Mendocino County Today: Monday 7/15/2024

Westport Coast | Patchy Fog | Heat Records | Weapons Man | McGourty Questions | More Weapons | Rooftop | Challenging Harvest | Used Book Sale | Climate Comparisons | Log Chute | Sale Postponed | Peacock | Ed Notes | Yesterday's Catch | Prop 4 | Trench Composting | Former Old | Age Compassion | Killer Deals | Lucky Turn | Great Photos | Nap Sign | Civil War | Lethal Atmosphere | Trump 2024 | Corporate State | Executioner | Dangerous Rhetoric | Ear Bro | Gun Sound | Stupid Hat | Movie Stars | Vending Machine | Falling Behind | Pet Work | NYT Stories | Prove It | Second Coming | Miss Lakewood | Danse Russe

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THE THREAT for interior, mostly dry thunderstorms continues today. Areas of coastal dense fog will linger through the morning hours. Temperatures will trend down through mid week and will increase some into the weekend. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A foggy 51F this Monday morning on the coast. "Patchy fog" says it all in 2 words. Well, ok, a 10% chance for a shower tonight, otherwise...

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INVESTIGATION LEADS TO SEIZURE OF CONCEALED GUN

On July 12, 2024 at approximately 8:46 p.m., Fort Bragg police officers were dispatched to the 100 block of W Redwood for a 9-1-1 open line. After they arrived, officers learned a firearm had been brandished at a juvenile inside a public event and the suspect was still in the area.

Officers quickly searched for the suspects. They found a 13 year-old male juvenile, resident of Fort Bragg and a second male suspect, identified as Matreyus Tiscareno Meyer, 18, resident of Fort Bragg.

A search for weapons revealed a concealed fixed blade weapon and gang paraphernalia on Tiscareno Meyer for which he was arrested. A search of the Tiscareno Meyer’s property revealed a loaded, non-serialized handgun, a large hatchet and gang paraphernalia. A non-serialized firearm is commonly known as a “ghost gun.”

Officers did not locate any evidence against the male juvenile and he was released to a parent during the incident.

Tiscareno Meyer was booked into the Mendocino County Jail on the following charges: Carrying Loaded Firearm in Public, Carrying Concealed Weapon on Person, Carrying an Unregistered Loaded Firearm, and Carrying Concealed Dirk or Dagger.

Sergeant De Leon said, “This is an example of the amazing teamwork amongst our officers. They quickly formulated a plan to enter a public event and find the suspects. They took a concealed, loaded firearm off the streets and undoubtedly prevented violence.’

Anyone with information on this incident is encouraged to contact Ofc Baker of the Fort Bragg Police Department at (707)961-2800 ext 226.

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MENDOCINO COUNTY SUPERVISOR TURNS TO FPPC FOR RULING ON PRIMARY RESIDENCE ISSUE

by Mike Geniella

Mendocino County Supervisor Glenn McGourty is asking the state Fair Political Practices Commission to review questions raised about his family’s purchase in May of a coast house located outside his inland supervisorial district.

In that transaction, McGourty assured loan lenders the Fort Bragg house will be his “primary residence” despite legal requirements that board members live in the district they represent.

Critics are suggesting McGourty, who represents inland Mendocino County’s First Supervisorial District, is possibly violating legal and ethical standards surrounding a public official’s local residency requirements, and his agreement on a loan document on file with the county to make the property his principal residence “within 60 days” of the purchase. Today (Sunday) is that deadline.

If in fact the coast home is legally considered McGourty’s primary residence, it represents an automatic forfeiture of office, according to a “concerned citizen” who has documented the transactions but refuses to be public identified. McGourty’s principal address declaration on loan documents may also violate regulations surrounding mortgage lending practices, according to the complaint.

The individual outlined concerns in a 7-page statement that is to be submitted to the Board of Supervisors, the County Counsel’s Office, and the County Executive Office.

McGourty on Sunday denied any wrongdoing, and said he voluntarily is asking the state commission to advise him on how to remedy any potential conflicts if they exist.

McGourty’s dilemma stems from a family trust’s May 14 purchase of a Fort Bragg house, and his wife’s subsequent move to the coast to live there with an adult disabled dependent son. Jan McCourty is now a registered voter in Fort Bragg, and as such was recently appointed to the Board of Directors of the Mendocino Coast Hospital District.

Supervisor McGourty, who leaves office in January 2025 after serving two terms representing his agriculturally based district, said, “There is nothing intentional here.”

McGourty conceded that when he steps down from the board within six months, he plans to join his wife and “spend most of the time living with her in Fort Bragg.”

However, McGourty said, because the couple have a vineyard and an orchard surrounding their current residence south of Talmage, “I will live part time in Ukiah as well to tend to our properties as needed.”

McGourty noted that he currently remains a registered voter in Ukiah, receives all his mail at his current address, and continues to live there while maintaining his office at the county’s Administrative Center on Low Gap Road “where I work most days.”

McGourty acknowledged that for his wife, and the couple’s mortgage needs, the Fort Bragg house “is considered a primary residence.”

McGourty, however, said that for himself until the end of his term, “Our property at 7200 Old River Road is my primary residence. I will then move to Fort Bragg to join her.”

The FPPC is being asked by McGourty to determine if there is a conflict under state rules with how he is viewing his current “primary address” arrangement.

“If so, what is the proper way to remedy this potential conflict?” he asks in a letter to the FPPC.

In the statement being circulated among county officials, the “concerned citizen” is calling for the immediate resignation of McGourty, and requiring he pay back salary and benefits if it is determined he was not entitled to them because of a residency change.

A request is also being made that the County Counsel review all board votes since May 14 McGourty may have been engaged in including his wife’s coast hospital district board appointment, or the county’s Tax Sharing Agreement reached with the incorporated cities.

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ANDREA’S ILLEGAL GUN

On July 12, 2024 at approximately 9:47 A/M, a Fort Bragg police officer conducted a traffic enforcement stop on a vehicle for multiple Vehicle Code violations in the 200 block of Maple Street.

During the traffic stop, it was learned the driver, a 17 year-old male juvenile, resident of Fort Bragg, was operating a motor vehicle while unlicensed. From prior history, it was known the male juvenile had been cited for the same offense in the past, and was taken into custody without incident for this current violation.

An inventory search of the vehicle was completed which yielded in the discovery of a club (mini-bat) and a loaded, unregistered, high capacity handgun both concealed under the front seat. The female passenger, identified as Andrea Romero-Serrano, 19, resident of Fort Bragg, was also taken into custody post investigation.

The handgun located upon further inspection, was determined to have a threaded barrel allowing for a suppressor to be attached, therefore classifying the handgun as an “assault weapon.”

The male juvenile was transported to Mendocino Juvenile Hall and Romero-Serrano was booked into the Mendocino County Jail. Both individuals were charged with the following: Possess Concealed Club, Carrying a Loaded Firearm in Public, Loaded Unregistered Firearm, Carrying a Concealed Weapon on Person or Vehicle, Possession of an Assault Weapon and Conspiracy. All felonies. The juvenile was also booked for Driving While Unlicensed, a misdemeanor.

Anyone with information on this incident is encouraged to contact Officer Frank of the Fort Bragg Police Department at (707)961-2800 ext 223.

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LOCAL WINE GRAPE GROWERS BRACE FOR CHALLENGING MARKET AS HARVEST APPROACHES

The North Coast wine grape harvest appears to be following normal timing to start in coming weeks, despite a heat wave. Meanwhile, growers face oversupply concerns for certain varieties and winery hesitation in challenging market conditions.

by Jeff Quackenbush

This year’s wine grape growing season in California's North Coast region appears to be on track with historical norms, despite the heat wave in the past two weeks.

But growers and buyers are bracing for a challenging harvest season amid concerns over excess supply and uncertain demand. That’s because the industry faces significant headwinds from oversupply for certain varieties, uncertain consumer desires and potential financial challenges for some players.

In the North Coast vineyards, grape development is two to four weeks ahead of last year's late harvest. Some of the last grapes were picked in the region in the first half of December, according to Glenn Proctor, partner of San Rafael-based Ciatti Company, a top grape and bulk-wine broker.

Sparkling wine grapes are expected to be the first to be harvested, starting the second week of August, according to Tyler Klick of Redwood Empire Vineyard Management.

Fred Peterson, owner of Peterson Winery in Dry Creek Valley, expects to start harvest at the end of August or the beginning of September, which he described as on track on average.

Peterson's own 15 acres vines on Bradford Mountain have weathered the conditions well so far, he said, with no signs of shriveled berries or other heat-related damage. He also buys grapes from other growers in Dry Creek Valley as well as Redwood Valley in Mendocino County.

Peterson also noted that the 2023 vintage, which saw a relatively cool and late growing season, resulted in larger-than-expected grape yields due to the continued growth and development of the berries. This year, he expects a more typical crop size, with the heat potentially limiting berry size and weight.

“A decent looking crop, but you get paid like breakfast cereals — by weight, not by volume,” Peterson said.

While some nearby wineries have expressed concerns about potential smoke taint from recent wildfires, Peterson said his vineyards were largely unaffected, with the smoke blowing in a different direction.

While the potential for an earlier harvest start is a positive sign, Proctor noted that some grape buyers have already asked for lists of available fruit, in case the heat causes tonnage to undershoot vintner projections. However, he said the heat so far has not significantly impacted crop size, with the region generally looking at an average to above-average crop.

The bigger concern is the state of the wine market.

Proctor said buyers are “very cautious right now.“

"There's just a lot of buyer hesitation, concern about oversupply, concern about margins going forward and pricing. They'd rather be short than long, in terms of inventory," he said.

Proctor estimates the share of uncontracted fruit on the North Coast is higher than the typical 5%–10% range, with one major vineyard management company reporting 70% of their fruit was contracted and 30% was not.

"My sense is it's more than that 5 or 10%, because the contract term expired," he said.

The bulk-wine market has seen more activity in recent months, but Proctor cautioned growers against "desperation" moves such as making bulk wine without the proper capabilities and financial backing. He also advised caution when selling grapes late in the season, emphasizing the importance of understanding a buyer's financial strength.

The California wine industry is navigating a complex landscape, with both similarities and differences between the North Coast and Central Valley regions, according to Steve Fredericks, president of Turrentine Brokerage, a Novato-based major deal-maker for grapes and wine in bulk.

He noted that the last time the industry faced oversupply and financial concerns was during the global financial crisis in 2009–10. However, the current situation is more challenging, as the industry faces future sales forecasts that are more muted and must adapt to high costs and oversupply.

“Not only do we have the economic challenges that differ, not only do we have a business climate with fear from a financial standpoint, but we have a conservative future sales forecast for everything,” Fredericks said.

The industry is grappling with the aftermath of short crops in 2020 and 2021, as well as the impact of the pandemic on sales. Fredericks said wineries must now adapt to the oversupply of Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir, either through supply reduction or increased marketing and sales efforts.

“We've got to compete on price. And that's hard. We got to put more effort into marketing and selling. And we've got competitive products competing against us. We've got a generational shift that's not in our favor right now,” Fredericks said.

The challenges are not limited to the popular premium market, as Fredericks noted that the Central Valley is also facing difficulties in this segment. And some higher-end Napa Valley Cabernet grapes and wine have also seen significant price drops for what’s not already under contract.

"Cost of production cost and farming — everything's much more expensive, whether that makes sense to a grower or not. But there's still a lot of grapes under long-term contracts that are at pretty darn good prices," Fredericks said.

The industry is also grappling with the challenge of depleted inventories and the slow recovery of shipments to match consumer demand. Fredericks noted that it's difficult to determine if shipments will improve next year, as the data on shipments has become more limited.

As the industry navigates these challenges, Fredericks emphasized the importance of adapting and being cautious about overcorrecting. He also questioned the competitive market and customer base for some vineyard plantings, suggesting that growers may not have fully considered the market dynamics before making their decisions.

(North Bay Business Journal)

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HINGES OF HADES IN MY BACK YARD

by Tommy Wayne Kramer

Was it hot in Ukiah last week? It was Thursday when the sun quit spinning in the sky and the meteorologist heat index registered between OMG and WTF.

Yeah, well I’m a Buckeye. Weather in Ohio ranges from torturous to illegal. If I’d stayed in Cleveland I’d have been frozen dead-solid in January and a hot gooey puddle by July.

California? Ha. I laughed at weather in California until I got to North Carolina. A veteran of all, here are condensed yearly weather accounts:

Cleveland

January: Global freezing ice age cold, snowflakes wear down vests.

February: Screaming cold, but only for 28 days.

March: Cool with potholes.

April: Opening Day at Municipal Stadium; Oops, snowing again.

May: Storms, isolated reports of flowers.

June: Mosquitoes.

July: Open window, instant sweat.

August: Surface of sun; outdoor activities banned.

September: Tiny black bugs.

October: Bonfires.

November: Winter preview.

December: Lights, festival of Red & Green.

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Ukiah

January: Drought or else 90 days of rain; canoes distributed citywide.

February: Flowers, budding stuff.

April: Chill winds crush flowers, blossoms, crops, hope.

May: Cool with hoodies and hints of January.

June: Sunscreen, parasols.

July: Outdoor activities (walking, opening doors) banned.

August: California lawmakers remove it from calendars.

September: Football.

October: Winter Water Tuneup.

November, December: Rain, flooding, heavy precipitation and storms. Canoes distributed citywide.

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North Carolina

January: Afternoon skies oddly dark.

February: Corn, Tobacco harvests delayed two days.

March: First sightings of sunbathing squirrels, chipmunks.

April, May, June: TV meteorologist calls weather “Seasonally Cute.”

July: Take Crocs from freezer, put ’em on, away I go.

August: Clear off shelf in fridge to spend my afternoons. Keep door shut to avoid light bulb heat.

September: Foliage, falling tree limbs.

October: Owls, cicadas, lightning bugs.

November: Seems darker; did time change?

December: Icy porch, frozen pipes; terrorist attacks suspected.

All I know after Ukiah’s blast furnace tsunami is that I really must mend my ways. Hell is simply not an option.

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Around Town

I like the downtown streetscape having cement ponds for dolphins and crab. Raccoons holding weekend sushi nights will provide children an education on nature’s food chain.

For generations the shrubbery at Bush and Low Gap brought smiles from pedestrians, and vehicles stopped at the intersection to see the carefully trimmed monsters peering from within. It’s been the hard work and artistry of County grounds maintenance crews since at least the 1970s.

Now come budget cutbacks and the first to go are the friendly Dinobeasts shaped from wild bushes.

Also, the classy and classic old hospital at the corner, an architectural relic with echoes of Deco and Spanish-style, is undergoing a rude makeover. It will not go well.

Already we see 2x4s inserted inside those graceful arches, doing violence to history, beauty and a citizenry that deserves better. Take a look before county meatheads decide to bulldoze the building just for the fun of it.

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‘Our Democracy’

Our friends on the left have concocted something new to fret over, and it’s about the fragile state of “Our Democracy” which they suggest is gravely imperiled by the Big Orange Tyrant.

Their feigned anxieties over abuse of the democratic process ignore which party is currently plotting a backroom coup against Joe Biden. They may also recall Dems working furiously to keep Trump off state ballots in the upcoming election, and to prevent him walking the streets a free man.

“Save Our Democracy” is the slogan covering the ruse.

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Caspar Mill Pond and Log Chute. Men on rafts can be seen moving the logs away from the bottom of the chute to clear the landing area and sorting the logs into pockets in the pond according to species and size. Logs were brought from the woods to the mill via railroad. The log chute connected the terminus of the railroad at the top of the bluff to the mill pond below. The chute was created using trimmed logs laid into the slope. Since the bridge carrying Highway 1 across Caspar Creek spanned the mill pond, passing cars were often showered with the splash from the logs hitting the water. (Kelley House Collection)

A huge “Thank you!” to Chuck Ross for correcting this photo description!

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BOONVILLE SUPER SALE POSTPONED DUE TO WEATHER.

It will occur and I will keep you posted.

It’s worth the wait!

Thanks,

Susan Bridge-Mount

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ED NOTES

“VIOLENCE has no place in our democracy.” Please. Violence is our democracy, from its bloody beginnings until now, as the accelerating violence of the present propels US toward what looks like our second civil war. Violence has been what sets “our democracy” apart from most other democracies. (Mexico excepted.) Our culture worships violence, celebrates it, has built an entire entertainment around it.

“OUR DEMOCRACY”? You mean the one with a figurehead president behind whom unelected people have made our national decisions for the past four years?

“OUR DEMOCRACY” ends at the county line unless, of course, you get invited to San Francisco where the Democrat insiders choose our congressman, our state senator and our assemblyman for us. Ever hear of Mike McGuire, or Huffman, or Wood before they appeared as our “representatives”?

TRUMP’S always talked up violence, especially against weak, undefended people, while the Democrats have compared him to Hitler and said he was “the greatest threat to our democracy in our nation's history.”

ANY WONDER a dumb kid thinks to himself, “Well, gee, I could be one for the history books if I knocked this guy off.”

WHICH isn't to approve of assassination as a political strategy, but is anybody really surprised when it happens, as it does in mass shootings and millions of violent episodes every day somewhere in our unraveling country?

TRUMP'S FIRST TERM AS PRESIDENT, with a tip o’ the hat to Fintan O’Toole for the facts:

Didn't repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with something beautiful.

Or make the rich pay more taxes.

Or drain the swamp of lobbyists or any other swamp creatures.

Or become the voice of American workers.

Or eliminate the federal deficit.

Or open up all the coal mines in West Virginia.

Or build a coast to coast wall and make Mexico pay for it.

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Sunday, July 14, 2024

LINDA ALMOND, Ukiah. Camping on sidewalk.

ENOCH GUTIERREZ, Ukiah. Assault with deadly weapon with great bodily injury, vandalism.

SCOTT HICKEY, Ukiah. Criminal threats.

KIMBERLY JONES, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

RICARDO MEDINA, Ukiah. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

PABLO MUNIZ, Ukiah. DUI.

RYAN OKERSTROM, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-under influence, resisting.

MICHAEL JAMES PERRY, Ukiah. Vandalism.

MICHAEL JOSEPH PERRY, Calpella. Vandalism.

PANDREA ROMERO-SERRANO, Fort Bragg. Concealed loaded firearm in vehicle with prior, loaded firearm-not registered owner, loaded firearm in public, saps or similar weapons, conspiracy.

BIANCA SCHOFIELD, Point Arena. Trespassing.

MARCUS SLOAN, Ukiah. Suspended license, county parole violation.

MATREYUS TISCARENO-MEYER, Fort Bragg. Concealed firearm, loaded firearm-not registered owner, loaded firearm in public, concealed dirk/dagger.

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WHAT YOU CAN DO

Editor:

I’ve been tabling at farmers’ markets urging people to take action to curb climate change. I hear the same lament over and over: “There’s nothing I can do.” Well, now everyone can do something really significant by voting yes for Proposition 4, the state climate bond on the Nov. 5 ballot. It’s an all-encompassing measure, cutting greenhouse gases, shifting to renewable energy, conserving lands to absorb unwanted carbon and increasing protection from wildfires, droughts and flooding.

Yes, the measure comes with a hefty $10 billion price tag. But if Donald Trump is reelected, fossil fuel companies will take precedence once more. California’s climate bond will look like an even better deal then. So, yes, Californians, you can make a difference this fall with a single stroke of the pen. It’s well worth the money.

Jane Bender

Santa Rosa

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TRENCH COMPOSTING

Trenching is the act of burying your organic waste directly into your garden soil. The advantage of this method over conventional composting is that it enables you to compost meat, grains, dairy, and cooked leftover foods that contain oil in addition to other kitchen scraps. Because these items attract rodents and flies, we recommend you don't put them into your regular compost. By burying them in a trench you can avoid these problems, since neither rodents nor flies will be able to access the material if it is 45 cm underground. And all you need is a shovel!

Trenching is also a safe method for composting pet waste. Because the waste is buried in the ground, the risk of pathogen spread is very unlikely. However, you should not trench your pet waste near edible food crops. Trenching is an excellent method to use in combination with growing annual plants, especially heavy feeding plants like cabbage, corn, and squash. It also encourages the development of deep, water conserving root systems.

Trenching utilizes anaerobic (without oxygen) decomposition to create an underground band of nutrient-rich humus for your plants. This is a slower composting process than that which occurs in a well-managed backyard bin, but the trenched materials will retain more nitrogen during the process.

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LIGHTEN UP ON US GEEZERS

Editor,

We need understanding of aging to show compassion.

In many cultures, the elders are seen as wise and there is little judgment about their physical and mental manifestations of aging. In recent years, we have made progress on the themes of racism, feminism and homophobia. When it comes to ageism, it is unfortunately a very different story.

Many of my liberal friends, all of whom are passionate about anti-racism and anti-sexism, lack understanding and compassion when it comes to aging.

In the recent presidential debate, Republicans and Democrats rushed to the conclusion that President Joe Biden is unfit to be commander in chief. When former President Ronald Reagan was showing signs of slowing down and had memory lapses while still in office, I don’t recall people declaring that he should resign.

Cognition is not a black-and-white issue. Stress and fatigue can impact alertness and speech. While I am not trying to make excuses for a poor performance, someone like Biden, who is uncomfortable with interactions that involve verbal attacks, could easily exhibit cognitive symptoms in a combative situation.

There is another aspect of cognition that rarely gets discussed. Former President Donald Trump, who was alert and articulate in the debate, shows serious signs of delusional thinking. How serious is this for a commander in chief?

Dennis Portnoy

Greenbrae

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FRED GARDNER:

When I heard the news Saturday night I went online to find the latest, and this is what came up:

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JUST LUCKY

Dear Editor,

Some say Trump pumping his fist after he was grazed let the audience know he was okay. Others saw the gestures, the extreme facial anger, and the repeating of what appeared to be the word “fight” three times, as not just encouraging support for his candidacy but exploiting the moment to build resentment and perhaps even retaliatory violence. His son Eric wrote, “This is the fighter America needs.”

One politician offered, “First they tried to keep him off the ballot, then they tried to jail him, and now this.” Blame for the event was already being deflected away from the unidentified dead shooter onto the political opposition, the black-hearted demon democrats of the left. Another politician said, “Joe Biden sent the orders.”

His audience got the angry message. One of the attendees said, “Trump is immortal, I will fight for him to the end.” This was clearly an opportunity to elevate Trump from human to super-human. Commentator Martha MacCallum offered, “There are not too many humans that are made that way. Support for him will exponentially increase.” Hannity said, “He’s been through more than most people can take.”

Former Republican leader Newt Gingrich took the failed assassination attempt as an indicator of God’s partisan view of the election. He said, “It was providential” that Trump turned his head at the right moment. Perhaps it was just very lucky.

Kimball Shinkoskey

Wood Cross, Utah

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

A 130 yd. shot with a clear line to the president? Good snipers can hit from ten times that distance and more. Trump was extremely lucky. Something wrong here. That building should have been secured.

Great photos of a bloody, defiant Trump. This should help him. It was disgusting to hear the likes of Biden and Obama regurgitate the usual platitudes about violence, having not done much to prevent it at all, almost endorsing it.

I hope that Trump and his advisors handle this incident with a firm and militant resolve, no talk about all getting along bull crap, but building on the incident and using it to point out the Left’s dangerous demagoguery and his extreme vilification, such as being compared to Hitler and him putting people into “gulags.”

Flaws and all, what’s not to love? The bloody, defiant face and fist. Will this be the face that launched millions of votes and burnt the topless towers of tergiversation?

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ON-LINE COMMENT: Trying to hit a target at 130 yards with a short barrel rifle is hard for even the best shooter. Trump uses a lot of body language when he talks, from the time of target acquisition to actually pulling the trigger, plus the fraction of a second for the bullet to fly 400 feet, we’re looking at half a second, maybe more, that’s more than enough time for someone who speaks the way Trump does to move his head. People taking bullets in the crowd behind Trump isn’t surprising, it was a densely packed crowd, it makes sense.

What doesn’t make sense is that Secret Service was supposedly notified by people in the crowd that there was a rifleman taking up an active shooter position on top of a building nearby and the Secret Service did nothing until after 8-9 shots were fired, after which the assassin was promptly neutralized with a head shot, makes one wonder, especially with how shady our politics have become.

One thing is unfortunately very certain, this moment has dramatically increased our chances of civil war. I thought the chance was very low before this point in time and people were just fear mongering, but now I think it is definitely within the realm of possibility.

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THE SLO-MO ASSASSINATION

Self-described guardians of democracy spent years creating a lethal atmosphere around Donald Trump

by Matt Taibbi

Before the attempt on Donald Trump’s life, while questions raged about the health of President Joe Biden, officials downplayed the importance of the physical leader. White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters to look at the administration, not the man. “What we are saying,” she said, “is there are results, his record.” As my podcast partner Walter Kirn wrote, we were “being introduced to the idea that the presidency is a diffuse impersonal ‘office,’ and the bucks stops nowhere that is… conventionally identifiable.”

But we live in a physical world, and individuals still matter. Official actions betray this more than anything else. When a populist movement built on frustration over decades of misrule began having electoral success, they created a legend that the backlash was irrational and the fault of one Donald Trump, building him into a figure of colossal art, a super-Hitler. It became cliché that he was the embodiment of all evil and needed to be stopped “at all costs.” By late last year, mainstream press organizations were saying legal means had failed, and more or less openly calling for a truly final solution to the Trump problem.

Now he’s been shot, in an incident that’s left two dead. We don’t exactly know why yet. We barely know the “who,” as stories about slain 20-year-old suspect Thomas Matthew Crooks are citing investigations into “whether the shooter had accomplices,” as NBC put it. New York Times analysts say the gunman fired eight shots. That’s a lot of rage, and even if we don’t know its direct source, it can’t have been much lower than what was already in the air around Trump. He and his supporters have been dehumanized as part of an induced collective madness that’s a bigger crime than the coverup of Biden’s incapacity…

racket.news/p/the-slow-motion-assassination

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THE ASSASSINATION of Trump would not remove the yearning of tens of millions of people, many conditioned by the Christian right, for a cult leader. Most of the leaders of the Christian right have built cult followings of their own. These Christian fascists embraced magical thinking, attacked their enemies as agents of Satan and denounced reality-based science and journalism long before Trump did. Cults are a product of social decay and despair, and our decay and despair are expanding, soon to explode in another financial crisis.

The efforts by the Democratic Party and much of the press, including CNN and The New York Times, to discredit Trump, as if our problems are embodied in him, are futile. The smug, self-righteousness of this crusade against Trump only contributes to the national reality television show that has replaced journalism and politics. This crusade attempts to reduce a social, economic and political crisis to the personality of Trump. It is accompanied by a refusal to confront and name the corporate forces responsible for our failed democracy. This collusion with the forces of corporate oppression, which have impoverished the working class, fostered endless war, militarized our police, created the largest prison system in the world, licensed corporations to exploit the most vulnerable and transferred wealth upwards into the hands of a billionaire class, neuters the press, Trump's critics and the Democratic Party.

Our only hope is to organize the overthrow of the corporate state that vomited up Trump. Our democratic institutions, including the legislative bodies, the courts and the media, are hostage to corporate power. They are no longer democratic. We must, like resistance movements of the past, engage in acts of sustained mass civil disobedience, especially strikes, and non-cooperation. By turning our ire on the corporate state, rather than Trump, we name the true sources of power and abuse. We expose the absurdity of blaming our demise on demonized groups such as undocumented workers, Muslims, African-Americans, Latinos, liberals, feminists, gays and others. We give people an alternative to a bankrupt Democratic Party — whose presidential candidate is in clear cognitive decline — that is a full partner in corporate oppression and cannot be rehabilitated. We make possible the restoration of an open society. If we fail to embrace this militancy, which alone has the ability to destroy cult leaders, we will continue the march toward tyranny.

— Chris Hedges

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A NATION INFLAMED

by David Remnick

On April 5, 1968, the day after Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in Memphis, Robert F. Kennedy, who was pursuing the Democratic nomination for President, spoke to the Cleveland City Club about the “mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.”

In a mournful cadence, Kennedy told the crowd that a sniper is a coward, not a hero; that the “uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of the people.” Violence, whether it is carried out by one man or a gang, he said, degrades an entire nation:

Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire weapons and ammunition they desire. . . . Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear; violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleaning of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.

On Saturday afternoon, a twenty-year-old man identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks positioned himself on a roof in Butler, Pennsylvania, and attempted to murder former President Donald Trump, who was speaking at a rally of his supporters. From more than a hundred yards away, Crooks allegedly fired off a series of rounds from what has been described as an “AR-15-style” rifle. One bullet grazed Trump’s right ear, he said. Had the shooter’s aim been even infinitesimally more accurate, Trump would have been mortally wounded. As it was, he was left stunned and bleeding from his ear. Before the Secret Service could sweep him off the stage, Trump paused near the steps to pump his fist and, in defiance, mouthed the words, “Fight, fight.”

President Joe Biden, who is facing calls from some Democratic leaders, various pundits, and much of the electorate to step aside, did the decent thing. In a statement, he expressed relief that Trump was safe and in good health: “I’m praying for him and his family and for all those who were at the rally.” Later, he appeared before reporters in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, and insisted that “everybody must condemn” the “sick” attack on his opponent, adding that he hoped to reach “Donald” later by phone. Biden momentarily set aside his profound differences with Trump, and his firm belief that the election would decide fundamental questions about the future of the country and its essence. “We cannot allow for this to be happening,” he said. Biden’s sole misstep was to add, “The idea that there’s political violence or violence in America like this is just unheard of.” If only that were true.

It remains to be seen if there is any leader in these hideous times who is capable of the pained eloquence and reason that Kennedy showed on the day after King’s murder. Set aside the sickening rush of accusation on social media, the vicious taunts, the crackpot theories that what happened in Pennsylvania was staged, a “false-flag operation,” a “fake,” the fault of the political left, the Democratic Party, and Biden himself. Set aside, for a moment, what influence the attempt on Trump’s life will have on voters in November.

Who is capable of bringing to this terrible moment the kind of moral sense that R.F.K. managed just hours after Dr. King was shot dead outside Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel? Many elected officials, Republican and Democrat, did issue statements denouncing violence and expressing relief that Trump had survived the attack. Many refrained from exploiting the event for political gain. But not all.

J. D. Vance, the junior senator from Ohio and a candidate to be Trump’s running mate, declared on social media that the shooting in Butler was “not just some isolated incident.” He added, “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

Senator Tim Scott, of South Carolina, added more fuel to the atmosphere of conspiracy: “Let’s be clear: This was an assassination attempt aided and abetted by the radical Left and corporate media incessantly calling Trump a threat to democracy, fascists, or worse.”

Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, tied the shooting in Pennsylvania to Trump’s myriad criminal convictions and indictments. “They try to jail him. They try to kill him. It will not work,” he posted on X. “He is indomitable.”

In the coming days, things will not likely get better. In a fevered and divided country, some will try to generalize the person and meaning of Crooks, a twenty-year-old high-school graduate who is both a registered Republican and, reportedly, a fifteen-dollar donor to a liberal voter-turnout group. When more details of his life emerge—and they inevitably will—it may be hard to know what it all means. If it means anything at all.

“For historians violence is a difficult subject, diffuse and hard to cope with,” Richard Hofstadter wrote, in his essay “Reflections on Violence in the United States.” “It is committed by isolated individuals, by small groups, and by large mobs; it is directed against individuals and crowds alike; it is undertaken for a variety of purposes (and at times for no discernible rational purpose at all), and in a variety of ways ranging from assassinations and murders to lynchings, duels, brawls, feuds, and riots; it stems from criminal intent and from political idealism, from antagonisms that are entirely personal and from antagonisms of large social consequence.”

What must be said, contrary to the rhetoric of Vance, Scott, and Abbott, is that Trump has, to say the least, done little to calm or to unify the country he once led and is campaigning to lead again. Unfortunately, it is hard to recall a public voice in living memory who has done more to arouse the lowest passions that so often percolate within individuals and the greater society. Even as one expresses genuine relief that Trump escaped a worse fate on Saturday (and sympathy for the family of the spectator at the rally who was killed), it is legitimate to describe what Trump and his rhetoric have meant to the country. He began his political career with statements like “When I was 18, people called me Donald Trump. When he was 18, @BarackObama was Barry Soweto.” And he went on from there, year after year. After Obama attended a public viewing for Antonin Scalia, but not the funeral, Trump asked, “I wonder if President Obama would have attended the funeral of Justice Scalia if it were held in a Mosque?” With dizzying frequency, he trafficked in the demagogic language of dehumanization, of “scum” and “vermin” and “animals” and “enemies of the people.” And then there was “Lock her up!” and “Stand back and stand by.” In 2016, he deployed familiar bigoted tropes, declaring that “Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty.” Over and over, he has glorified brutality, whether it was the desirability of police throwing “thugs” into “the back of a paddy wagon” or a congressional candidate body-slamming a reporter because he dared to ask about health-care policy. (“Any guy that can do a body slam, he’s my type,” Trump said.) When he heard that MSNBC anchor Ali Velshi had been hit by a rubber bullet during a demonstration in the wake of the death of George Floyd, he called it “a beautiful sight.”

Trump has always dismissed the idea that he has contributed to the division and inflammation of the country’s state of mind. When asked if his language was divisive, he replied, “I don’t think my rhetoric does at all. My rhetoric is very—it brings people together.” And yet he has not hesitated to mock his victims, even when their loved ones were victims of assault. Nancy Pelosi was “crazy,” he said. And when Pelosi’s husband, Paul, was brutalized by a hammer-wielding attacker, he asked, sarcastically, “How’s her husband doing? Anybody know?” The Capitol Hill insurrection, which threatened the lives of Pelosi, Mike Pence, and other political leaders, found its inspiration in the rhetoric of one man.

That language, that lack of empathy, cannot serve as an example or a way forward. It is absolutely right and necessary to denounce in the clearest terms the crime that we witnessed Saturday in Pennsylvania and feel relief that the result was not even worse than it was. At the same time, one hopes for a sensibility and moral temper of the sort that stepped to the microphone in Cleveland, in April, 1968, to reject violence as an instrument of politics or rage and to pay tribute to an avatar of humanity and peace:

Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanish it with a program, nor with a resolution. But we can perhaps remember—even if only for a time—that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short movement of life, that they seek—as we do—nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can. Surely this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our hearts brothers and countrymen once again.

Two months after delivering that speech, Robert Kennedy won the California and South Dakota primaries and had a good chance to defeat Richard Nixon and win the Presidency. He addressed his cheering supporters in the Ambassador Hotel ballroom, in Los Angeles, and then tried to leave the building through a crowded kitchen. A man in his mid-twenties named Sirhan Sirhan approached him, raised a handgun, and fired multiple times. Kennedy died at Good Samaritan Hospital the next day. He was forty-two years old.

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THE SOUND OF THE ASSASSIN’S GUN NEVER GOES AWAY

by Maureen Dowd

I always watch Donald Trump rallies if I can. I was watching the one Saturday night in Butler, Pa., on Fox News, waiting for the former president to come on. But after an hour of waiting, I had to leave to meet my sister, Peggy, for dinner.

As soon as we sat down, we heard the shocking news about the assassination attempt on Trump, and we ran out of the restaurant and went back to see that horrific, bloody two minutes and 30 seconds being replayed over and over on every cable channel.

Pop. Pop. Pop.

My sister heard that sound before, on June 5, 1968, but it was louder, because she heard it inside a ballroom. She was at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles the night Bobby Kennedy was assassinated.

She had just moved from Washington to California that May for a job at the American Hospital Supply Corp. A woman she worked with had befriended her because Peggy knew no one in Los Angeles. The woman’s husband was an electrician at the Ambassador Hotel.

He had called his wife to say, “Bobby Kennedy is going to make a speech at the hotel tonight. A lot of people are coming to see him. Why don’t you both drive down here, and we can have a drink after?”

Kennedy had challenged President Lyndon Johnson, running on a platform critical of the Vietnam War. Then in March, Johnson announced that he would not seek re-election. Kennedy was left competing against Gene McCarthy and Hubert Humphrey. When Kennedy went to the Ambassador that night, he was on a high. A few hours before, he won the California and South Dakota primaries.

Peggy loved John F. Kennedy — she was in the crowd at his inaugural — and was devastated when he was assassinated in 1963. She was excited as she squeezed into the back of the ballroom to hear her hero’s brother Bobby Kennedy, who wrapped up his speech at about midnight, happily saying, “So my thanks to all of you, and on to Chicago, and let’s win there.”

A few minutes later, she heard the same firecracker noise: Pop. Pop. Pop.

“After we heard the gunshots, there was total chaos, people screaming and crying,” Peggy recalled. The crowd pushed toward the kitchen hallway, where Kennedy had been shot by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian.

Kennedy was leaving through the kitchen; he was felled next to a tray stacker and an ice machine.

“People were screaming, ‘He’s dead, he’s dead, just like his brother!’” Peggy said. “We saw them take the body away. I was thinking, ‘How could this happen to one family, the same thing?’ It was surreal.”

Kennedy died at Good Samaritan Hospital 25 hours later.

His only security had consisted of a former F.B.I. agent, William Barry, and two unofficial bodyguards, his friends Rosey Grier, a retired football player, and Rafer Johnson, an Olympic decathlon gold medalist.

Grier and another friend of Kennedy’s, the writer George Plimpton, were the ones who tried to wrestle the gun from Sirhan as he kept shooting and wounding people. Ethel Kennedy, visibly pregnant, was leaning over her husband, asking bystanders to give him air.

This was the tragic event that caused the Secret Service to provide protection for presidential candidates. Agents of the service were there Saturday evening surrounding Trump after a sniper climbed a roof and shot a rifle at him.

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TAIBBI & KIRN

Walter Kirn: Movie stars: I’ve been around some of them. I’ve written about them. I’ve hung out on movie sets. I’ve been friends with them. Michael Douglas called somebody and said, “How is Clooney getting this all to himself? Get me out there.” My ex-mother-in-law was Margot Kidder, the woman who played Lois Lane in the Superman movies.

Matt Taibbi: Lois Lane. Yeah.

Walter Kirn: Yeah. And she had problems at one point in her life, emotional and psychiatric problems, that caused her to be on the cover of People Magazine, and be interviewed by Barbara Walters and so on. And celebrities who did not know her, I knew for a fact that they did not know her, rushed in to say how concerned they were for their friend, Margot Kidder. I don’t know that many of them had even met her. Okay? So you are going to see people now concerned about Biden’s mental state, who haven’t thought about it once in their lifetimes, but need a spot. They want to get up there with Clooney. “How dare he?” Okay, so first of all, I saw the opportunism, and that’s going to snowball. Because today, people across Hollywood, who don’t have careers, or whose careers are quiet, realized that condemning Joe Biden is a way to get some airtime, and they’re going to do it.

Matt Taibbi: Right. Right.

Walter Kirn: Second of all, George Clooney, who I did meet, he starred in the movie of my book. I believe he has political ambitions. He knew Barack Obama from his original campaign. They’ve been friends for a long time. And I think George, who was the world’s most eligible bachelor, and confirmed bachelor, who swore he would never marry, and swore many times in front of me, ended up marrying a woman who is a international human rights lawyer, makes the scene, serious person, and I believe has been on a glide path toward political office himself. And I think this was a way station on that journey.

Matt Taibbi: Okay. But that’s just so weird. All right, part of the issue here is that the Democratic Party in particular, you would never imagine this on the Republican side. Republicans, some actor, Kid Rock stands up and says…

Walter Kirn: “Trump, your time is up.”

Matt Taibbi: “Trump, your time is up.” And then every news agency in the world says, “Oh my God, Kid Rock has spoken. It’s over.” That would never happen. Are you kidding me? But on the Democratic side, the opinions of actors are, they’re very, very important. I’ve had less exposure to big time actors than you have, Walter, obviously, but I’ve had some, and the experience has been really interesting because some of them are actually smarter than even I would have thought on screen. They’re great actors, and they’re really impressive people, erudite, thoughtful in their private lives. And then other ones are people who you almost need help getting to the bathroom, right? It’s a really strange range of folks. But there’s also this thing that’s happened, I think particularly in the last 15 years or so, where Hollywood celebrities… The joke was always that Washington was Hollywood for ugly people. And now the dynamic is starting to reverse, where people in Hollywood are imagining themselves to be politicians, and I don’t think they’re in touch with how detested they are when they get into politics, very often, in middle America.

Walter Kirn: Yeah. I live in middle America, Montana, and I can tell you, just in my private street side poll, not a New York Times columnist who interviews Uber drivers, but I do get around a little. And this isn’t working, man. They need to stop this if they want to win, because Hollywood actors were used to sell COVID fear. Okay? They just were. The beginning was full of TikToks and Periscopes, and whatever, of Hollywood actors, Madonna in her bathtub, Ellen DeGeneres, et cetera, et cetera. That was the shark jump. We are so post shark jump now, as far as the taking serious advice about our democracy and our lives from actors. And if you look at the Clooney threads on X, ones that begin with just the editorial, they quickly devolve into “F You. I don’t listen to you. Go do this. Go do that sexually to yourself.” But worse, Matt, this all appears to be the prelude toward a Lollapalooza extravaganza of Hollywoodism in Democratic Party politics.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah. And we’ll get to that in a second, but I think we got to play a clip that we both thought of right away, because this is the backdrop. The South Park guys saw this coming. Maybe they saw it at the time. But there was a preview of how ordinary Americans saw this new idea of Hollywood people getting together and deciding what’s right for the rest of America, and how that was going to go over. And they satirized it in the great and only satirical puppet movie that I can remember, Team America World Police.

Speaker 1: This is breaking news with Peter Jennings.

Team America Peter Jennings: Team America has once again pissed off the entire world after blowing up half of Cairo. And now some Hollywood celebrities are lashing out. Alec Baldwin is head of the Film Actors Guild.

Team America Alec Baldwin: The Film Actors Guild believes that what the world needs is compassion, not violence. All that Team America does is create new enemies.

Team America Tim Robbins: Let me explain to you how this works. You see, the corporations finance Team America, and then Team America goes out, and the corporations sit there in their corporation buildings, and see they’re all corporationey, and they make money.

Team America Sean Penn: Last year I went to Iraq. Before Team America showed up it was a happy place.

Matt Taibbi: That’s a very funny Sean Penn puppet.

Team America Sean Penn: They had flowery meadows and rainbow skies and rivers made of chocolate where the children danced and laughed and played with gumdrop smiles.

Team America Peter Jennings: The actors are calling for an emergency meeting. Already expected to attend are Helen Hunt, George Clooney, Liv Tyler, Martin Sheen, Susan Sarandon, Janeane Garofalo, and Matt Damon.

Team America Matt Damon: Matt Damon.

Team America Peter Jennings: In the meantime, the world wants to deal with dangerous individuals their own way.

Matt Taibbi: And then there’s another segment where they meet in the Great Hall of Film Actors Guild.

Walter Kirn: The future capital of the United States.

Team America Alec Baldwin: My fellow actors. We live in a dark time. The world is becoming more and more violent, and the idiots in charge are making it worse. What the world needs is an international advisory committee who truly understands global politics, namely us.

Team America Helen Hunt: The time has come for us to start using our acting talents in a different way.

Team America Ethan Hawke: Yes, we can use our powers to change the world.

Team America Tim Robbins: We will persuade everyone to drive hybrid cars and stop smoking.

Team America Liv Tyler: If we focus our acting on global politics, we can change everything and stuff.

(racket.news)

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THE IMPERATIVE TO REDUCE THE CHANCES OF A TRUMP VICTORY

by Norman Solomon

After surviving an assassination attempt at his Pennsylvania rally, Donald Trump is in a stronger position than ever to win a second term in November. With his active supporters even more motivated in the wake of the shooting Saturday, preventing a Trump victory is now unlikely. Still, we must try.

Top Trump strategists are very eager for their candidate to run against Joe Biden. They’re now worried that the Democratic Party might end up with a different standard bearer.

The Atlantic recently published Tim Alberta’s in-depth examination of the Trump campaign’s strategic approach. “Everything they have been doing, the targeting that they have been doing of voters, the advertisements that they’re cutting, the fund-raising ploys that they’re making, the viral Internet videos that they have been churning out, they’re all designed around Joe Biden,” Alberta told PBS' "NewsHour."

“So if suddenly he were replaced at the top of the ticket,” he added, “I think in many ways it’s back to square one for the Trump campaign. They recognize this. And I think they’re deeply unnerved by the possibility of a switcheroo at the top of the Democratic ticket.”

Last weekend, the Washington Post put it this way: “As Democrats debate the future of Biden’s reelection bid, Republicans would prefer he stay in a race they believe they are already winning.”

On Sunday, “Face the Nation” reported “top Democratic sources believe that Democrats who had thoughts about challenging President Biden are now standing down ‘because of this fragile political moment.’” Yet a guest on the same CBS program, Democratic Rep. Jason Crow, warned of a “high risk” that his party will lose the election “unless there is a major change.” He said that messaging from Biden’s campaign “is not effectively breaking through.” Additionally, an unnamed “senior House Democrat” reportedly told Axios over the weekend that "We've all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency."

While Biden boosters like to talk about national polling that sometimes puts Biden within a couple of points of Trump, such surveys mean little. Due to the Electoral College, the swing states will determine the winner. Biden is behind — and falling further behind in most of them. Arizona, Georgia and Nevada have moved from “toss up” states to “lean Republican” following Biden’s disastrous CNN debate, according to the Cook Political Report. With an approval rating that now hovers around an abysmal 37 percent, Biden is increasingly playing defense in states he won easily four years ago.

“Democrats’ concerns about Biden’s ability to win are expanding beyond this cycle’s predetermined battlegrounds into states that long ago turned blue in presidential elections,” Politico reported last week, in an article raising doubts about Biden’s prospects in New Hampshire, Maine, New Mexico and Minnesota. The headline: “Dems Are Freaking Out About Biden Even in Once Safely Blue States.”

Around the country, Democratic candidates are running well ahead of Biden. Last week, the Economist/YouGov poll found that “96 percent of registered Democrats say they will vote for a Democratic House candidate in the fall, compared with 85 percent who plan to vote for Biden.”

Biden’s presence at the top of the ticket promises not only deliver the White House to Trump but also the House and Senate to Republicans.

In the light of such realities less than four months before Election Day, it’s alarming to hear many elected Democrats — including some progressives in Congress — publicly claim that Biden is just fine as the party’s nominee.

The happy-talk denialism from those congressional progressives shows a disconnect from the progressive grassroots. Many activists who devoted months of their lives on behalf of Biden in 2020 to vote Trump out are disaffected from Biden in 2024. Many are furious over Biden’s nonstop support of Israel during its continuous slaughter of civilians in Gaza. That includes Arab-American and Muslim activists and groups who mobilized for Biden four years ago against his Islamophobic opponent. Many climate activists who fought for Biden in 2020 against the “drill, baby, drill” Trump are disgusted with his reversals on climate policy.

So, the depressing poll numbers may understate the problem for Biden as the Democratic nominee, because they don’t count the gap in campaign volunteer energy — especially in contrast with the highly energized MAGA base. Early this year, an anonymous letter from 17 Biden 2024 campaign staffers urged Biden to reverse himself on Gaza and seek an immediate ceasefire: “Biden for President staff have seen volunteers quit in droves, and people who have voted blue for decades feel uncertain about doing so for the first time ever.”

In 2017, the Trump presidency was properly mocked for its brazen assertions of “alternative facts.” It’s now disconcerting that Biden and his advocates so often lapse into puffery as to his true political situation.

That situation was laid out with chilling candor in a detailed New York Times piece by longtime Democratic strategist Doug Sosnik, who was a senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and has advised dozens of governors and senators. The article makes for grim reading: “President Biden has spent much of 2024 with a more challenging path to winning a second presidential term in November than Donald Trump. But for reasons that have become glaringly obvious, that path has all but vanished.”

Biden “not only faces losing battleground states he won in 2020,” Sosnik wrote, “he is also at risk of losing traditional Democratic states like Minnesota and New Hampshire, which Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama carried. If current trends continue, Mr. Trump could rack up one of the most decisive presidential victories since 2008.”

Yet so many Democrats in Congress are refusing to call for Biden to step aside. And a lot of them are even cheering him on, encouraging his intransigence, as though nothing is amiss.

There is still time, however, to course correct. Until the Democratic Party officially nominates its presidential candidate, the push for Biden to withdraw from the ticket should continue.

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MONDAY'S LEADS IN THE NYT

Biden Asks America to ‘Lower the Temperature’ After Trump Shooting

Here’s What Is Known About the Suspect Who Tried to Assassinate Trump

After Shooting at Trump Rally, Officials Say R.N.C. Security Is ‘Ready To Go’

They Were Told They Were in a Safe Area. Then Came the Missiles

Promised Cures, Tainted Cells: How Cord Blood Banks Mislead Parents

A New Prince Leads Spain as It Rules European Soccer Again

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THE SECOND COMING

by Ellen Taylor

For an elder, (or for anybody in fact) contemplation of the tableau of US history can become a habitual 4th of July conversation.. As commonly told and commemorated on Independence Day, our nation’s story begins glamorously enough, erupting into the world with streaming banners of righteousness and courage. There’s Paul Revere tensely listening for oars, poised on his horse and ready to hurtle through the night to Lexington and Concord; Washington crossing the Delaware on Christmas amidst icebergs, hail and snow; Valley Forge, snare drums, … brilliantly written, defiant documents, and Francis Scott Keyes’s anxious vigil on the truce ship watching, and writing about the first fireworks, later set to a soaring melody (of “To Anacreon in Heaven!”), gold fringe, marching bands and the rippling Red White and blue.

Thrilling. As a little child in New York, I used to run, at a diagonal, through the ranks of those bands as they sashayed down 5th avenue.

However, through aging and experience, this glorious tableau fades, cracks and metamorphoses, like the portrait painted of Dorian Gray, in Oscar Wilde’s novel, a man who sold his soul in exchange for the gift of undying, lifelong youth and beauty. As the gorgeous Dorian leads his life of wickedness, his portrait, hung in magnificence on the wall, gradually becomes coarse, gnarled and pockmarked, shrunken, villainous and malevolent.

Like Dorian, the ugliness of the United States is slowly revealed as nothing but an aggressive metastasis of the marauding British empire. “Liberty” meant, and means, the freedom to plunder and murder. “Equality” and “Justice” were, and are, as limited in their scope as the rules of a croquet game, which only billionaires can play. By the time Martin Luther King ascends to the stage of history, he can say, and pay with his life for saying, that the United States in the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” ..…a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

The US has become ever more violent since his murder. We have bombed 32 countries, some to smithereens, and caused the death of millions through sanctions designed to weaken and kill the peoples of the world. Further, we have punished other countries who disobey the sanctions we impose.

US taxpayers are now spending $98,000 a minute on upgrading our nuclear weapons. We have 1100 military bases around the world. We have broken or withdrawn from almost all the arms treaties. At the same time Gorbachev ended the Cold War, seduced by the vision of a “common European home” and a “common security architecture” , US President Bush was secretly betraying him (remarking to Mitterrand and Kohl, “to Hell with that! We prevailed, they didn’t!”). NATO immediately began a hostile, implacable advance toward Russia’s borders, with missile bases and military exercises.

The Plan for the New American Century, made public in 1995, is unyielding in the current version of our National Defense Strategy. The method for achieving this plan is violent, brutal conquest. We have armed the world, and have become adept at igniting rebellion and purchasing sedition, provocation, infiltration, media disinformation dissemination, sabotage, use of special forces, and relentless forward motion of weapons and military bases toward our chosen enemies. We are openly smug about fighting our wars with other countries’ soldiers. “Let them kill each other off”, a formula expressed by Truman (“If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible”) has been repeated in numerous South American and Asian countries, and, in this century, Libya, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Ukraine, to name a few.

Indeed, the phrase ”To the last Ukrainian” has turned into a satirical promise of US fidelity to our luckless ally.

In the final pages of The Picture of Dorian Gray, the painted image of Dorian grew misshapen, shrunken and hideous. So it is with the United States. Our Congress, marshalled by billionaire money, struts in lockstep with each bloodthirsty Administration. And the people, who pay for what W.E.B. Dubois called the “democratic despotism” of US imperialism, become more and more conditioned to accepting the atrocities their votes are paying for. Electing our government representatives, we are herded like sheep down the same narrow paths toward profit for our masters, absorbing the lies of mass media, or remaining in ignorant indifference. Journalists who risk life and freedom to bring the truth to a passive public despair as it falls on deaf ears and fails to make a difference.

A perfect caricature for the political moment is this ancient cryptogram, used by children for jumping rope:

Early in the morning in the middle of the night

Two dead boys got up to fight.

One was blind and the other couldn’t see

So they chose a dummy for a referee.

Back to back they faced each other

Drew their swords and shot each other.

A deaf policeman heard their noise

And came and shot those two dead boys.

The only note of hope (for the US) in this cartoon is the deaf policeman, representing the people, who is finally awakened by the danger (Apocalypse!) and, hopefully, brings a new dispensation.

But it is late. It is all happening in the middle of the night, under the Doomsday clock.

We, the United States, leading producer of the poisonous fossil fuels and weapons, whose resultant wars alone create more greenhouse gas than all but three other countries, must abandon the Plan for a New American Century, and conjure up a new Gorbachev moment.

Israel, which cannot be removed from the Holy Land by force, must be made an offer it cannot refuse for a new Nation State, since that is what it wants.

Yes, but somewhere else. It was a mistake.

The crime occurring in Palestine is of such a scale that even an atheist cannot avoid using the word “sin.” It is flagrant, and being shamelessly committed before our eyes such that none of us can claim ignorance. It condemns us. There can be no rebuilding of the Temple. Al Aqsa mosque must be rescued by a giant Crusade, encompassing all religions and non-religions, who stream as pilgrims into ancient Palestine, and symbolically lay down their swords and shields by the river Jordan.

With our Greenhouse turned up 1.5 degrees centigrade, we must “love thy neighbor” without waiting another moment. Let that be the Second Coming.

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“Nobody taught me. There were so many of us in the house, and even my Nanna didn’t know how to read. So I never learned to read. I was so bad at school that I acted like a clown just to avoid everything; then I got caught running around here with a pistol when I was thirteen. They sent me to Tryon Juvenile Detention Center, and that’s where I met Ms. Lakewood. She taught the computer class. Heavy-set Italian lady, about 4’ 10”. But attitude, huge. Aura, big. She was like the grandmother in a mob movie. You know how you’ve got all the bosses, but when the grandmother comes in—everyone shuts up? She was like that. But she was loving too. She had pictures on the wall of all her favorite students; she called them her babies. She even had a picture of Mike Tyson up there. He was one of her babies. One day we had this contest, on the computer. The winner got $50. And I was looking at the screen and getting so angry. I’m crying, because I couldn’t read. And that’s when this Spanish kid called me Forrest Gump. He had the whole class laughing at me. Miss Lakewood was like: ‘What’s going on?’ She came over to me and said: ‘Fix your face. Fix your fucking face, I don’t want to see another tear.’ Then she said: ‘Tomorrow, you better get ready.’ She started working with me for an hour-and-a-half, every night. She started me on Lion King. It was a preschool book, so I didn’t want to do it. But she made me. Every night she made me keep reading until I was able to read on my grade level. I started getting report cards with nothing less than 85. I was sending them home; my mom was getting hyped. I got my GED. I started reading so much. Today I can finish a five-hundred-page book in two days. If I smoke a blunt first, I swear to God I can picture the whole book like it’s a movie. Miss Lakewood passed away when I was eighteen. I heard about it while I was in prison. Some new guys came in; they’d been in Tryon too. They heard me talking about her and that’s when one of them told me. But he said: ‘Yo. I’m pretty sure she had your picture on the wall.’”

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