ed Notes | Crying Uncle | Facebook Critique | Yesterday's Catch | Haight Days | Warrior Memories | Many Cats | Bill Walton | Good News | Patty & Bill | Serial Slingshoter | Replied All | Doris & Richard | Babe & Duke | 1500s | Big Daniel | McGee Scalped | Trump Entrance | Saving Democracy | Legalized Crime | Insanity Perpetuated | Tragic Accident | Coast Guard | Raised Jewish | Chomsky Sale | US Discredited | Painted Bunting

---

AN UPPER LEVEL TROUGH will move through the Pacific Northwest bringing substantial moisture and cooler temperatures to Northwest California today and tomorrow. This trough is forecasted to migrate out of the area by Wednesday evening allowing a ridge to build back. This ridge should bring us warmer temperatures and a first look at true summer-like conditions, especially for Friday when temperatures are expected to peak. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): Kind of a hazy overcast at 5am with 45F on the coast this Tuesday morning. Not sure if we have high or low clouds? Our forecast was for thick fog & drizzle which I do not see yet? Wind is back in our forecast the next 3 days which in turn should bring us clear skies.

---

---

MEMORIAL DAY

by Doug Anderson

They could not wish for a more perfect day: eighty degrees and the sky so blue they can’t look at it for fear of opening themselves to the past—a childhood in the woods or falling in love the first time, all of this in flood surge. The smell of basted steaks brings back the solidity of purpose. The grandmother naps in her sunhat, a tender breeze on her arms. A little boy turns the crank of the ice cream maker and a badminton game is in full heat, the players imagining themselves professional, getting testy and competitive until the cold beer quiets them. There’s an off-color joke (it’s allowed as long as there’s nothing as specific as condoms) and the wives gossip about the queer scoutmaster, or the man down the street who, caught in a cathouse, lost his job. It’s only old Herman sitting a few yards off in the recliner who looks beyond them into a burning village where a marine drags a wounded man by his heels behind a tank for cover and the tank backs up and runs over them both. Herman, come get some potato salad. Herman would you like another beer? Put on your hat so you don’t get those cancers. Stop moving your mouth like that —who are you talking to? He gets up and limps to the table and loads up his plate. Then goes back to his chair where he will sit, alone, and those pushed beyond trying will not come to his side and listen.

(Doug Anderson was a Navy Corpsman in a Marine rifle company in 1967.)

---

---

ON MEMORIAL DAY

by Matt Taibbi

As a boy I read Wilfred Owen’s famous poem about World War I, describing the suffering of young men sent by industrial powers to die in clouds of poison gas. It’s a warning: if you saw what Owen did, and your nights were tormented by visions of blood and death, “You would not tell with such high zest, to children ardent for some desperate glory/The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.”

Owen was killed in November 1918, a week before the Armistice. In his poems you read a soldier’s hope that boys like me would read them before they became old enough to want to prove themselves in combat. God didn’t design us to be killers, he said, noting we aren’t born with claws or talons, and a boy’s teeth are more suited for “laughing round an apple.” I know that’s true of my children, who’ll be taught to remember soldiers like Owen today.

---

---

JEFF GOLL: On this Memorial Day I remember my grandfather, Fred Hakewill, who fought and survived the battle of Saint-Mihiel in France in the first U.S. led offensive in World War I (George Patton led aggressive tank assaults from the front lines).  He was in the infantry and stormed "Over the Top" as German machine-gun fire dropped many of his fellow soldiers.  During the charge, he said he could feel bullets whizzing close past him until he made it to the trenches of the German army.  My grandfather and three fellow soldiers captured 3 German war prisoners and by the following day the Germans retaliated by saturating the conquered area with Mustard Gas that afflicted many of the American soldiers.  My grandfather was one of those, and on the ride out he told me most of the "gassed" soldiers were choking to near and total death.  A Hellish scene though he made it out alive and up until his death at 92 years of age, was always pleasant and fun to be around.   In that battle the U.S. lost the lives of 7,000 men and the Germans at least 17,500 including 10,000 captured.   War is Hell, War is a Racket and what is War good for - Absolutely Nothing, unless you gain power and money from killing your fellow human beings.  Just say No to War.

---

JUDY BASEHORE CELEBRATES HER 90TH

by Terry Sites

Judy Basehore was determined to usher in her 90th year with a bang —a really great dance party. And she succeeded.

On Saturday night May 25th the Anderson Valley Grange was filled to the gills with music, dancing, wine, revelers and song. Grazing their way through tables full of finger food and a forest of BYOB wine bottles, guests were able to forget their cares for a few hours and just dance the night away. Dean Titus and the Boot Jack Five provided live music and they never took a break! There were slow dancers and fast dancers and line dancers and hippie dancers all doing their thing. Those few who actually knew how to do fancy partner dancing were a delight to watch.

Senior Center line dance teacher Margaret Pickens had her own posse doing the cowgirl slide or the electric slide or the senior slide. Looking good! Judy was whisked off her feet by any number of ardent partners including the always-gentlemanly Reagan, ebullient Mary Daniels, and the joyful Ellen Fontaine.

I think Judy really enjoyed her own party (a lot) but it is hard to tell since she is the kind of person who always has a smile on her face. If only there were more like her there would be more 90-year birthdays to attend. (Excellent attitude award goes to Judy.)

With her slide show, mementos and artwork we all got to see evidence of a rich life well lived. As a first grade teacher, horsewoman, theater teacher, community volunteer and much more, she has done it all and done it all well.

Local readers are probably familiar with the Boot Jack Five band including: Dean Titus on guitar and vocals, Susan Clark vocalist, Craig Titus guitar, Rod Dewitt on drums, Chris Rossi on the bass, and Sue Marcott on the keyboards. Also spotted were some community members not often seen out and about.

Happy to see Charlie Hochberg, Chris Bing and Jan Wax, Lindsay Clow, Cindy Wilder, Anthony Leighton, and Barbara Bowers.

The usual suspects were also there including (among a cast of many, many more), Denver Tuttle, Jonesy and Mark, Seasha and Donde Robb and kids, Laura Baynham, Pilar Echeverria, Gregory Sims, Denise Mattei, Danny Mandelbaum, Benna Kolinsky, Janet Anderson, Lauren Keating, Gwyn Smith, Christine Clark, Eileen Pronsolino, Jeannie and JR Collins, Mary Daniels and Ross, Peggy Ridley, Reagan, Margaret Pickens, Lady Rainbow, Captain Rainbow, Sheila Leighton, Judy Nelson, Dr. Mark Apfel, Sonny, The Goodells, Cameron and his little girl, Mary Ann Grezenda and Ellen Fontaine.

The overall vibe was warm and fuzzy, lively and old-timey, just like our hostess Judy! This kind of gathering reminds us why we live in Anderson Valley. For many people today dropping into this gathering would be like time travel back to a bygone era, one of community and mutual acquaintance.

The hall looked great with western art from Judy and Rod Basehore’s personal collection everywhere. Especially fine were the woven saddle blankets lining the front of the stage and the bucking bronco posters along the walls.

A continuous slide show illuminated the life of Judy and Rod. It seems that Judy has had a twinkle in her eye and an adventurous spirit from her earliest days. Plus she has always been quite the vibrant beauty.

Judy has been publicizing this event for months and we were all crossing our fingers that she would get a good turnout. Obviously there was no need to worry as Highway 128 was lined from stem to stern with enthusiastic attendees.

I left before the band played “Happy Birthday” but no doubt they did and there were enough donated cupcakes for every single partygoer to have one. So, “Happy Birthday dear Judy, Happy Birthday to you- and many more…” Thanks for the memories and for inviting us all to celebrate your 90th with you in such grand style.

---

---

WHAT’S NEXT?

Editor,

I think that the City is way out in left field in issuing a permit to demolish the Palace Hotel. The Palace Hotel is Private Property. The City declared an emergency relative to health and safety issues seven, yes 7, months ago – November 2023 – and they did nothing these last seven months. They had required an engineering report on the building from the owner, but then decided that they did not want that after all. You may have seen the scaffolding – the City did not require or install it – that was done by the owner (according to Shannon Riley, Deputy City Manager.) The City declared an emergency in relation to public health and safety, but the City waited and waited and did nothing – apparently they did not think it an emergency after all.

The declaration of an emergency did have one rather large effect; If public health and safety are at risk, and the City makes such a declaration , then the building, even though it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, even if it is Private Property, can be torn down with no further recourse from anyone. Looks like the fix is in folks…but wait.

Does it not seem that the total inaction by the City, for seven months and counting, to require any action at all relative to their “public health and safety” declaration, including abandoning their ask for an engineering report, say something about their declaration? Does the inaction not mean that they are not really serious about the danger to “public health and safety?” The Palace is Private Property, after all, and the City has said, over and over again, that they have no control over Private Property, yet they have set this thing up so that the Palace can be torn down with no recourse, no CEQA, no environmental impact statement, no nothing. The Palace IS Private Property.

This seems really scary to me – If the City, with a simple, perhaps erroneous, declaration can bring about the destruction of a building belonging to a private citizen with no recourse, no outside engineering reports, with nothing more than the stroke of a pen, then I think that we should all very afraid. What will they come for next? What if the City Manager should decide that he does not like gun shops? Or dispensaries? Or your house? Too bad pal – health and safety rule…

Tom McFadden

Boonville

---

---

ED NOTES

FROM the California School Boards Association: “The Board believes that the presence of weapons in the schools threatens the district’s ability to provide the safe and orderly learning environment to which district students and staff are entitled.”

CONFIRMING old suspicions that The Valley’s pesticide and herbicide-soaked vineyards have wiped out the frog populations in and around them, the U.S. Geological Survey has found that the increased pesticide concentrations in Pacific tree frogs downwind of San Joaquin Valley ag correlated with a decline in amphibian numbers in the Sierra. The specific pesticides included chlorpyrifos and Diazinon, both of which are widely and promiscuously applied by the wine industry.

SOME HISTORY. Tom Lucier was informally known around Willits as the “Jolly Reaper” when he presided over the Anker-Lucier Mortuary. Lucier also once functioned as 3rd District supervisor where he successfully argued to ensure that the county received franchise fees from cable tv monopolies in Ukiah and Willits, and that the cable companies guarantee one channel to local public access television.

PUBLIC ACCESS television still exists in Ukiah as part of a franchise deal with Comcast. Ukiah City Council meetings are telecast live on Channel 3. It's a good thing if put to good purpose as it is in Ukiah, and as it was put to good public purpose for many years in the Fort Bragg area, thanks to Charlene Aumack. (Good purpose is defined here as the huge public benefits derived from live telecasts of public meetings, most of which are held during work hours when most of us can’t attend.) Ms. Aumack kept the Coast station genuinely public, diplomatically preventing the nut pies and the chronophages from capturing control of it.

PUBLIC ACCESS TELEVISION inland was originally overseen by the County Office of Education, at the time an ongoing criminal organization. MCOE quickly cut the public out of public access by placing the studio in a bar on North State Street owned by a former MCOE administrator named Hal Titen where Titen used public access television equipment to make pornographic films with underage local girls which he then sold on the internet. He was eventually (and reluctantly) shuttled off to state prison by DA Susan Massini who, even more reluctantly, had previously sent Titen’s boss, County Superintendent of Schools Jack Ward, to the County Jail for a series of felony thefts of edu-property that, if not for a sweetheart plea deal, should have won Ward some state time too.

INEVITABLY IN MENDOCINO COUNTY whenever it comes down to a choice between something “for the kids” and the interests of the persons well paid to “serve the kids,” the kids are summarily tossed over the side.

MCOE ALSO tossed “the kids” over the side about the same time when the agency squashed a skateboard park on a couple of acres the agency owned west of town out by the high school. The drones at the County Administration Center on Low Gap Road had complained that “the kids,” in lieu of a skate park, regularly showed up for their skateboard workouts outside the County Administrator’s office window, thus disrupting the functioning of local government. And the language the kids used! It was enough to make a goldfish blush!

UKIAH wanted a skateboard park at 1041 Low Gap Road well west of the County Admin Center and out of the sight and hearing of the gray ghosts doing the people's business. The prob was that the prospective 1.75-acre site was leased by the Mendocino County Office of Education and located right next door to a major playground for adults — the Ukiah Players Theater.

MCOE CLAIMED it intended to erect an “educational facility” on the property, meaning another building filled with shiny white teeth and prozac smiles shuffling around in air-conditioned comfort looking for coffee urns and the free lunch table. If there was a way to get public funding for skateboarders you can be sure that MCOE would have built one on top of the Ukiah Senior Center.

ONE finally got built out on Low Gap, which, I guess, sees an occasional skateboarder.

ANYTHING that gets the sedentary little sugar muffins up on their feet and moving around instead of zoned out on techno-gadgets, is a good thing, but imo these million dollar skateboard parks with their solid acre of concrete and, at any one time, a mere handful of “the kids” zooming around the expensively manufactured cement bowl, hardly justifies the expense.

WHEN I WAS A KID — yes, I was a kid, and I’ve got proof — Mommsy shoved us out the door at daylight and told us not to be back until it was time for stone soup, a beating and bed time.

---

---

EXCHANGE OF THE DAY

Former Ukiah Mayor Jim Mastin:

Let me begin with the fact that I have a lot of respect for David both professionally and personally, although our paths don’t often cross. However (who knew this was coming!), I think posting photos of his upper-middle class home, and all of its ongoing improvements, is something of a poke in the eye to our general population. Not that we’re not there with him, but…

DA David Eyster:

Wow. You apparently didn't have anything better to do today, Jim? Your comment is your perspective that I will temporarily allow to exist on my personal FB page. As a result of a divorce, I lost most of what I had acquired (which was a lot and many times more than what I have now) to somebody who already had more than I will ever have. I had to start mid-life all over with very little (less than $1,600 in the bank) and have worked VERY hard to rebuild my personal life and how I live. L and I have long distance family and friends who like to see through FB posts what is going on and the progress the new “we” are making. We are very proud of the improvements we have done and are doing around here. We've had to weigh choices and make financial sacrifices every step of the way to get what we have. Unfortunately, your “poke in the eye” comment is a lot like those who don't like adult magazines at the quick stop market. If one doesn't want to see something that offends them (but doesn't offend others), don't look. Better yet, anybody who has a sore eye from what I post can unfriend me or block my otherwise harmless feed. I personally don't appreciate negativity directed at my weekend hobbies and pride of home ownership. I have no idea how or where you live and, frankly, it is none of my business. That said, I would never find it appropriate for me to crash your FB page to criticize you, your home and the work you have put into it. 'Nuff said.

ED NOTE: Mastin does seem outta line here. Dollar for dollar, homestead for homestead, Mastin probably lives a little higher on the hog than our DA, although neither of them is in any danger of becoming homeless. Eyster's obviously a main stem middleclass lawn guy on the lower end of West Side prosperity. Poor envy material if you ask me.

---

CATCH OF THE DAY, Monday, May 27, 2024

DEBORAH ANDERSON, Lakeport/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

JESUS BERMUDEZ, Fort Bragg. Burglary.

MICHAEL BITONTI, Clearlake/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

BRIAN BRAZIL, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

JOHN IMUS JR., Ukiah. Parole violation.

KENNETH KUHL, Ukiah. Resisting, bringing alcohol or drugs into jail.

CHAD MCCALLUM, Ukiah. Reckless driving, resisting.

JAMES PELLIGRINE, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, probation revocation.

EMIL REDZIC, Ukiah. Stolen property, ammo possession, county parole violation.

ELIAS RUTHERFORD, Fort Bragg. Paraphernalia, county parole violation.

ERIC SMITH, Potter Valley. Probation revocation, resisting.

---

I WILL BE 86 IN FOUR MONTHS, lived in the Haight Asbury from 1964 to 1969 then moved to Santa Cruz and Cabrillo College and UCSC. Lived at 625 Ashbury, a 13-room flat with gas lights that still worked, two floors, and $650 rent, shared with another couple. Later to Delmar Street, two doors down from the backyard of The Grateful Dead house on the 700 block of Ashbury. Grass was $75 to $85 a kilo back then and Owsleys tabs were almost free. If you attended the Playland gatherings (Steve Gaskin) at the beach you could get handfuls of LSD for nothing. Alan Watts had his school on the Avenues, Asian Studies Inst., and I was lucky to audit some classes back then. I also lived in the apartments at Cole and Haight and here is Janis with my Blue VW bus in the background.

---

STEPH CURRY IS GROWING OLDER. I AM, TOO.

by Ezekiel Kweku

A few weeks ago, as I watched the Golden State Warriors submit to a humiliating defeat by the Sacramento Kings, my main feeling was not frustration, anger or embarrassment. Rather, it was resignation: One day I will die.

The Warriors’ three core players — Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green — have been together since 2012. I remember watching their first playoff run end at the hands of the dynastic San Antonio Spurs machine and reveling in their unbounded potential. They will be back, I thought, and I was right — over the next few years they turned into the defining team of their era, combining swarming, ferocious defense with gorgeous, egalitarian offense. Curry blossomed into one of the greatest players of all time; Green, one of the best defenders; Thompson, one of the best shooters. They went to the finals six times and won four.

How this all came to matter to me is a little mysterious. But one of the charms of sports is that they are empty of inherent meaning: A ball passing through a rim has no practical import or broader significance. But that emptiness makes them a perfect vessel for the entire range of human emotions, their bite no less sharp for the low stakes. For me, the emotional tides of life as a Warriors fan have moved in strange relation to the ebbs and flows of the rest of my life.

The professional life span of an N.B.A. player is short. Players join at 19 at the earliest, and by their early 30s, if they’ve managed to stick around that long, they are often considering retirement. Rooting for basketball players means constantly being aware that they are aging. And now that the oldest players are my age, it means constantly being aware that I am aging, too.

Stephen Curry was born into the N.B.A. in 2009, at age 21. Six years later he was the league’s most valuable player. Nine years after that, in 2024, it’s clear that the end is near, both for Curry and for this team. Parts of his game that I fell in love with have faded; watching him, I can almost feel my own bones grinding against one another. The quick-twitch burst that allowed him to slip past defenders or explode from a dribbler’s crouch to a shooter’s stretch is all but spent. He operates in narrower margins, tighter windows. Flashes of the old wizardry still shine through, but these days he is more craftsman than magician.

If there is one moment for which Klay Thompson will be remembered, it is Game 6 of 2016’s conference finals. On the verge of playoff elimination, Thompson saved the season with a supernatural series of three-point shots: from oblique angles, or with legs canted in the air, or over forests of defending arms. It was everything that I had come to love about basketball compressed into one game.

The Warriors won that game and the next, sending them to the finals in a rematch against the Cleveland Cavaliers. The morning of Game 3, I went with my pregnant wife to her first ultrasound appointment, brimming with anticipation. What I remember most is the billowing silence as the nurse technician fruitlessly scanned for signs of a viable fetus and the way my wife’s palms felt so soft against my own. I did not cry until we had reached the safety of our home.

Later, without much deliberation, we decided to go through with our plans to watch the game. It was a blowout defeat. I cannot remember one half of this day without the other — the real tragedy bound up with the ersatz one. Uncannily, each made the other hurt less, like dull echoes canceling out.

Hampered by injuries and the weight of expectations, the Warriors would go on to lose the series, their historic regular-season success transforming into playoff ignominy. A few days later, my wife became suddenly and mysteriously ill, unable to stand without passing out. I carried her down the stairs of our apartment building; in the sunlight, I noticed how pale she was and began to be truly afraid. What had been diagnosed as a miscarriage turned out to have been an ectopic pregnancy. My wife’s fallopian tube had ruptured. An emergency surgery saved her life. She was still in her recovery bed when we heard that Kevin Durant would be joining the Warriors.

That next year, as the team stormed through the season, my wife’s belly swelled with new promise. The Warriors won their second championship of this run. On her due date, we braved the crowds to watch the Larry O’Brien trophy carried through the streets of Oakland.

The year after that, my son awoke in my arms as the Warriors clinched their third title. We were at a watch party, and the sight of the confetti falling around us fascinated him. Four years later, in 2022, I woke him up — and his new little brother, too — to watch the Warriors win the fourth title of the run, a memory they remind me of often.

A few weeks ago, I took my firstborn to a Warriors game: his first time seeing them in person and the last meaningful game of their elegiac regular season. Despite my nudges and suggestions, the younger Warriors players held no interest for him. He had eyes only for his favorite players: Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green. We arrived early to watch Curry warm up — he, too, was accompanied by his firstborn. Riley Curry was 2 during her dad’s first championship run, making a name for herself by stealing the mic and the show during the postgame news conferences. Now she was 11 and passed the ball to her dad for a few trick shots at the end of his workout. My son, watching through binoculars, correctly declared Curry “the best.”

The Warriors played from behind for most of the night. Curry conjured up some vintage late-game heroics, but it was not enough. My son, who had invested every shot with world-changing significance, took the narrow defeat with surprising equanimity. They had tried their best and come pretty close to winning, after all. I asked him what his favorite part of the game had been. “You standing up and cheering,” he said. “I just liked it.” He does not yet know why Warriors basketball had come to mean something to me, and to him. But he sensed the currents. This is how it starts, I thought to myself.

(NYTimes)

---

HAVING MANY CATS IS GOOD. If you feel bad, you look at the cats and you feel better, because they know that everything is just the way it is. You don't have to be nervous about anything. And they know it. They are saviors. The more cats you have, the longer you will live. If you have a hundred cats, you will live ten times longer than if you have ten. One day, this will be known and people will have thousands of cats.

— Charles Bukowski

---

BILL WALTON, HALL OF FAME PLAYER WHO BECAME A STAR BROADCASTER, DIES AT 71

by Tim Reynolds

Bill Walton, who starred for John Wooden's UCLA Bruins before becoming a Hall of Famer for his NBA career and one of the biggest stars in basketball broadcasting, died Monday, the league announced on behalf of his family. Walton, who had a prolonged fight with cancer, was 71.

He was the NBA's MVP in the 1977-78 season, a two-time champion and a member of both the NBA's 50th anniversary and 75th anniversary teams. That followed a college career in which he was a two-time champion at UCLA and a three-time national player of the year.

“Bill Walton,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said, “was truly one of a kind.”

Walton, who was enshrined in the Hall of Fame in 1993, was larger than life, on the court and off. His NBA career — disrupted by chronic foot injuries — lasted only 468 games with Portland, the San Diego and eventually Los Angeles Clippers and Boston. He averaged 13.3 points and 10.5 rebounds in those games, neither of those numbers exactly record-setting.

Still, his impact on the game was massive.

His most famous game was the 1973 NCAA title game, UCLA against Memphis, in which he shot an incredible 21 for 22 from the field and led the Bruins to another national championship.

“One of my guards said, ’Let’s try something else,” Wooden told The Associated Press in 2008 for a 35th anniversary retrospective on that game.

Wooden’s response during that timeout: “Why? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

They kept giving the ball to Walton, and he kept delivering in a performance for the ages.

“It’s very hard to put into words what he has meant to UCLA’s program, as well as his tremendous impact on college basketball," UCLA coach Mick Cronin said Monday. "Beyond his remarkable accomplishments as a player, it’s his relentless energy, enthusiasm for the game and unwavering candor that have been the hallmarks of his larger than life personality.

“As a passionate UCLA alumnus and broadcaster, he loved being around our players, hearing their stories and sharing his wisdom and advice. For me as a coach, he was honest, kind and always had his heart in the right place. I will miss him very much. It’s hard to imagine a season in Pauley Pavilion without him.”

Walton retired from the NBA and turned to broadcasting, something he never thought he could be good at — and an avenue he sometimes wondered would be possible for him, because he had a pronounced stutter at times in his life.

Turns out, he was excellent at that, too: Walton was an Emmy winner.

“In life, being so self-conscious, red hair, big nose, freckles and goofy, nerdy-looking face and can’t talk at all. I was incredibly shy and never said a word,” Walton told The Oregonian newspaper in 2017. “Then, when I was 28 I learned how to speak. It’s become my greatest accomplishment of my life and everybody else’s biggest nightmare.”

The last part of that was just Walton hyperbole. He was beloved for his on-air tangents.

He sometimes appeared on-air in Grateful Dead T-shirts; Walton was a huge fan of the band and referenced it often, even sometimes recording satellite radio specials celebrating what it meant to be a “Deadhead.”

And the Pac-12 Conference, which has basically evaporated in many ways now because of college realignment, was another of his many loves. He always referred to it as the “Conference of Champions” and loved it all the way to the end.

“It doesn’t get any better than this,” he once said on a broadcast, tie-dyed T-shirt on, a Hawaiian lei around his neck.

“What I will remember most about him was his zest for life,” Silver said. “He was a regular presence at league events — always upbeat, smiling ear to ear and looking to share his wisdom and warmth. I treasured our close friendship, envied his boundless energy and admired the time he took with every person he encountered.”

Walton died surrounded by his loved ones, his family said. He is survived by wife Lori and sons Adam, Nate, Chris and Luke — a former NBA player and now a coach.

(AP)

---

---

TODAY'S SAD NEWS: Patty Hearst & Bill Walton

https://fredgardner.bandcamp.com/track/patty-hearst-bill-walton-revisited

---

IT COULD HAPPEN HERE

“Serial Slingshot Shooter,” 81, Arrested In California, Police Say

An 81-year-old “serial slingshot shooter” was arrested during a search warrant serving Thursday after authorities determined he had been striking residential windows, denting car windshields, and making close calls with several people in his Azusa neighborhood for close to a decade, authorities said.

The Azusa Police Department launched an investigation after learning of the “quality of life issue” afflicting residents on the 900 block of North Enid Avenue, which is about 23 miles east of Los Angeles. “During the course of 9-10 years, dozens of citizens were being victimized,” police said in a recent news release.

Authorities served the warrant at the residence of Prince King, and found ball bearings and a slingshot at the property.

No injuries had been reported, Azusa police Lt. Jake Bushey told the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, but detectives discovered most of the ball bearings were launched from his backyard while others were hurled from a nearby neighborhood.

“It’s been ongoing for many years because we just didn’t identify who the suspect was,” Bushey told the outlet, noting the reason for the vandalism or why certain people or properties were targeted remains unknown. “We’re not aware of any kind of motive other than just malicious mischief.”

Records show King was booked at the Los Angeles County Jail later that afternoon without bail, and he is scheduled to appear in court on Tuesday.

(SFGate.com)

---

---

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN CREATES FENG SHUI IN BOSTON

by Fred Gardner

“A girl has to hustle.” —Truman Capone

The New York Times runs an occasional feature called “At Home With…” in which a famous person shows off one of their residences. “At Home With Anderson Cooper, At Home With Ron Chast, etc.” Doris Kearns Goodwin used an “At Home With” interview April 9 to peddle her new book, which soon made the nonfiction best-seller list and was #8 as of May 19. The Times piece by Joanne Kaufman was subtitled “A Historian Makes Peace With Her Own History.”

What was the source of Doris’s anguish, I wondered? Having worked for Lyndon Johnson as he escalated the bombing of Vietnam and the number of US troops sent over there to fight and die in a lost, unrighteous cause? Supporting the Bush-Cheney “shock-and-awe” invasion of Iraq? Having been exposed as a serial plagiarist?

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Kaufman’s angle was: “After Doris Kearns Goodwin’s husband died nearly six years ago, the couple’s home, a 19th-century farmhouse in Concord, Mass, no longer felt right.”

“ ‘We were there for 20 years,’ said Ms. Kearns Goodwin, 81, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian whose new book, ‘An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s,’ will be published April 16. ‘It was a house we had loved, and a house that in many ways we had built together,’ she continued. [Rich people often say “built” instead of “put up the money for.”] I just missed Dick too much, so I decided to put the house on the market.’

“Moving to nearby Boston was an easy call,” Kaufman reports. “ ‘I knew the building and loved it,’ said Ms. Kearns Goodwin, who bought a three-bedroom apartment with panoramic views of Beantown two floors below her son in 2019. There she wrote ‘An Unfinished Love Story,’ a braiding of memoir, biography and history.

“Ms. Kearns Goodwin’s primary sources were the 300 (and counting) boxes of letters, postcards, documents, diaries, newspaper clippings, photos and other ephemera that Dick Goodwin amassed during the middle years of the 20th century, unceremoniously shoved into storage units, basements and a barn, and then, more than 50 years later, retrieved cache by cache and shared with his very eager wife.

“ ‘I was really excited to see them, just as a historian. They had all the elements of what you want in an archive,’ Ms. Kearns Goodwin said. ‘And they were from the ‘60s, the decade I really wanted to know more about.’

“A cancer diagnosis and the subsequent debilitating — futile — treatment got in the way of Mr. Goodwin’s plans to chronicle those turbulent times. After his death, Ms. Kearns Goodwin took up the project.

“She had the source material, but she also needed the setting: a recreation of her Concord study in her new condo. The mise en scène included a nicely worn blue leather sofa, a low chestnut table with plenty of room for books, a side table and the rug that Ms. Kearns Goodwin brought back from Morocco when she attended the 40th anniversary of the Casablanca Conference, a 1943 meeting between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

“ ‘It was the only way I could work,’ Ms. Kearns Goodwin said. ‘To have my little nook, I could feel I was still in Concord, though I was in a different room in a different building.’

“Pieces from the Concord house are scattered around the apartment,” Kaufman observes, “among them, several Persian rugs and an octagonal Indian coffee table. The bookcase that was in her old foyer sits in the condo’s entryway. Now, as then, it contains first editions and a miniature reproduction of the Revolutionary War Battle of Lexington and Concord, on the North Bridge. One of Ms. Kearns Goodwin’s most prized possessions is a baseball autographed by Don Larsen, who pitched the only perfect game in postseason history… A bookcase holds a Tiffany paperweight commemorating the Pulitzer Prize that Ms. Kearns Goodwin won in 1995 for her book ‘No Ordinary Time.’

“Framed photos of Ms. Kearns Goodwin with President Johnson and President Obama, and of Mr. Goodwin with Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, Robert F. Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy, hang on a wall in the entryway… Books are everywhere: on tables, on sculptural vertical stands and in bookcases custom-made to look like the shelves in Concord.

“ ‘I looked at other buildings,’ she said. ‘But there was something about this place’.” [You’d think proximity to her son and grandchildren would be more than ‘something.’] Her angst would not relent. “For two years after she moved to Boston, she compulsively — one might say masochistically — replayed the video that was commissioned (complete with meditative piano accompaniment) to sell her house. ‘I don’t know what I was doing to myself,’ she said ruefully. ‘I’d watch and start sobbing. And each time I went back to Concord I felt sad’.”

Somehow, she has pulled through, writes Kaufman. “When she lived in Concord, it was, frankly, a schlep to come into Boston to go to the symphony or the theater. ‘Now I can just decide at the last minute to go,’ she said.

“It’s been a while since she has watched the video. And she no longer feels undone when she visits Concord.”

After breathing a sigh of relief, I wondered whether the Times reporter knew, as she filed this fawning plug for Doris’s book about the ‘60s, that Dick Goodwin had written his own book about the ‘60s? “Remembering America: A Voice From the Sixties” (Little, Brown, 1988) drew on the primary source material Goodwin hoarded while working for Jack, LBJ and Bobby – the same trove that Doris has now drawn on. He didn’t just have “plans” to “chronicle those turbulent times,” he gave it his best shot in memory yet green!

Sometimes I get exposed to second-hand PBS in the kitchen. It happened a few weeks ago as Doris was being interviewed by a fanboy named Jeffrey Brown. The content was “At Home With” minus the mise-en-scene. Doris told Brownie that she’d been helping her beloved husband write a book about the ‘60s when cancer cut his life short. “I came to the decision,” she said, “that I needed to keep the promise I had made to him that I’d finish it. It had to be in my voice, not his. And I needed to be an historian as well as a biographer of him. And it had to be about the 1960s as well as our personal life.”

So she intercepted what would’ve been her husband’s second memoir and ran it back for a best seller. That’s not plagiarism, but… The woman has had issues in the past.

Doris had to resign as a Pulitzer prize judge, the Guardian reported in March 2022, “in the face of mounting allegations that she had lifted many passages in her acclaimed work from other writers’ books.

“Goodwin, a bestselling historian of the American presidency who won the Pulitzer herself in 1995 for a book about the Roosevelts, explained in a letter to the prize-giving board that ‘because I am so distracted by the media focus on my work, I do not feel capable of giving the considerable time needed to make the proper judgments.’

“Suspicions were first raised in January, when Goodwin, formerly an aide to Lyndon Johnson, acknowledged that passages in her 1987 book, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, had been borrowed — accidentally, she insisted — from three other works. But her swift admission, in response to an article in the Washington conservative magazine the Weekly Standard, did nothing to halt the progress of the latest plagiarism scandal to convulse American history publishing…

“Since then, it has emerged that Goodwin reached a financial settlement in the 1980s with Lynne McTaggart, author of a biography of Kathleen Kennedy from which she lifted up to 50 passages. She has since admitted to borrowing passages from other authors.

“She has taken indefinite leave from a prime-time current affairs television show, NewsHour, to which she contributed, and has been ‘disinvited’ from giving a commencement speech at the University of Delaware. Her publisher, Simon & Schuster, has destroyed its paperback inventory of ‘The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys’ and plans to issue a corrected edition.

“ ‘There is absolutely no intent to appropriate anyone else’s words as my own,’ Goodwin, who was not available for comment yesterday, told NewsHour last week. ‘It was simply a mistake in technique’.”

“Critics have been quick to point out that a belated apology would probably not have been enough were she an undergraduate at Harvard University, where she sits on the board of directors.”

The Guardian piece by Oliver Burkeman gave a few examples of her technique. Sometimes she didn’t even bother to change your word or two. “Of Kathleen Kennedy, Goodwin writes: ‘Her closest friends assumed she and Billy were semi-engaged. On the day of the party, reports of a secret engagement were published in the Boston papers… The truth was that the young couple had reached no such agreement.’ An identical passage appeared first in McTaggart’s 1983 book, ‘Kathleen Kennedy: Her Life And Times’.”

“The picture that has emerged of Goodwin’s working methods has more in common with the workshop of a Renaissance artist than the study of a modern-day author, with teams of assistants undertaking much of the research for her.” [Maybe this is why she needs three bedrooms in her Boston pad.] She blames the borrowed passages on her habit, until 1994, of taking longhand notes verbatim from the work of others. In assembling the book’s 900 pages and 3,500 footnotes, she says, she simply got confused. ‘The mechanical process of checking things was not as sophisticated as it should have been, she said’.”

This was an interesting inversion of the more common excuse for gaffes, “computer error.” Doris blamed her plagiarism on pencil-and-paper note-taking!

Not everybody bought it, of course. The Guardian quoted Columbia University’s Eric Foner commenting re Goodwin and Stephen Ambrose (another best-selling historian outed as a copycat), “Everybody makes mistakes, but the scale and number of these incidents is such that it really does point to a larger problem in their method of writing… fundamentally, both of them have violated very commonly understood standards of how one utilizes and acknowledges the work of other scholars.”

But this being the United States of Amnesia, Doris was soon back on TV as a pundit, speaking at college graduations, and turning out esteemed history books. As I send this off on May 26, 2024, Doris’s ‘60s Love Story is #6 on the Times’s nonfiction best-seller list.

Dick Goodwin’s Odd Obsession

I crossed paths with Dick Goodwin back in the summer of ‘65 or ‘66. A big, powerful man with a bulbous nose and acne scars that made his face more interesting, he was saying goodbye to Lillian Hellman at her house in Vineyard Haven as I was arriving to interview her. She introduced us. I knew who he was. As Kennedy’s emissary to the Organization of American States, Goodwin had held a long conversation with Che Guevara in Montevideo in 1961. (“Fair play for Cuba” was one of many intertwined goals proclaimed by the movement I considered myself part of back then, along with racial equality, ending US intervention in Vietnam, and the freedom to smoke marijuana. Women’s liberation and gay rights were a few years off.)

In April, 1965, Che had left Cuba to take part in or help launch another revolution. His whereabouts were a major subject of speculation by US lefties (and intelligence agencies). Hellman, a world-class gossip, had of course asked Goodwin for inside info and he couldn’t wait to share. He’d told her that Che had left Cuba after “a homosexual falling out” with Fidel! It sounded like crude CIA disinformation to me, but the famous playwright said, “Well, Che has that fag face.” She regularly used derogatory ethnic nicknames as if they weren’t slurs, as if political correctness (as it’s now called) meant nothing to her. The Japanese were Japs, the Chinese were Chinks, and so forth.

In “Remembering America,” the book Dick Goodwin’s widow seems to have forgotten, he implies but doesn’t come out and say that Che was a queer. Their face-to-face talk at the OAS meeting had been hastily arranged by diplomats from Argentina and Brazil, who led them from a party to a room with a couch big enough for two and an an armchair. Che sat down on the floor. The diplomats insisted that he and Goodwin use the furniture. “From a distance,” Goodwin wrote, “as he had walked purposefully through the conference rooms and the streets of Punta del Este, the slightly stocky, erect man in fatigues, with his untrimmed beard, had seemed rugged, even tough. Now, as I looked at him across a distance of a few feet, his features seemed soft and slightly diffuse, almost feminine…

“Following our meeting in 1961, Che Guevara’s own career took a far more abrupt and fateful course than did my own. [What an understatement!] His revolutionary beliefs demanded that Cuba be made an industrial state, relieved of dependence on its sugar crop. Soviet economists tried, with limited success, to persuade him that economic facts would not yield to ideological commands, and that it was far more efficient for Cuba to sell sugar and buy goods with the income than to manufacture everything it needed. The economists were right, of course, and as the Cuban economy lagged [as the US trade embargo exerted its strangling effect], Guevara was gradually relieved of his control.

“In addition, it is almost certain that Guevara’s relations with Castro were marked by periods of violent strain alternating with periods of renewed intimacy. Perhaps there was just not room enough in Cuba for both of them. Whatever the reason, in 1965 Che abandoned his position of high authority in Cuba and set out, single-handedly, to lead a still non-existent revolution in the forsaken wretchedness of Bolivia. ‘Dear Fidel,’ he wrote, ‘I leave here the purest of my hopes as a builder, and the dearest of those I love’…”

A rumor that Che had been done in by Fidel was spread in ‘66 by leftists who felt betrayed by Cuba’s reliance on the Soviet Union and the prominent role being played by the Cuban Communist Party. Prominent socialists challenged Fidel to assign a trustworthy journalist to interview Che and confirm that he was alive and well. Fidel eventually acquiesced to this demand and sent Regis Debray, author of ‘Revolution in the Revolution’ (Monthly Review 67). The wealthy young Frenchman was followed, of course, resulting in Che’s death.

---

BABE RUTH AND OLYMPIAN SWIMMER DUKE KAHANAMOKU, Waikiki Beach, 1934.

---

THE NEXT TIME you are washing your hands & complain because the water temperature isn’t just how you like it, think about how things used to be. Here are some facts about the 1500s.

They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot & then once a day it was taken & sold to the tannery. If you had to do this to survive you were “piss poor.”

But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn’t even afford to buy a pot; they “didn’t have a pot to piss in” & were the lowest of the low.

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by June. Since they were starting to smell, however, brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women, and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it … hence the saying, “Don’t throw the baby out with the Bath water!”

Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof, resulting in the idiom, “It’s raining cats and dogs.”

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed, therefore, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That’s how canopy beds came into existence.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt, leading folks to coin the phrase “dirt poor.”

The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way, subsequently creating a “thresh hold.”

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire.. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while, and thus the rhyme, “Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.”

Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, “bring home the bacon.” They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and “chew the fat.”

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the “upper crust.”

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial.. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up, creating the custom of holding a wake.

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive, so they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be, saved by the bell or was considered a dead ringer.

And that’s the truth. Now, whoever said History was boring?

— Scott Brandt

---

DANIEL LAMBERT was at one point considered to be the heaviest person in human history.

At the age of 18, Lambert began working as a prison guard and was much respected for his ability to befriend and help rehabilitate many of the prisoners.

He once walked 7 miles (11 km) from Woolwich to the City of London "with much less apparent fatigue than several middle-sized men who were of the party". In terms of strength, Lambert was able to easily carry 560 lbs. (254 kg) and had the ability to stand on one leg.

In 1805, Lambert decided to put himself on exhibition and charge people a shilling to visit him in his home at 53 Piccadilly. He worked 5 hours a day, talking to nearly 400 daily visitors on a variety of topics concerning dogs and sports.

Lamber also enacted a rule that everyone who entered his home needed to remove their hats. When one visitor reportedly refused to remove his hat "even if the King were present", Lambert gently replied, "Then by G-, Sir, you must instantly quit this room, as I do not consider it a mark of respect due to myself, but to the ladies and gentlemen who honor me with their company."

Lambert suddenly passed away in 1809 at the age of 39. His coffin was so large that it needed to be pulled by 20 men. At the time of his death, he weighed 335 kg (739 lb)

---

ROBERT MCGEE, SCALPED AT THE AGE OF 14 IN 1864.

McGee was working as a teamster with H.C. Barret to transport a caravan of flour to Fort Union in New Mexico Territory. Whilst on the road, somewhere around Kansas, the wagon train was set on by a band of Brule Sioux Native Americans, resulting in the majority of the teamsters being tortured and killed. McGee was shot in the back, had two arrows put through him as well as 64 square inches removed from his scalp - all whilst he was still awake. His survival was miraculous. This photo was taken in 1890.

---

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Donald Trump, like him or not, the guy can make an entrance. Who else would buzz a race crowd of 100,000 with his 757? Not only that but broadcast live for millions of NASCAR “clowns” and “deplorables.”

---

SAVING OUR DEMOCRACY THIS MEMORIAL DAY

by James Kunstler

“We must stop Donald Trump.” — President “Joe Biden”

Surely it was the right thing to do for President “Joe Biden” to remind the nation of the tragic loss of George Floyd four years ago this Memorial Day weekend. At the time, the man known as “the Black Thomas Edison” was rumored to be this close to achieving an economically viable system for producing electricity via atomic fusion using the fentanyl molecule (C22H28N2O) combined with the nuclei of alcohol (C2H6O), releasing enough energy from one gram to power a city the size of Minneapolis for a day. The math he left behind on his chalkboard spells it out:

17.6 MeV×1.60218×10?13 J/MeV?2.82×10?12 J

You see how that works? Alas, Dr. Floyd had apparently ingested a small amount of these experimental substances accidentally before leaving his lab May 25, 2020, when he encountered the white supremacist police officer Derek Chauvin outside a Cup Foods convenience store in Minneapolis’s “Powderhorn” neighborhood. For reasons never understood, despite manifold judicial inquiries, the officer dragged the Great Man out of his car — where he was polishing some of the requisite algebra in his notebook — and for no reason at all placed one knee, and all his weight, on Dr. Floyd’s neck, constricting his airway and causing his death. The nation erupted in violence, and you know the rest of the story: no cheap energy for you, you nation of white supremacist asswipes!

And so it has gone since that fateful day: one darn thing after another. Luckily though — and with a little help from Mark Zuckerberg’s Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) — the vigilant “Joe Biden” presides in the White House, keeping America safe for democracy, by democracy, and of democracy. The country has never experienced so much democracy. The Brookings Institution even warns that the country might be close to a democracy overload, in which the popular will is so immense that everyone in all fifty states thinks the same morally correct thoughts all day long without giving offense or making any space unsafe or dis-including any diverse category of human (except white supremacists) from his, her, or they’s share of the nation’s limitless wealth.

“Joe Biden” has been especially effective at containing the Grand Golem of all white supremacists, Trump, from deconstructing our utopian democracy. This Trump uttered perfidious misinformation that the 2020 election was less than fair and upright. He is under indictment in Fulton County, GA, for conspiring to transmit this incorrect thinking to other white supremacists and creating an unsafe space for GA Sec’y of State Brad Raffensperger by asking him to “find” additional votes. What log was Bradraff supposed to look under, anyway (ha ha!)?

The case is being guided by Fulton County DA, the indomitable Fani Willis, at least for now, as she awaits a process known as getting the bidness from a white supremacist so-called ethics committee in the Georgia State Senate, where she has been falsely accused of mis-spending state money on vacations with erstwhile special prosecutor Nathan Wade. These trips were, of course, fact-finding efforts. One fact found is that the white supremacist cruise ship directors attempt to kill black people by luring them into all-you-can-eat buffets at sea, from which escape is impossible.

“Joe Biden” also got Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint Lawfare paladin Jack Smith to prosecute this nefarious Trump in the most upright of all federal court districts, Washington, DC, for instigating what “Joe Biden” recently called an “erection” against our democracy. Trump, you see, told a gigantic mob of white supremacists to penetrate our nation’s capitol building so as to obstruct certification of the 2020 electoral vote and murder then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, if possible, along with all congresspersons of color. Legal experts at MSNBC, Andrew Weissmann (of the Mueller Special Counsel office) and Andy McCabe (former Deputy Director of the FBI), have already found this Trump guilty, and they know about these matters better than anybody, so the trial under Judge Tanya Chutkan may be unnecessary.

Things are not going quite so well for SC Smith in the Martin County Federal Court of Judge Aileen Cannon, where this Trump stands accused of fobbing off with classified government documents, claiming some fabricated sort of presidential privilege — unlike “Joe Biden” who got his classified docs before he was president and therefore does not have to claim any such privilege (and was understandably “forgetful” when asked about the docs by the other SC Robert Hur). In any case, AG Garland can always dispatch an FBI SWAT team to Judge Cannon’s home to spur an attitude adjustment on the bench, if required.

Hopes really rest, though, on the current case against the Grand Golem Trump in Judge Juan Merchan’s Manhattan courtroom, where the most supreme of all white supremacists stands accused of book-keeping irregularities in furtherance of federal crimes so unspeakable that they have never actually been spoken. The case, engineered by veteran DC Golem hunters Mary McCord, Norm Eisen, Lisa Monaco, and Matthew Colangelo, fronted by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, goes to the jury after final arguments this week.

Judge Merchan is expected to instruct the jury to vote guilty because no other conclusion is possible. Thus, Judge Merchan will be celebrated far and wide for saving our democracy. But that’s not all. After the most excellent verdict of guilty X-23-Plus, he will have the pleasure of sentencing this Trump to life in the Rikers Island prison complex, where it will be difficult for the Grand Golem to organize any white supremacist activities and will be relegated to a diet of baloney sandwiches for the duration of his term.

The only downside for this scenario is that Trump might get elected President of the USA despite conviction, and on January 20, 2025, commence operations to put “Joe Biden” and all the others in his train of officials in jail for the rest of their natural lives. You have to wonder if they’re thinking about that this holiday weekend.

---

---

MURDERING TO GET HAMAS

Editor:

Another letter equating protesting against what’s happening in Gaza to support for Hamas. Objecting to the decimation of entire cities to get Hamas is not support for Hamas, it is sanity. If you have to displace two million people and destroy their homes and livelihoods to get Hamas, you are no longer holding the moral high ground. In addition, for every Hamas fighter you kill you have probably minted at least five young angry replacements — and the insanity is perpetuated.

Jack Burger

Cazadero

---

AMID CONDEMNATION, NETANYAHU CALLS CIVILIAN DEATHS IN RAFAH STRIKE ‘TRAGIC ACCIDENT’

The blast and subsequent fires killed at least 45 people, Gazan officials said.

With international condemnation mounting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said Monday that the killing of dozens of people in a camp for displaced Palestinians in Rafah was “a tragic accident,” but gave no sign of curbing the Israeli offensive there.

His comments came at a particularly delicate time, just three days after the International Court of Justice appeared to order Israel to immediately halt its offensive in the city and as diplomats were aiming to restart negotiations for a cease-fire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas at some point in the next week.

The International Court of Justice appeared to order Israel on Friday to suspend its military offensive and “any other action” in Rafah that might wholly or partly destroy the Palestinian population there. Some of the court’s judges said that Israel could still conduct some military operations in Rafah under the terms of their decision.

(Reuters)

---

---

I WAS RAISED JEWISH in an insulated Jewish community, and Zionism was part of my identity. From as far back as I can remember, my extended family was deeply committed to the idea of a Jewish homeland. I was raised to believe that if there were no Israel, Jews would not be safe in the world.

Learning and facing the truth about the ideology and history of Zionism has been painful. It is not easy to reconcile that I was once a cheerleader for an ethnostate since I now know it is not possible to do so without committing an ethno-cleanse.

When I was 16, I spent the summer in Israel with a high school program. As kids, we thought it was cool that we had armed guards with us when we left the campus. As a mother now, when I look back, I'm outraged that we were taken to places where assault rifles were needed to protect us. We were taken to the West Bank, which I now know was and still is occupied land. We were used as human shields as we planted trees in East Jerusalem. How else could Israel justify taking teenagers into occupied territory and using them as tools of ethnic cleansing?

My journey to recognizing the destructive colonial nature of Zionism has not been easy. It has taken me about 12 years to reach my level of outrage at the state of Israel. Even as recently as 2019, I still hoped for a two-state solution. But it has been made abundantly clear by Zionists that they will not abide a Palestinian state. I've decided to take them at their word.

My atonement is using my voice to support Palestinians and to free Palestine from the river to the sea. The best way I can do that is right from the hallways of Congress.

— Jen Perelman (challenging AIPAC's darling and former DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz for the seat in Florida's 25th Congressional District)

---

---

THE US IS DISCREDITING ALL ARGUMENTS FOR WHY IT SHOULD LEAD THE WORLD

by Caitlin Johnstone

One by one, the US empire is discrediting all of its own arguments for why it should lead the world. All the violence, tyranny and injustice it claims to be keeping at bay with its globe-dominating leadership is being inflicted by the empire itself, in more and more brazen and egregious ways each year.

The entire premise behind the empire’s containment strategies, military encirclement and cold war brinkmanship with China is that obviously the PRC needs to be stopped from rising and displacing the US as the global leader, and arguments about the need to control Russia and Iran by any means necessary arise from the same premise. These arguments are accepted as a given by many on the basis that the US is a free and democratic country which promotes liberal values and opposes authoritarianism, so of course it’s better to have the US in charge of world affairs.

But every point which could be used to bolster that argument is being rapidly eroded by the US itself. The US is making the world a much more violent and dangerous place. The US is assaulting freedom by perpetrating and facilitating more and more injustice and authoritarianism. The US is undermining international law by constantly violating it. Every argument that could be made for the merits of US global leadership gets weaker by the day.

As the US backs Israel in routinely committing horrifying massacres in Gaza, it’s clear that the US cannot claim to be making the world a more peaceful and harmonious place.

As the US and its allies recklessly ramp up nuclear brinkmanship with Russia over the failing proxy war in Ukraine, it’s clear that the US cannot claim to be making the world safer.

As the US denounces the International Criminal Court for applying for arrest warrants of Israeli officials, and supports Israel in dismissing the orders of the International Court of Justice to cease its assault on Rafah, it’s clear that the US has discredited its claim as the upholder of the “rules-based international order”.

As online censorship and banned pro-Palestine slogans are increasingly normalized throughout the US-led western world, it’s clear that the US has discredited its claim to being a protector of the freedom of speech.

As the US inflicts violent police crackdowns on anti-genocide protesters on university campuses nationwide, it’s clear that the US has discredited its claim to being a protector of the freedom of assembly.

As the US backs Israel in murdering a historic number of journalists and shutting down Al Jazeera, while itself imprisoning Julian Assange for journalistic activity exposing US war crimes, it’s clear that the US has discredited its claim to being a protector of the freedom of the press.

As the US supports its proxies in Kyiv canceling elections in Ukraine while providing military assistance to most of the world’s dictatorships, it is clear that the US has discredited its claim to being a major promotor of democracy.

Whatever argument you could come up with for why the world benefits from US leadership, there are major stories in the news right now which soundly discredit such claims. The evidence is in, and that argument has been lost.

This is not some empty rhetorical point I’m just making to show that my worldview is better than those of the mainstream western empire apologist; it is extremely relevant to present and future developments of unparalleled importance to the survival of our species. 

The US empire has been simultaneously ramping up aggressions against China and Russia as well as in the middle east with increasing recklessness that appears bound for a massive military confrontation with at least one major nuclear-armed state at some point in the coming years. It is doing so because the rise of China means US planetary hegemony will be on its way out the door unless something significant occurs, and the empire managers appear to have calculated that it’s worth risking the life of every terrestrial organism to force that something significant to occur.

The only possible argument that this is a sane or reasonable thing to do is that the world is better off with US leadership than without it. But as we just discussed, every possible premise of that claim has been soundly discredited by the actions of the United States. And it’s only getting worse.

This to me makes it abundantly clear that the world would be better off without US leadership.

Whenever I say this I get empire apologists in my comments furiously arguing that if the US doesn’t dominate our planet then China will, but there’s no evidence that China seeks to supplant the US as a unipolar planetary hegemon, and the assumption that there must always be one unipolar power dominating the globe is ahistorical nonsense. In all of human history there has been only one unipolar planetary hegemon, namely the US empire, and it didn’t exist until the fall of the Soviet Union in the nineties. 

It is not rational to believe that something which has only happened one single time in all of history must be the norm for our world. Multipolarity has been the norm, not the exception, throughout all the rest of our time on this planet prior to the emergence of US global supremacy some three decades ago.

None of this is to suggest that a multipolar world will solve all our problems or give rise to peace and harmony. But it is clear that accepting the emergence of such a world is preferable to a world in which the US empire seeks to suppress and delay its arrival with rapidly increasing amounts of violence and aggression, up to and including ramping up for World War Three and playing insane games of chicken with armageddon weapons.

The US empire is too crazy and sick to be allowed to rule the world anymore. There is no argument to be made that the benefits outweigh the costs. There is no reason the world’s great powers cannot come together and collaborate toward a healthy world for the benefit of everyone, if humanity can just shrug off its primitive impulse to dominate and control.

(caitlinjohnstone.com.au)

---