Mendocino County Today: Sunday 10/27/2024

RAINFALL will continue through Monday. Cooler temperatures are expected by Tuesday with the potential for frost/freeze conditions to develop for interior areas. Additional rainfall chances exist for mid week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A tropical 60F with cloudy skies this Sunday morning on the coast. I have .08" of rainfall collected at 5am. I have no idea what to make of our forecast for today as the bulk of the weather appears to be down south? We have a good chance of rain until noon then more rain returning later tonight. At least that's what the NWS says. Much cooler temps arriving by Tuesday morning. A dry break on Tuesday then unsettled into next weekend. Our forecast will likely be a moving target this week in general.

UKIAH SET TO TAKE OVER GROUNDWATER AGENCY PROMISING 40% COST SAVINGS

by Monica Huettl

At its October 10, 2024 meeting, the Ukiah Valley Basin Groundwater Sustainability Agency (UVBGSA) Board advanced plans to transition administrative duties from the West Yost consulting firm to the City of Ukiah. Sean White, Ukiah’s Director of Water Resources, presented a cost proposal estimating the City could manage the agency for 40% less than West Yost. While the move promises savings, board members raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest given the City’s dual role as a GSA member and the largest groundwater user in the basin.…

https://mendofever.com/2024/10/27/ukiah-set-to-take-over-groundwater-agency-promising-40-cost-savings/

ADAM GASKA:

John Pinches plan [to renegotiate water rights with Sonoma County] would never happen. Environmental interests would never allow it.

Water is metered per SB 88. It requires metering of all surface water diversions. Mendocino County has one of the highest compliance rates in the state. You can look up people’s diversion on the state data base. I have seen them aggregated onto spreadsheets. Some areas have water demand management plans at least seasonally to better coordinate diversions to fine tune stored water releases and maintain minimum stream flows. There is a telemetered pilot project about to launch on the Russian River that is upgrading monitoring equipment-pump meters, flow meters, well transponders-to develop better models.

The place where loss of the PVP will hit hardest is summer and we are already feeling it. Most water rights and licenses are for summer time diversions. Even if people want to shift to winter diversions and increase storage (i.e. dig more, larger ponds) it requires a change petition on your license/permit. That process can take a decade, usually two, and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars just to switch from a May-October diversion to a October-May and storage.

There will be more demand on groundwater which also can create its own issues with the requirements of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA).

I chair UVWA, the new JPA working to consolidate the Ukiah area water districts. The move to consolidate our small water districts will help a lot, being able to legally and functionally share water to ensure drinking water supplies. There are tens, possibly hundreds, of millions of dollars in state funding to develop the infrastructure necessary to more easily distribute domestic water from Redwood Valley to south of Ukiah. Hopefully we can tie in and expand the sanitation district so we can allow for pockets of more intense development and reclaim the water, lessening the demands on surface and groundwater supplies.

Losing he PVP will hurt but it will hurt Sonoma and Marin more because they are entitled, and have come to rely on it, more than Mendocino County. They have more to lose than we do.

GLOATING about an award from their pals at ‘Wine Enthusiast’ Magazine declaring Mendo as “America’s Wine Region of the year for 2024,” Mendocino Winegrowers Inc, Executive Director Bonnie Butcher said: “Our winemakers have long been pioneers in organic and sustainable farming, dating to the Back to the Land movement, and this acknowledgment from Wine Enthusiast reinforces our commitment to producing world-class wines that reflect the terroir and values of our region.”

But according to the last County Crop Report (2021 — Mendo’s way behind on its crop reports since covid) about 4,900 of Mendo’s total of 17,000-plus acres of vineyard are considered “organic.” Which is about 29%, which is fine as far as it goes, because most of those are Mendo’s smaller vineyards. But this demonstrates that more than two-thirds of Mendo’s wine acreage is most certainly NOT owned by “pioneers in organic and sustainable farming.”

This is typical of the local wine hype. They like to pretend that the County’s smaller, somewhat less harmful vineyards are representative of the industry, when the opposite is true.

(Mark Scaramella)

ED NOTES

FROM the July 1st 1964 edition of the Anderson Valley Advertiser: “…It was pointed out that the development of a water conservation program in the Navarro Watershed was essential to the future development of this area.

That water was needed for irrigation, domestic use, recreation needs, and for the enhancement of our fish and game resources. It was also pointed out that a dam or series of dams could not only furnish water for these purposes but could also help prevent damage by flash floods during the winter.”

AND YOU’RE mos def an old timer if you remember Charmian’s Style Shop in Philo whose advertisement read, “To market! To market! Don’t buy any hogs! Come down to the Style Shop and look at our togs!”

COMPUTER PEOPLE probably already know that there’s much interesting water information on the United States Geological Service’s website, including the Navarro River. (Bob Abeles, white courtesy telephone, please. I’m almost afraid to ask, but what’s the latest on our battered Navarro?)

THE MORE conscientious among Mendo’s huge consignment of liberals, the more deluded among them daring to call themselves “progressives” to distance themselves from the Democrats they always vote for, will concede that there’s also as strong a fascist impulse among them as there is among the Magas. In my long experience as a left-lib in Mendocino County I have never been interfered with by Magas, past or present, but “liberals” have often tried to shut me up.

INLAND LIBS have also often tried to kill off Tommy Wayne Kramer, the Ukiah Daily Journal’s brilliant Sunday columnist (and a long-time friend of mine). One of Kramer’s opinion pieces that set off an avalanche of criticism and threats to un-subscribe and boycott the UDJ’s advertisers, lamented the number of lunatics on the streets of Ukiah, a statement of the obvious to most people not deriving their livelihoods from the walking wounded, the same people responsible for keeping the insane and the addicted on the streets. And, to a person, liberals.

THE SECOND KRAMER column that got the pseudo libs howling for both Kramer’s and the paper’s scalps objected to Project Sanctuary’s grisly annual art show featuring macabre messages from children not to beat on mommy, which always struck me and Kramer as an expression of child abuse. What else can you call leaning on little kids to depict their mothers getting assaulted when they are only thinking about their dogs, cats and Santa Claus?

ONE would think that liberals or, as the more delusional of them describe themselves, “progressives,” wouldn’t have wanted to ban writers at a time the national government had launched an all-out assault on Constitutional protections. And here we are again in ‘24, with libs trying to shut down sites that violate the lib catechism. Mendocino County is a funny place, a place long on righteous rhetoric, extremely short on righteous behavior, private and institutional.

A COAST READER WRITES: We have just had most of our seasoned oak firewood stolen. We can attribute stolen garbage to animals ,but stolen firewood? It was not just laying around in an informal pile, it was neatly stacked in our little shed. It took place in two separate robberies. We have no theories or ideas about who or why anyone would do this. If it is someone desperate for wood to keep warm that is one thing, if it is malicious or greedy, that is something else. Has anyone else experienced this recently? Please help us keep watch and send any information that might be useful via the AVA.

RECOMMENDED VIEWING: The new Zodiac doc on Netflix. America being global home of The Lone Nut, Zodiac was a departure, an upgrade from the usual low-grade mass killer. No sir, Zodiac was a genius-level mass murderer with desire for publicity and a macabre sense of humor as expressed in his letters to the SF Chron. He said he was amassing slaves for the next life. Zode’s divine cosmology was also unique given most depictions of Heaven, strictly a fair play sorta place we’re told.)

THE COPS KNEW for years that Arthur Leigh Allen was Zodiac, but knowing it and proving it are, as we know, two different things. A state high dive champ as a kid, Allen, as adult lunatic, was once seen doing some kind of triple fandango high dive into a reservoir late at night in the same Vallejo-area lover’s lane area where he murdered a young couple.

APART from being a homicidal maniac, Allen, we learn for the first time, was also a chomo, honing his predations as a credentialed elementary school teacher. In classic chomo fashion he ingratiated himself into the family of a beset mother of six children whose husband, super ironically, was incarcerated at the nearby Atascadero State Hospital for molesting children where Allen would also eventually be incarcerated for molesting children. You could say this lady had bad luck in men. There is strong evidence that Zodiac murdered one young couple on a beach not far from Atascadero while the kids he was babysitting waited for him on the highway above.

THE GREAT union man from Terre Haute, Eugene Debs, posthumously explains my vote for Jill Stein: “I’d rather vote for something I want and don’t get it, than vote for something I don’t want and get it.”

NORMAN MAILER dismissed G.W. Bush as “too stupid to be evil.” Ditto for Trump, mass hysteria about the orange oaf notwithstanding.

THE COURTHOUSE DESIGN goes from shockingly bad to simply appalling, with a load of pretentious grad school blather from the architect, the whole of it presented as simply wonderful by the court’s manager, Kim Turner, a resident of Marin. No comment from their majesties, the judges, of course, for whom this abomination is being foisted off on Mendocino County. The construction is being farmed out to some firm that specializes in judicial eyesores, meaning no jobs for Mendo labor. A major lose-lose for Mendo where win-wins are unknown.

Moscow’s Russian White House (designed in the early 60s)

ON LINE COMMENTS re: New Courthouse:

A READER WRITES: Using my fine-tuned bullshit detecting powers, the award for biggest steaming pile of poo goes to the architect and county personnel who dare to say the design for the new county courthouse—that prison/bar code atrocity, “creates interesting shadows and provides a sense of movement (like) in the forest.” I cannot imagine a building less like nature or what the average Ukiahan would describe as ”intended to replicate the verticality of the redwoods, with shivelight coming through the interior public corridors.” This is it? This monstrosity will be forced down our throats? Why bother asking for public input if that input is summarily waved away by not only the “architect” but also our artistically-challenged public officials? I’m pretty certain Gerard Manley Hopkins would upchuck his dinner were he to see these plans. It IS the blight man was born for. It is Ukiah I mourn for.

JULIE BEARDSLEY: That courthouse design just butt-ugly. How about facing the outside with natural local stone? How about some actual local wood if you find our trees so inspiring? Beautiful oak? How about a green wall? Is it a green building? There is nothing about this design that suggests it’s in Mendocino County! Rather it’s in the Walmart category of dull, uninspired public architecture that could be anywhere. It looks like an Amazon warehouse. If you’re going to spend public money- try harder!!

FALCON: It’s supposed to be butt-ugly — a representation of, a re-presentation of something bad, a place where a person would not want to be, a place a person would want to escape/get away from as quickly as possible at the speed of light…

BRIAN WOOD: I agree the courthouse design is abysmal. Turner said the exterior design of the building is “intended to replicate the verticality of the redwoods, with shivelight coming through the interior public corridors.” Yeah, right. In seriousness, the design doesn’t evoke anything natural that would represent the county. It’s crass.

HARVEY READING: No uglier than the White House, the US capitol, or most state capitols. Get over it.

MARCO MCCLEAN: Re: “Shivelight” and its influence on courthouse architecture and, farther down the page, Peter White writing about how the rich “pat you on the shoulder, from their marble homes and granite banks from which they rob the people of the world under the pretense of bringing them culture.” It’s weird– just last week I quoted the scene in Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions, where Rabo Karabekian says something in the same mental department, addressing surly, resentful denizens of the town’s dim bar, to explain why his painting, a large canvas covered in leftover greenhouse paint with a single vertical stripe of reflective tape down the left edge, which took him five minutes to slap together, is worth $50,000 (in 1973 money) to the town, thanks to a grant from the Elliot Rosewater Foundation and the Midland City Festival for the Arts. He wins the bar-flies over to his point of view, and you’re kind of happy for his triumphant moment, if you’re fourteen.

SARA KENNEDY OWEN: Interesting analogy! There have been beautiful works of art done using tape “bars” (Frank Stella comes to mind) but usually color is involved. In this case the blankness of the black and white seems wrong for our county, with its colorful population and varied (if sometimes very regrettable) history. To add to the insensitive-to-the-public design, as tempting as it is to accept the architect’s reasoning, trees do not grow in straight lines, in fact there are no straight lines in nature. “Shivelight” in the forest, falling on the soft understory, is one thing, but sunlight falling in rigid lines on straight hard floors heats up and makes the building less energy-efficient, reminding us of the folly we created that led to global warming. Not a particularly wonderful feeling. Also, the old train station could have been more incorporated into the design, and its style a jumping-off point for a more “local” feel. Very big missed opportunity there, another indication of the haughty indifference the “movers and shakers”(including locals) show toward the Mendocino County population. As to the (new) courthouse “turning its back” on the downtown, that’s pushing it, but there is definitely a “disconnect” between the flow of public foot traffic and commerce and the cold stature or even autistic isolation, of this sad and lonely, strange building. So unlike the current courthouse, the hub of a busy downtown, where attorneys can be seen walking around with their briefcases and jurors can find lunch at a choice local spot. Let’s not blame the architect, however, who was trained in a certain style. Instead, I would like to know who chose this location, this architect and who promoted this design? Who gets to make these momentous (and sometimes disastrous) decisions for the people who pay for it and are forced to accept it?

MARK SCARAMELLA: Sorry, but this ridiculous courthouse design is exactly what Ukiah deserves. It will be the death blow to downtown Ukiah. The City let the Palace Hotel fall into ruin (as well as several other old buildings to a lesser degree) while they approved junk buildings up and down the newly repaved but soon to be nearly abandoned State Street as they make it impossible for legitimate businesses to repurpose some of the junk buildings. And the County, “lead” lately by uncomprehending Supervisor Mulheren of Ukiah (formerly of the Ukiah City Council), has stood by as the Courts and their Courthouse minions chose this location when there was a better location across the street from the current courthouse. They have done nothing about the disruption all the ancillary judicial offices to be caused by this isolated location. Together, the City and the County have allowed this atrocity to metastasize in slow motion into the monstrosity it has become without a word of complaint. It will stand as a huge, grotesque monument to Ukiah’s and Mendo’s legendary incompetence. In that sense, it’s perfect.

JESUS’S AGGRAVATED VANDALISM

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

Defendant Jesus Anthony Herrera, age 41, of Ukiah, was convicted of three felony counts of vandalism causing $400 or more each, the use of a splitting maul in one of the three felonies, and a misdemeanor count of aggravated trespass.

In March 2023, the defendant vandalized a Volvo SUV and a GMC pickup truck parked near East Gobbi Street by jumping on their respective roofs, causing approximately $17,000 in combined damage.

Nearby was parked a Lincoln MKZ. Using a flashlight multi-tool, the defendant broke a rear window, causing over $680 in damage. He climbed into the vehicle through the broken window and was found by the police sitting in the Lincoln’s driver’s seat just before he was arrested.

In March 2024, the defendant used a splitting maul to vandalize the front door of a residence in Willits, causing over $1,000 in damage.

He separately forced his way into a second residence and was arrested at that location for the vandalism of the door at the first residence and trespassing at the second residence.

After the jury was excused, a follow-on court hearing was scheduled for October 31st. The purpose of that hearing is to resolve the defense motion that seeks to strike the defendant’s prior Mendocino County Strike conviction from 2012 for felony criminal threats.

At the October 31st hearing, the prosecutor will also present evidence to prove up allegations that circumstances in aggravation exist in the facts of each crime and the defendant’s prior record, circumstances that need to be proven or admitted as mandated by Supreme Court precedent and the California Rules of Court.

The law enforcement agencies that identified necessary witnesses and obtained important evidence that was used at trial are the Ukiah Police Department and the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office.

The prosecutor who presented the People’s evidence at trial was Deputy District Attorney Jamie Pearl.

Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Victoria Shanahan presided over the four-day trial.

MENDO UNIFIED COMPTCHE SEAT DEBATE

A debate between the contestants for the Mendocino Unified School District Comptche Trustee seat, Michael Schaeffer and Jim Gagnon, is schedule for Tuesday, October 29th at 4 pm on Student Powered Radio KAKX (https://www.kakx.fm). Topics will be coming from the student body.

Be there or be square. Expect Fireworks.

(Jim Gagnon)

ANDERSON VALLEY VILLAGE: List of Events

UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK

Jay is a bit nervous when meeting new people, but he warms up after a few treats. He walks nicely on leash and is very happy getting out in the wild blue yonder. Jay knows sit and down and he’s eager to learn new tricks. This dude will do anything for a treat, and that will help with further training. Because Jay can be a little standoffish, we’re recommending older kids in his new home. Jay has excellent indoor manners and loves to sit on the couch with you. Jay would probably like a female canine friend/housemate. And those eyes!! Whoa!

To see all of our canine and feline guests, and the occasional goat, sheep, tortoise, and for information about our services, programs, and events, visit mendoanimalshelter.com

Join us every first Saturday of the month for our Meet The Dogs Adoption Event at the shelter.

We’re on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/mendoanimalshelter

For information about adoptions please call 707-467-6453. Making a difference for homeless pets in Mendocino County, one day at a time!

JACK SAUNDERS:

What was once the old coast road from the Gualala River north to around Westport became in 1933 State Highway 56 (aka the Shoreline Highway as noted in the 4 Feb 1934 Mendocino Beacon). This is, of course, now Highway 1. At that time there were 84 timber bridges with a combined length of about 3 miles, only 5 of which were capable of supporting legal loads according to the predecessor of today’s Caltrans. Many of these had been built prior to 1910, and at least 10 were built prior to 1900. Some of the oldest were at Dark Gulch (1874) and Elk Creek (1886). By 1940 a total of 46 of these were replaced or eliminated, and another 25 were strengthened for legal loads. Several of the more notable replacements were at Jughandle Creek (1938), Russian Gulch (1940), Jack Peters Creek (1939), Elk Creek (1938), and Garcia River (1938). Caspar had been replaced in 1928, and others such as Ten Mile, Pudding Creek, Noyo, Hare Creek, Albion, and Salmon Creek were replaced in subsequent years, though I believe that the Albion Bridge (1923, replaced 1944) may have been widened a bit during the 1933-39 period to make it a full two-laner. At the same time the old McDonald-To-The-Sea Highway was by then State Highway 48. It later became Highway 28, which we now know as Highway 128, and it had in excess of 23 bridges, 16 of which were eliminated or replaced. It’s hard to imagine that there are people alive today on the coast that actually rode over the old Elk Creek bridge, shown here in a Caltrans photo with its 1938 replacement.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Saturday, October 26, 2024

MARCUS DUMAN, 41, Redwood Valley. County parole violation.

WILLIAM GOFORTH, 56, Willits. Paraphernalia, polluting state waters.

JARED KIDD, 33, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs, resisting.

PITTSBURGH STEELERS DEFENSIVE TACKLE GENE LIPSCOMB ON THE BENCH DURING THE 1962 PRO BOWL.

A legendary NFL figure, Lipscomb was so effective that he once said he’d tackle everyone in the backfield until he found the one who held the football.

MEMO OF THE AIR: Spookiyaki

Here’s the recording of last night’s (Friday, 2024-10-25) almost 8--hour Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA) and KNYO.org (and, for the first hour, also 89.3fm KAKX Mendocino): https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0615

Coming shows can feature your story or dream or poem or essay or kvetch or announcement or whatever. Just email it to me. Or include it in a reply to this post. Or send me a link to your writing project and I’ll take it from there and read it on the air.

Besides all that, at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you’ll find a fresh batch of dozens of links to not-necessarily radio-useful but worthwhile items I set aside for you while gathering the show together, such as:

The Jackson 5 – Give Me One More Chance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnjWBXaxcUg

1930 Pageant of the superstitions. https://www.vintag.es/2024/10/the-pageant-of-the-superstitions.html

And a history of HIndi cinema. With video. https://www.avclub.com/history-of-hindi-cinema-1950s

Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org, https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

THEY CALLED HER MISS MORGAN

Miss Morgan was only five feet tall, slender, plainly dressed, and frail in appearance. People said she had an almost Quaker look. She spoke softly, but “when she gave orders, it was with the authority of a Marine drill sergeant.”

Miss Morgan was Julia Morgan, an architect. She graduated from the University of Berkeley in 1894 with a degree in Civil Engineering. She waited two years to be admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris because of her gender, eventually becoming the first woman to graduate there. She was also the first woman registered as an architect in California.

In 1904, Julia opened her own architectural firm, where she shared profits with her associates. Her career lasted 42 years, during which she designed approximately 790 buildings, including the famous Hearst Castle.

TRUMP’S WHOPPER

Editor:

Donald Trump’s photo op at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s fry station was as hilarious as seeing him in (any) church. But to say, “I’ve always wanted to work at McDonald’s” was even more laughable. He’d be better suited at Burger King, home of the Whopper!

Bob Canning

Petaluma

HOW BAD DO YOU WANT IT, LADIES?

by Maureen Dowd

Usually, I get political wisdom from Rahm Emanuel, not his brother Ari.

But a quote from Ari, the Hollywood macher, to Puck’s Matthew Belloni about the gender chasm in 2024 caught my eye.

“This election is gonna come down to probably 120,000 votes,” Ari said. “You probably have 60 percent of the male vote for Trump, and the female vote is 60-40 for Kamala. It’s a jump ball. We’re gonna find out who wants this more — men or women.”

Are we back to the days of Mars versus Venus? Or did we never leave?

It is the ultimate battle of the sexes in the most visceral of elections. Who will prevail? The women, especially young women, who are appalled at the cartoonish macho posturing and benighted stances of Donald Trump and his entourage? Or the men, including many young men, union men, Latino and Black men, who are drawn to Trump’s swaggering, bullying and insulting, seeing him as the reeling-backward antidote to shrinking male primacy.

Drilling into the primal yearnings of men and women — their priorities, identities, anger and frustration — makes this election even more fraught. When I wrote a book about gender in 2005, I assumed that, a couple of decades later, we’d all be living peacefully on the same planet. But no Cassandra, I. The sexual revolution intensified our muddle, leaving women in a tangle of dependence and independence in the 21st century. The more we imitated men, the more we realized how different we were.

Progress zigzags. But it was dispiriting to see the fierce backlash to Geraldine Ferraro, Anita Hill and Hillary Clinton’s co-presidency and candidacy.

In Kamala Harris’s case, the backlash is evident even before the election. Surveys reflect the same doubts about a woman in the White House that I saw covering Ferraro in 1984. Many men — and many women — still wonder if women are too emotional to deal with world leaders and lead the military.

Other countries overcame this stereotypical thinking about women leaders, but there is still a thick strain of it in America.

Harris is running way behind where Joe Biden was in 2020 with both white and Black men. It would sting if Black men sunk the chance for the first Black woman to become president, just as enough white women spurned Hillary in 2016 to tip the balance.

It is sad that women had to be stripped of their basic right to control their bodies — and to be threatened with the loss of lifesaving medical care — for Kamala to even have a chance to get the votes of enough women to offset losing the votes of so many men.

Trump is running a hypermasculine campaign — with Chief Bro Elon Musk bizarrely bouncing up and down — that is breathtakingly offensive to women. Trump is exploiting the crisis among Gen Z men, a crisis driven by loneliness, Covid isolation, economic insecurity, a lack of purpose and a feeling that the modern world seems more accommodating to young women.

Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist, told Vanity Fair that straight, white, Christian males are tired of being painted as colonizers, noting, “They want to be part of a political movement that doesn’t hate them.”

Trump is a renowned predator and groper who has been found liable for sexual abuse. But he has the gall to cast Kamala as “retarded,” “lazy as hell” and a “bitch” and ask, “Does she drink? Is she on drugs?”

At a Trump rally in Georgia on Wednesday, Tucker Carlson gave a rant that became an instant classic of perversion.

In a shrill tone, he spun out a metaphor in which America is like a house where the children are misbehaving. The toddler is smearing feces on the wall; a 14-year-old is lighting a joint at the breakfast table.

“There has to be a point at which Dad comes home,” Carlson said ominously, to raucous applause. “Yeah, that’s right. Dad comes home, and he’s pissed!”

He’s most pissed at the 15-year-old daughter, who has flipped off her parents and stormed to her room. Playing the dad, Carlson intoned: “You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl. And you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now.”

When Trump came out, some screamed, “Daddy’s home!” and “Daddy Don!”

Somehow, Carlson was even more creepy and retrogressive than JD Vance, with his denunciations of “childless cat ladies” and his dissing of postmenopausal women.

Trump is phallocentric — always a sign of insecurity. At a rally in Latrobe, Pa., he rhapsodized about Arnold Palmer’s anatomy.

“This is a guy that was all man,” Trump said, adding, “When he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there, they said, ‘Oh, my God, that’s unbelievable.’”

Barack Obama punctured the MAGA macho myth at a rally with Kamala on Thursday. Putting down people is not “real strength,” he said. Real strength is standing up for those who can’t stand up for themselves. “That’s what we should want in our daughters and our sons,” Obama said. “And that’s what I want to see in the president of the United States of America.”

INGMAR BERGMAN: “I usually take a walk after breakfast, write for three hours, have lunch and read in the afternoon… for a person who is as chaotic as me, who struggles to be in control, it is an absolute necessity to follow these rules and routines.”

LEAD STORIES, SUNDAY'S NYT

Voters Are Deeply Skeptical About the Health of American Democracy

Amid Talk of Fascism, Donald Trump’s Threats and Language Evoke a Grim Past

Trump and Harris Struggle for Georgia as Supporters Brace for a Photo Finish

This Town Has More Faith in Football Than Politics. Can Walz Make a Difference?

Donald Trump Will Never Be Done With New York

Barricades and Bulletproof Glass: A County Prepares for Election Day

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

What would make a man take up arms? Discomfort, desperation and acceptance of death. We haven’t gotten close to discomfort yet. You look at the Palestinian men throwing their lives away against a far better equipped military. Those men live in squalor, have been considered dogs their entire lives, have a spiritual belief of accepting death. They take up arms in a vain attempt to end the apartheid of their entire lives. Unless the power goes out for the majority of this country, I don’t see that happening country wide in the USA. There will be pockets of resistance, which will be overwhelmingly destroyed and made examples of. I guess my point is, if the blob can keep the majority fed, housed and entertained, no “revolution” will occur.

PRESSURING AUTHORS TO REMAIN SILENT re: Gaza/Another Gaza Warning from the UN

Literary Institutions Are Pressuring Authors to Remain Silent About Gaza

Requiring authors remain silent about war at the risk of losing their livelihoods is not only ironic but also sinister.

by Lisa Ko

A culture that demands certain political allegiances from its writers and artists at the risk of losing career opportunities is one that is antithetical to democratic values.

When writer and disability justice activist Alice Wong received a MacArthur Fellowship earlier this month, she shared a statement about accepting it “amidst the genocide happening in Gaza.” The backlash was swift, with a deluge of posts on X attacking Wong’s character and accusing her of antisemitism.

This conflation of opposition to Israel’s military action with hatred of Jewish people is only one part of a broader wave of political and social repression that is attempting to silence writers speaking out against the war. In the past month alone, authors who have criticized Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza — which is funded largely by the U.S. — have been labeled extremists, been suspended and fired from faculty jobs, and targets of defamation and harassment.

I had my own recent experience with the latter following an incident with the New York State Writers Institute’s Albany Book Festival. I reached out privately to the festival organizers in support of a fellow author, Aisha Abdel Gawad, expressing concern about the public rhetoric of the moderator with whom we were to share a panel. In social media posts and published articles, the moderator mocked people who advocate for a ceasefire by calling them “terror apologists” and other names. Such rhetoric seemed disturbing in its mischaracterization of those mourning the loss of life, including Palestinian lives. In response, the assistant director of the Writers Institute emailed the moderator calling our concerns “crazy,” going so far as to fabricate a story that I refused “to be on a panel with a ‘Zionist’,” a message that was then made public. This resulted in death and rape threats, harassing messages and the loss of professional opportunities for me and Abdel Gawad.

To set the record straight, I neither refused to be on the panel nor used the word “Zionist,” but this clarification, while necessary, is not the point. The implication is that vitriol directed at those opposing war and genocide is acceptable; objecting to such vitriol is not.

Many of us who have spoken out against Israel’s war on Gaza have not only opposed the war, but also drawn connections between the violence there and other interlocking crises: mass death and displacement in Sudan, the Congo and Haiti; the disparity between U.S. military funding for war and funding for escalating climate catastrophes; the expansion of carceral systems, including surveillance and militarization of policing; and the increased criminalization of dissent following the racial justice protests in 2020, quelling connections between the global and the domestic. Suppression of dissent also suppresses connections between people and communities in a time of organized abandonment, a time when we need each other even more.

For writers, censorship and suppression is also taking place within notable arts institutions. PEN America — which canceled its 2024 annual awardsthis spring after nearly half the nominees withdrew their books from consideration due to the organization’s response to Israel’s war on Gaza — is now asking publishers to confirm with authors that they want their books to be considered for the 2025 awards, ostensibly to avoid finalists again withdrawing in protest and to circumvent a writers’ boycott of the organization. Canada’s Giller Prize, which was plagued by protests and withdrawals over its primary sponsor’s financial investment in Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems, has made confirmation of intent to participate in the awards — attempting to ensure that finalists will not decline the prize or use the opportunity to speak out about Palestine — a requirement for author eligibility.

To pressure authors to remain silent about institutional response to war in order to be eligible for prestigious literary prizes is not only ironic — PEN America’s mission, for instance, is to protect freedom of expression — but sinister. A culture that demands certain political allegiances from its writers and artists at the risk of losing career opportunities is one that is antithetical to democratic values, and harkens back to the McCarthy-era Hollywood blacklist that barred writers from employment on suspicions of “subversive”and “un-American” leanings.

In many of the attacks I received, the senders referenced my race in their threats, suggesting I should shut up or meet with physical violence. Yet I, too, have my own stake in speaking out against war and occupation. I was born in the U.S., in part because, like so many children of immigrants, of U.S. military presence in my ancestors’ home country — the Philippines, a former U.S. colony. My parents immigrated during a period of martial law, led by U.S.-supported dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who imprisoned and disappeared thousands of journalists, writers and editors. Marcos’s son, now currently president, recently expanded U.S. military access to Philippines bases.

Much of my writing has explored the ways in which Asian assimilation in the U.S. is negotiated, including our complicity in U.S. imperialism: As Viet Thanh Nguyen writes, “The condition of our belonging, our inclusion, is our silence.” Advocates against anti-Asian violence focus on very real problems of harassment, bullying and discrimination, but stop short of extending the connections globally to include the violence of the U.S. “forever wars” in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. To be Asian American is to carry this dissonance, as our Americanness hinges on our acceptance of the violence carried out in our names and against our people. It hinges on our obedience, our gratitude.

I’m a novelist. I study and teach the craft of writing stories. I can trace how storytelling has been used to vilify in order to legitimize violence — including the recent framing of immigration as a “border crisis,” insidious misinformation about Haitian Americans and transgender people, and references to Palestinians as “human animals.”

Although stories can be used to inflict suffering, the opposite is also true. Writers choose our words for clarity and truth, to build love and solidarity. Failing to do so can harden our hearts, making us more susceptible to justifying harm done to others. And by dehumanizing others, we also harm ourselves. It is our ability to create connections — and the power of these connections — that makes writers a target for repression, and why it’s critical to withstand it. Our belonging is not contingent on our silence; our humanity is contingent on breaking it.

“I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.”

– Georgia O’Keefe

UN WARNS GAZA’S ECONOMIC RECOVERY COULD TAKE 350 YEARS UNDER ISRAELI BLOCKADE

The UN warns that, should the blockade remain in place, GDP per capita will continue “to decline continuously and precipitously,” placing Gaza’s future in severe jeopardy.

by Alexis Sterling

A new report from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) offers a bleak assessment of Gaza’s future under the ongoing Israeli blockade. According to the report, if the current conflict ceased immediately, it would still take Gaza 350 years to return to its already strained prewar economic status. The blockade and repeated military campaigns have driven Gaza’s economy into such severe decline that, under current conditions, even maintaining a basic standard of living for the region’s 2.2 million residents would require monumental changes.

The UNCTAD report bases its projection on Gaza’s limited economic growth between 2007 and 2022, during which Gaza’s GDP increased by an average of just 0.4 percent annually, despite significant population growth. Under these conditions, the report estimates that it would take 350 years to restore Gaza’s GDP to its level from before the recent conflict. Not only has Gaza’s GDP per capita fallen sharply, but as its population continues to grow, the economic strain intensifies. The UN warns that, should the blockade remain in place, GDP per capita will continue “to decline continuously and precipitously,” placing Gaza’s future in severe jeopardy.

Beyond the slow economic growth rate, the report details staggering material losses since the start of the conflict in October 2023, when Hamas attacked southern Israel, prompting a devastating Israeli military response. As of early 2024, UN estimates place the infrastructure damage in Gaza at $18.5 billion—equivalent to seven times Gaza’s 2022 GDP.

UNCTAD researcher Rami Alazzeh, the report’s author, noted that this projection reflects not just the direct damage from the war but the cumulative impact of a prolonged blockade that has left Gaza’s economy “almost paralyzed.” He stated, “We’re not saying that it will take Gaza 350 years to recover because that means that Gaza will never recover.” Instead, the report highlights the immediate need for humanitarian aid, economic investment, and a lifting of restrictions to prevent Gaza from falling further into irreversible economic collapse.

Israel first imposed its blockade on Gaza in 2007, after Hamas took control of the territory, restricting the movement of goods, people, and essential materials into the region. While Israel maintains that the blockade prevents Hamas from acquiring weapons, humanitarian organizations argue it has driven Gaza into economic isolation. Before the recent escalation, international agencies had already described Gaza as “nearly unlivable.”

UNCTAD’s report emphasizes that the blockade has cost Gaza’s economy an estimated $35.8 billion in unrealized GDP growth from 2007 to 2023, equating to roughly 17 times Gaza’s 2023 GDP. According to the report, restrictions on economic activities and essential goods have trapped Gaza in a “de-development” cycle, with each conflict eroding the region’s infrastructure and capacity to recover. As of early 2024, more than 153,000 Palestinians in Gaza are dead, maimed, or missing, with millions displaced due to the unceasing violence.

Israel’s permanent representative to the UN, Ambassador Danny Danon, defended the blockade as necessary, stating, “There is no future for the people of Gaza as long as their people continue to be occupied by Hamas.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also indicated that Israel will maintain “open-ended security control” over Gaza.

The humanitarian toll in Gaza has reached critical levels, with over 90 percent of Gaza’s population now displaced. UN agencies estimate that more than a quarter of Gaza’s structures have been damaged or destroyed, including over 227,000 housing units, schools, and hospitals, forcing people into crowded camps. The report also highlights environmental degradation, as Gaza is now littered with mountains of rubble and decomposing bodies, contributing to growing public health risks.

Medical facilities in Gaza are also overwhelmed. UN agencies report that ongoing hostilities have severely damaged the region’s healthcare infrastructure, and ambulances have been restricted or prevented from accessing certain areas. Gaza’s Government Media Office reports that “all medical and rescue operations have been completely halted by the military administration,” adding that the Israeli army has threatened to target ambulances and rescue teams that attempt to enter conflict zones.

In addition to the blockade, Israeli-imposed limitations on humanitarian aid and reconstruction materials have further hampered Gaza’s recovery. According to UNCTAD, only minimal amounts of aid have made it into Gaza due to border closures, bureaucratic delays, and ongoing security restrictions.

The UNCTAD report underscores that even under ideal circumstances—where Gaza enjoys peace, freedom of movement, and sustained international investment—it would still take decades to restore Gaza to its 2022 economic state. In a best-case scenario, the UN projects that Gaza’s GDP per capita would not return to pre-2022 levels until 2050, assuming an annual growth rate of 10 percent, unrestricted movement, and a significant increase in aid.

However, political conditions further complicate recovery efforts. Key Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have signaled that they would only support Gaza’s reconstruction if a clear path toward a Palestinian state emerges—a condition that Israeli leadership firmly opposes. Consequently, the UN warns that without diplomatic and economic solutions, Gaza could become even more dependent on international aid, pushing long-term recovery further out of reach.

The UN’s findings have led to calls for immediate changes in how aid and support are allocated to Gaza. William Schabas, a legal expert and former head of the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on the 2014 Gaza conflict, described the situation as “an unparalleled humanitarian disaster.” He emphasized that without a fundamental shift in international policies, including an end to the blockade, Gaza’s economic and human suffering will only continue.

Yet Israel remains resolute in maintaining the blockade. Analysts argue that Israel’s policy effectively cripples Gaza’s economy, blocking exports and severely limiting employment. Advocates for lifting the blockade contend that a more open economic policy would allow Gaza to foster local industry, reduce dependence on external aid, and provide jobs for its young and rapidly growing population.

Rami Alazzeh offered a sobering perspective: “Everybody now calls for a cease-fire, but people forget that once the cease-fire is done, the 2.2 million Palestinians will wake up having no homes, children having no schools, no universities, no hospitals, no roads.” Without transformative change, he warned, Gaza’s chance of a sustainable recovery will remain elusive.

(NationofChange)

THE STORY OF THE COUNTRY IDIOT

Many years ago, in a small village in the province of Matera, a group of people were having fun with a man known as the “town idiot”, a man who lived by doing small jobs and begging.

Every day these people, meeting the “idiot” at the bar, had fun by giving him the possibility to choose between two 100 lira coins and a 500 lira banknote and he, punctually, always chose the two coins instead of the banknote and this is useless to say so was a source of derision.

One day, a gentleman who was watching the group have fun behind the poor man’s back, called him aside and pointed out that it was true that he was taking two coins but that the coins together were worth less than the single banknote. At this point the “idiot” replied: “Sir, I know well, I’m not that stupid. The banknote is worth more, but the day I choose it, the game will end and I will no longer “win” the 200 lire a day.”

In the photo Genaro or Genarín, the leather worker from Léon at the beginning of the 20th century who loved pomace, women and overalls. The story goes that he was hit by the first garbage truck on Good Friday 1929. A procession took place in his honor on the night of Holy Thursday.

‘I WISH I HAD HITLER’S EDITORS’: Trump and The Atlantic

How to hide the ball in peculiarly-sourced stories. Plus, “The Hanging Stranger,” another predictive sci-fi fable from Philip K. Dick

Matt Taibbi & Walter Kirn

(Yeah, yeah, I know it’s long but it’s an interesting discussion about how media really works these days — Ed)

Matt Taibbi: All right. Welcome to America this week. I’m Matt Taibbi.

Walter Kirn: And I’m Walter Kirn.

Matt Taibbi: Walter, are you back home? You look good. You look tanned, rested, and ready.

Walter Kirn: I’m actually exhausted, flushed, and unprepared.

Matt Taibbi: Starting off with a bang, both of us.

Walter Kirn: Yeah. I’m back in Montana, which gladdens me because as the election approaches, I want to be in a place with mountains nearby.

Matt Taibbi: High ground.

Walter Kirn: Yeah, high ground. I want to have high ground advantage. I was in New York City, and there’s a feverish sense there that something strange is coming. It’s a town that watches too much news and knows too many people in the media. Back here. It’s a ball game on TV at the bar, and some talk about things that broke nationally five weeks ago. So, I’m glad to be among the less informed, the more informed about their own lives, and the less informed about everything else.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah, I feel the same way. I live in a house that kind of floats in the middle of a ravine, and I’m thinking about putting dangerous animals in the ravine for election night.

Walter Kirn: Crocodiles.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah, exactly. I mean, the biggest thing, I can get around here out are alligator, snapping turtles, and bears, but I don’t know how I’d coax the bears in there. But as we speak, there are dueling rumors on the internet of campaign ending stories that may be coming out. The once, and I guess now again, relevant, Mark Halperin is claiming that he was pitched a story that would, what’s the language that he used, that would end the Trump campaign? Or wait, let me see if I can, if true would end the Trump campaign.

Walter Kirn: Has any story in October ever ended any campaign?

Matt Taibbi: Not even Access Hollywood killed the Trump campaign, and I thought that was the ultimate in a campaign killing story.

Walter Kirn: I was saying exactly that to my wife the other day. I said, “At this time in 2016, people were talking about grabbing by the pussy and it didn’t leave a mark.”

Matt Taibbi: So, to speak. Yep.

Walter Kirn: Yep.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah.

Walter Kirn: So, to speak. Yeah.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah. So, Halperin is saying this, should we hear what he’s … Let’s hear the audio on this, because I’m always interested in his tone of voice.

Walter Kirn: Sure.

Mark Halperin: These last two weeks are going to be filled with things like this, and I can tell you without going into detail, that I’ve been pitched a story about Donald Trump now about a week that if True would end his campaign. And there’s all sorts of things like that flying around. I’m not the only one who’s been pitched it.

Matt Taibbi: Okay. Where is he, by the way? Yeah.

Walter Kirn: He’s at the headquarters in some New York skyscraper.

Matt Taibbi: Halperin Headquarters.

Walter Kirn: Yeah. Halperin Inc. and it’s got a Lex Luthor vibe or something, or Ayn Randian vibe to be in a steel and glass skyscraper. First of all, what’s the use of saying, I’ve been pitched a story, which I’m not going to tell you, which if True would end a campaign?

Matt Taibbi: It’s a lot of ifs. Yeah. Conditionals

Walter Kirn: Even I don’t do that. I mean, in other words, if nothing comes of it, then you should not have mentioned it. If something does, then you didn’t break it.

Matt Taibbi: I’ve teased stories. I mean, I’ve talked about stories that are coming.

Walter Kirn: Yeah. Stories …

Matt Taibbi: But if you’re not going to do it…

Walter Kirn: But ones that you yourself have passed on. I guess he’s trying to dull the victory for somebody who might bring the story forth, even though he didn’t. Should it prove determinative? I don’t know.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah, it’s a strange one. If it’s that good, keep working on it and have it ready next week and then let it fly. And then simultaneously, is it this morning or last night, the rumors started flying that there was a campaign ending situation going on with Kamala that would come out today. So, by the time this show comes out, we’ll know if this was bull or not.

Walter Kirn: Well, and it has a strange provenance, that story, because Trump did say at a rally in Georgia that she may know something we don’t know as an explanation for her rather relaxing campaign schedule of the last few days in which she’s taken days off and so on. And I took it to mean that he thinks the polls are showing her losing badly, and she’s given up. That seemed like the Occam’s razor analysis. But then, George Santos the unimpeachable, but impeached, Long Island Congressman got in front of his camera in what seemed like a moment of enthusiasm because he hadn’t shut up.

Matt Taibbi: Well, you can tell. Look at the shooting.

Walter Kirn: Yeah, exactly.

Matt Taibbi: Right. Yeah. Let’s hear it.

Walter Kirn: Well, let’s see it.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah.

George Santos: Oh, hey guys. Got to tell you something. It’s so crazy. I just got off the phone with a source, and they’re telling me that tomorrow the Kamala Harris ship sinks, you’re going to see all the rats jumping off. The story that’s going to break tomorrow is so damning and so, so bad that Democrats are going to distance themselves from her something you’ve never seen before. And essentially, you might even see some asking for people to vote for Trump. This is wild. Stay tuned as this drops tomorrow.

Matt Taibbi: Boy, I’m waiting with bated breath, aren’t you, Walter?

Walter Kirn: Was that on Twitter that he released that?

Matt Taibbi: It is on Twitter. It looks like it might’ve originated elsewhere.

Walter Kirn: So now that Twitter pays actual money, and I’ve gotten a few hundred dollars here and there from him, one can imagine that he made a few hundred dollars just from that little video, but he did seem excited. It also seemed that maybe he had ducked out from a wild party in the next room to make that, because George, who I imagine is vain like the rest of us did not look put together for that thing.

Matt Taibbi: No. Well, it could have been a studied, rushed look.

Walter Kirn: Right. Cinema Verite, as they used to call it.

Matt Taibbi: Right.

Walter Kirn: Yes. Internet verite by the way.

Matt Taibbi: Don’t you love this era? You can just go on, let’s say you’re at a party and you need to score some ice to really make things go over, but you don’t have the cash. Just go on Twitter and say you got a campaign ending story. And I’m not saying that that’s what’s going on with George Santos.

Walter Kirn: No, no.

Matt Taibbi: I’m just saying one could theoretically, if one were in a situation where you needed a couple of hundred bucks to score something, you could do that now. Right?

Walter Kirn: Well, and also, even though journalism has now fallen below, I don’t know…

Matt Taibbi: Congress.

Walter Kirn: Yeah, rain gutter contracting, as a profession in terms of public esteem, still everyone wants to be a journalist. He just got off the phone with his source. He’s really adopting the swagger of Mr. Deadline there.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah. Wasn’t he sort of in Congress like eight seconds ago?

Walter Kirn: He’s already come and gone. He’s like a reality TV star who suddenly got in Congress and for a brief moment and probably is believed that he doesn’t have to do the job.

Matt Taibbi: Oh, it’s boring.

Walter Kirn: Oh, I can’t imagine.

Matt Taibbi: Right?

Walter Kirn: I can’t imagine.

Matt Taibbi: But they should just make it, let’s just cut to the chase and make Congress a reality show. You know?

Walter Kirn: Well, C-SPAN tried it.

Matt Taibbi: No, no, but I mean, for real, where you build characters and have them do crazy things, and then you have the spouses get together in the empty room outside the rules committee and gossip about who was sleeping with whom and which staffers are hot and that kind of stuff. That would be awesome. I think if it was interspersed with some actual drama, like very short about major legislation being passed.

Walter Kirn: Right. Well, one time a congressman or a former congressman came to my father’s cabin where I sometimes broadcast from. It was only a few years ago, and I think he was from the South somewhere. I have no idea how my dad met him. My dad was the kind of person who meets people in airports, and then they end up at his dinner table. Old school.

Matt Taibbi: My dad is like that too. That’s interesting. Okay, go ahead.

Walter Kirn: Yeah, yeah. And so, here was this former congressman, and he was eating dinner with us alone in this cabin, far from any electronic eavesdropping. And he made Congress sound like a reality TV show. He really did. But what he impressed on me more than anything is that they just need money constantly. They do not have time to wonder about where it’s coming from. They don’t want to know. And he just went around the table trying to find out if we knew any rich people because he wanted back in, but there was a number that he had to hit.

Matt Taibbi: Oh, I love America. America’s amazing.

Walter Kirn: Yeah.

Matt Taibbi: No, especially in the house. In the house, unless you’re in an absolutely safe district, the minute you get elected, you have to be running again because it’s two years later, and you need a certain amount of money just to get to the primary.

Walter Kirn: Right.

Matt Taibbi: So, you need the party committee behind you, but you also need to have a certain number, a certain amount of donors lined up. So, you got to have some issue that you’re willing to whore yourself out on that will pay. So, some people are really good on lots of stuff, but not good on oil and gas, or it’s always one little thing. If you pay close attention, you’ll see that they have some suspicious votes in there.

Walter Kirn: So, there could be a mechanical pencils Congressman. In other words, a guy who has made a deal in the back room to require mechanical pencils be used throughout the federal government. And on that basis, he could get the manufacturer behind him and maybe get in there for 24 months.

Matt Taibbi: I remember Senator Daniel Inouye, this is obviously not the house and he was the head of either the appropriations or armed services, I can’t remember which one it was. But he annually stuck in a program like the Hawaii Brown Tree Snake Program into the defense budget. It was like some weird favor to somebody, but that’s what they do. That’s the whole game with earmarks. You can’t tell where they came from exactly most of the time. You need somebody to fink on you. Right now, a lot of people are talking about this. I feel like Trump, everybody’s talking about this.

Walter Kirn: Right.

Matt Taibbi: But there is a story that is dominating public conversation, and we thought this would be an appropriate moment to kind of take a broader look at this publication in general. But we want to start with the actual story. And this is from The Atlantic, and it’s by Jeffrey Goldberg, who is a very particular character in the history of modern American media. And it’s titled, Trump: I Need the Kind of Generals that Hitler had. And Walter, when did you read this story? Did you just read it this morning? I put it off for a while because I knew how it was going to be structured.

Walter Kirn: Well, so it’s odd in modern America, before you actually read stories, you absorb them through your skin for a few days on the internet and acts and so on. So, I’ve seen speeches about the story already. I’ve read numerous tweets about it. I’ve seen it excerpted, but until this morning, I didn’t actually read it.

Matt Taibbi: Right. It’s classic Atlantic journalism in some ways because it’s filled with stuff that looks like real reporting, and there is actually reporting in there. He’s got some good sources that he talks to. But should we start with the Egg McMuffin? The kernel of the whole thing? The thing that drove the entire story, because it starts, this story really starts, and remember, The Atlantic is a feature mag, so everything has to be written, right? It’s not like a newspaper where it just gets to the point right away.

Walter Kirn: It can’t be done Larry King style with bullet points.

Matt Taibbi: Right, exactly. You can’t just cough it out. So, it starts with the story of a female army private who was bludgeoned to death by a soldier in Fort Hood, and then there was a story about how Trump allegedly offered to pay for the funeral. And then later, there’s a story where Trump allegedly balked at the bill saying, “It doesn’t cost $60,000 to bury a fucking Mexican.”

Walter Kirn: But I was unclear, Matt, that was not a bill presented to him personally, because it seems that the Army decided to cover the funeral expenses.

Matt Taibbi: Some of them.

Walter Kirn: Okay.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah. So, there’s a thing where it says, and this is a feature of the other main revelation of the article. The big quote is, “At a certain point, according to two people present at the meeting, Trump asked, did they bill us for the funeral? What did it cost?” And according to attendees and to contemporaneous notes, “Yes, we received a bill. The funeral costs $60,000.” Trump became angry. It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks. Turns to Mark Meadows issues an order, “Don’t pay it.” And then, I guess the Army does step in and cover some of it. So maybe, I’m confused. Maybe the White House was offering to pay for it, but in the story, Trump offered to personally pay it, and maybe there’s some disconnect there. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going on.

Walter Kirn: My understanding was that he offered personally to a family member. Then, the Army decided to make it, to cover the expenses as though it were a combat death or some kind of in the line of service death.

Matt Taibbi: Right. That’s the quote from Kash Patel in the piece.

Walter Kirn: Right. And then later, Trump asked how it had all come out. What was the bill? What’s an update on the story? He was told it costs 60,000 and his quote, which is supposed to be the thing that outrages you was, “It doesn’t cost $60,000 to bury a Mexican.”

Matt Taibbi: ”A fucking Mexican.”

Walter Kirn: Yeah, “A fucking Mexican.” So, it’s a long setup, as you used to say, it’s a long ride or a long walk for a short…

Matt Taibbi: Yeah, a long walk on a short pier or whatever it is. I forget what that was, yeah.

Walter Kirn: But it’s all meant to get you to that repulsive quote.

Matt Taibbi: The first one.

Walter Kirn: Right. The first one. Okay. Since we’re going to take things point by point, my thought on this was that’s a lot of money for a funeral. He’s right. But he probably shouldn’t have said the other part.

Matt Taibbi: Right.

Walter Kirn: But did he say the other part?

Matt Taibbi: Right.

Walter Kirn: We don’t know. We’re told by sources in the room that he did, but it’s hard to say. So, that’s how I stand on that one.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah. So, it’s always a, what’s the word I’m looking for? It’s a red flag to me when you have a whole story that’s full of on the record quotes, and then all of a sudden, the big money payoff is an anonymously sourced thing, because almost certainly that those anonymous sources are among the quoted people in the story. And so, why are they not putting their names on it? That bothers me always.

Walter Kirn: And we have since had the family come out and claim that they were well-treated by Trump, and they were ill-treated by The Atlantic, and they can’t believe their family member’s death has been politicized in this naked fashion and so on. So, they have not necessarily cast out on the specifics of this incident, but on the general contention that he didn’t care.

Matt Taibbi: Right, right. Yeah, exactly. All right, so it goes on, and that’s the first big revelation, right?

Walter Kirn: And that’s new, right? Was that the first time this was reported? Because a lot of this article is a kind of greatest hits of Trump’s alleged slurs against the military.

Matt Taibbi: That’s new. I think it doesn’t take 60 grand to bury, that I think is new, but the rest of it is, and then Goldberg the author, who is also the editor of this paper, which is always interesting when the captain of the ship decides to raise a sail himself, right?

Walter Kirn: Right.

Matt Taibbi: So, he does what you would call pulling back in the article. You’ve done something specific and scene specific, and then you do the broad, sort of thesis and talk about basically Trump’s contempt for the military. Then he even pulls back from pulling back and talks about how he personally has been interested in Trump’s understanding of military affairs for nearly a decade. I hate that sentence. Does that mean he’s been interested for a decade or does that mean he’s been interested in Trump’s understanding over a decade? Anyway, and he talks about being upset about Trump’s disparagement of John McCain. And then, that starts to build toward, he goes on and on, as you say, it’s a personal, a greatest hits of all the things that he said about the military that are bad. Like, when he went on the Howard Stern show instead of avoiding STDs was his personal Vietnam. I feel like…

Walter Kirn: Okay. If he’d said that on Face the Nation…

Matt Taibbi: Right.

Walter Kirn: I might be taking it back, that he teed up an outrageous quote for Howard Stern. It’s not even outrageous for Howard Stern. It’s mild for the Howard Stern Show.

Matt Taibbi: Right.

Walter Kirn: And it’s actually kind of funny, to be honest.

Matt Taibbi: It is funny. Yeah. Yeah. There are other things in the story that are not funny where he talks about, allegedly, there’s a story where he came off the debate with Hillary and was praised by somebody who compared it to the exploits of a soldier in the field of battle, and that is tasteless if it’s true.

Walter Kirn: But remember the context here is that he had a meeting or a debate or something with Hillary just after the Access Hollywood tape. Was that it?

Matt Taibbi: I thought it was the debate. Hang on a second. Let me look.

Walter Kirn: Yeah. But the reason for the quote about it taking courage was that the night before something terrible had dropped about him…

Matt Taibbi: The Access Hollywood. Yep.

Walter Kirn: Yeah. And the person was saying it was courageous to get up there right after that damning story and debate and said it took courage.

Matt Taibbi: Right, right. And again, if it’s true, it doesn’t read well, right?

Walter Kirn: What did he say again?

Matt Taibbi: Last year at a speech, before a group of New York Republicans while discussing the fallout from the release of the Access Hollywood tape, he said, “I went onto that stage just a few days later, and a general who’s a fantastic general actually said to me, “Sir, I’ve been on the battlefield. Men have gone down on my left and on my right, I stood on hills where soldiers were killed. But I believe the bravest thing I’ve ever seen was the night you went onto the stage with Hillary Clinton after what happened.” We’ve all watched Trump speak.

Walter Kirn: Well, wait, are they suggesting that Trump made up the fact, the idea that a general said this?

Matt Taibbi: No, no, no, no. They’re talking about him boasting about it.

Walter Kirn: Well, isn’t that the general’s fault then, in a way? I mean, it is a funny story. I might not tell it to a large audience.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah. I don’t think I would tell it.

Walter Kirn: I might not tell it to a large audience, but a general, making a joke like that, which is obviously a joke…

Matt Taibbi: Right.

Walter Kirn: And then repeating it before a fundraising style crowd.

Matt Taibbi: Right, right, right. Yeah. No, it was a group of New York Republicans. I mean, it’s a friendly crowd, so you can give them a little bit of a break for that. I still wouldn’t say it though. You know what I mean?

Walter Kirn: I hate to be in this position, but as a humorist somewhat myself, these are now two examples of humor. The avoiding STDs was my personal Vietnam. And then again, this comparison of getting up with Hillary after the Access Hollywood deal being an example of courage. Now, they’re obviously ironic and irony is increasingly endangered in our society because it’s only really comprehensible in situ if you know the mood. I mean, something I might say at a party and something that I might say in an address to the nation are two different things entirely. So, I’m going to say zero for two on this as far as big hits, because when something is obviously humorous, I need to know if the atmosphere was humorous too.

Matt Taibbi: You see, this is the thing, and this is a characteristic of the whole era of Trump reporting. Trump’s whole schtick has a bit of a campy edge to it. Right?

Walter Kirn: Oh, more than a bit.

Matt Taibbi: More than a bit, right? So, it’s layers…

Walter Kirn: It’s a Don Rickles routine.

Matt Taibbi: Exactly. Yeah. So, whenever he says anything, you have to take that into account. And what a lot of this reporting always is, is putting in print where all the tonalities and the contextual stuff is gone, and you just reduce it to the words which look worse without the delivery. But it would be like if you put the transcript of a Dice Clay routine on paper, it wouldn’t be funny probably. Right?

Walter Kirn: Any joke about courage is probably going to play off the definition of courage that we have from the military. In other words, “I had friends who went to the Battle of the Bulge, but being married to her…”

Matt Taibbi: That’s the same Kinison thing. “You can’t scare me. I was married.”

Walter Kirn: Yeah. So again, not wanting to see humor in America completely disappear. I’m unwilling to go hard on these two examples.

Matt Taibbi: Right, right. I mean, I would say he’s maybe a half point for two here for me, because…

Walter Kirn: The Question for me is did a general ever really say that?

Matt Taibbi: Right. And it could be if Trump didn’t say, but he’s not alleging that.

Walter Kirn: Right. He’s not alleging that.

Matt Taibbi: Okay, so then…

Walter Kirn: What if it’s one of the generals quoted later in the article?

Matt Taibbi: I mean, that would be interesting, right? Because that’s entirely possible. How many generals does Trump spend a lot of time with? But anyway, so the big revelation in the article that actually comes sort of at the beginning of that second pullback section, and it starts with this sentence, “Former generals who have worked with Trump say that the sole military virtue he prizes is obedience. As his presidency drew to a close, and in the years since, he has become more and more interested in the advantages of dictatorship and the absolute control over the military that he believes it would deliver.”

Walter Kirn: That’s an unwarranted extrapolation.

Matt Taibbi: Yes.

Walter Kirn: From what we’ve seen before. Maybe he supports it in what’s to come, but that’s a big leap.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah. And I think he’s also conflating a couple of things, but whatever. This is Goldberg talking, and I don’t love that because I think you always want to be able to substantiate everything you’re saying, but look, he’s not making a news claim, right?

Walter Kirn: Right.

Matt Taibbi: I don’t know. It’s in a gray area, I would say.

Walter Kirn: Well, it is a news claim.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah.

Walter Kirn: It’s a news claim of this type. From examining the totality of the evidence and watching it over time, I have concluded, me, experienced journalist who’s been around that he has a growing fascination with dictatorship, and it’s required that he say this because of course, the problem with the whole Hitler scenario is that Trump was already president and wasn’t Hitler that time and could not be sure that he would ever be re-elected, so it might’ve been his only chance to be Hitler. Why didn’t he take it? Well, it has to be posited that he wasn’t as quite as interested in it then as he’s become.

Matt Taibbi: That’s an interesting point, right? Part of the theme of the article is that Trump is surprised at the lack of obedience, so maybe he’s sort of inferring that he thought he could pull off a Hitler act, but was rebuffed by these heroic sources. So then he goes on-

Walter Kirn: But I’m going to stop you one more time. Before we go on, here’s the dog that didn’t bark in the article. Here’s the thing that caused me to alert and wonder about its credibility in total. How many generals did Trump hire? I mean, he had a chief of staff. If he hated the military so much, why did he surround himself with generals like this?

Matt Taibbi: Right, right. Yeah.

Walter Kirn: I mean, Mattis, Kelly, didn’t he bring them both in pretty close?

Matt Taibbi: Milley, yeah. Mm-hmm.

Walter Kirn: Well, Milley was Joint Chiefs of Staff. I mean, any president would be dealing with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But Kelly was his chief of staff, no?

Matt Taibbi: Right, right. Yeah. Yeah.

Walter Kirn: Has Biden had a general be his chief of staff?

Matt Taibbi: I don’t know. That’s an interesting question, right?

Walter Kirn: So the guy who hates the military and thinks they’re all some form of losers or chumps or whatever certainly loves to have them close.

Matt Taibbi: That’s an interesting point, and I hadn’t thought about that. He doesn’t bring it up, of course, like there’s a bunch of things he doesn’t bring up in the piece.

Okay, so now he goes on, and this is the money quote, this is the thing that is driving all the news this week, and if we could put it up, let’s get this quote as big as we can on this screen. Now, there’s a quote. “‘I need the kind of generals that Hitler had,’ Trump said in a private conversation in the White House, according to two people who heard him say this, ‘people who are totally loyal to him that follow orders.’” So again, this is like the Russia-guy formula for news reporting. You got a whole bunch of stuff where people are saying things on the record, and then you have mysteriously these anonymous sources who say these things that you can’t check.

Walter Kirn: And in response to what did he say this? Did he just call people in, sit them down, spread his arms and say, “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had,” or was there a conversation that this was part of?

Matt Taibbi: Right, right, exactly. And, “People who are totally loyal to him who follow orders,” now, what kind of person would tell a reporter that and then not want to be part of the story? Somebody who’s-

Walter Kirn: They couldn’t hide their identity because if he indeed said it and there were only a couple of people around, well, maybe there were a lot and only two of them came out, but I think he would have a very good idea who might have said it. I mean, who might have leaked it.

Matt Taibbi: Right. So what are we hiding for here, right? And it just doesn’t make a lot of sense, and it makes the rest of this article, which is just laden, and if you can scroll up and down, just show people how big this article is.

Walter Kirn: Is that as completely as they are ID’d, two people in the room?

Matt Taibbi: Yeah, according to two people who are in the room, and he says that it was in the White House.

Walter Kirn: And there are two people who are loyal to him and follow orders, but they’re not necessarily military people?

Matt Taibbi: It doesn’t say. According to two people who are in the room. Now, what two people who are in the room who heard that who’d be pissed off about it enough to tell The Atlantic would say it and then not reveal themselves? And we talked about this just the other night with Woodward and the Dan Coats thing, where Dan Coats says that he’s worried that Putin is blackmailing Trump, and there’s no follow-up, how is he blackmailing him, what makes you think that-

Walter Kirn: I’m worried that Putin’s blackmailing Dan Coats, but that doesn’t make it a story.

Matt Taibbi: Right, it’s not a story until you got something… Like this would be a story in the context of a press that had not screwed up 9 billion stories in the last 20 years doing exactly this kind of thing. And remember, Jeffrey Goldberg is one of the people who was most infamous for overhyping the WMD story, won awards for that coverage, and he’s the ultimate case of failing upwards into this hyper-influential spot at The Atlantic magazine after having completely dog paddled, or what’s the word I’m looking for? Well, I’m looking for something that’s a little bit too graphic for this show, but he screwed up the WMD story in a big way doing exactly this kind of thing.

Walter Kirn: Now, look at this picture for a moment. The golden wing emerging from Trump’s neck with the stars behind him. It’s obviously meant to portray him as some sort of South American overly militaristic dictator himself, you know? Because the overall point of this article is, of course, that Trump is going to be a fascist authoritarian who will take control of the military and use it against his enemies. That’s the narrative into which this is meant to drop. Just as there are no wings coming out of Trump’s neck in real life but there are in this photo, I feel that the whole thing has been organized with the worst possible connotations at every point. In other words, the article is a variation on the photo.

Matt Taibbi: Right. Right, right, right. Yeah, I mean, if you take the picture that way, it does look a little bit more ominous than it probably would in the full shot, right?

So this is basically the whole story, it’s according to two people who are in the room, and it’s a rerun of another story that came out a couple of years ago. Actually, was it a couple of years ago? It was before the last election.

Walter Kirn: No, it was a while ago, the suckers and losers business?

Matt Taibbi: Yeah. This was in September of 2020, so it was another pre-election story.

Walter Kirn: Right.

Matt Taibbi: This one was called Trump: Americans Who Died in War are Losers and Suckers. And if you go down to some of the money quotes, like there’s one moment in there where he says… Let’s see if I can find it here. Sorry.

Yeah. “Trump remained fixated on McCain. When he died on August 2018, Trump told his senior staff, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the event, ‘We’re not going to support this loser’s funeral,’ and he became furious according to witnesses when he saw flags lowered to half staff. ‘What the fuck are we doing that for? Guy was a fucking loser,’ the president told aides.”

Walter Kirn: Okay.

Matt Taibbi: These sources and others quoted in this article spoke on the condition of anonymity, and then, of course, the Trump campaign denies it. Then there’s a story that he… “According to three sources with direct knowledge of his views, Trump referred to former President George HW Bush as a loser for being shot down.” It just goes on and on and on like this. It’s like is there one person who can go on the record saying this stuff? I don’t know. What’s your feeling about… I mean, if it were a real story, how would you do it? Would you do anything different, Walter, if this were true?

Walter Kirn: Okay, I used to write for The Atlantic. I wrote cover stories for The Atlantic. I am familiar with their editorial standards, at least going back to about 2014. It’s under new ownership. Goldberg wasn’t the editor then, I don’t believe. Maybe he was.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah, I think.

Walter Kirn: I’m not sure how long he’s been there. But how would I write this story differently? Well, that’s not a legitimate question because this isn’t a story that is out there for various people to write.

Matt Taibbi: Right, yeah.

Walter Kirn: This is a story that Goldberg put together himself and created a thesis for. I can’t imagine The Atlantic calling me up back in the day and saying, “Listen, Trump disrespects the military. We’ve got some people and they have various instances of seeing him say untoward things. We want you to put that together into a big, big piece on Trump and the military.” They would never allow anyone but the prime person or somebody they completely trusted to be down with the whole thing to ever do it. In other words, this is a composite piece. It’s an editorial with examples basically, and only the editorialist could even write it really.

Matt Taibbi: Right, right. And again, this story, it wraps things that are on record with other instances, with anonymous sources where you’re just like, “Eh,” like-

Walter Kirn: I will tell you this. If I were asked to do it, if they trusted me enough, if they thought I disliked Trump enough and so on, here’s one thing I would do that Goldberg didn’t do, I would at least gesture toward exculpatory interpretations of some of these things. You know what I mean? There is not a single moment in this piece in which he questions his own thesis. Everything is grist for the mill, every single statement, except for going to Trump people and getting denials. “But maybe it was lighthearted, I might say, when he said XYZ,” or, “There’s some dispute over whether this was actually said. Anonymous sources say it was. Others say it wasn’t.” But he comes down so heavily in favor of his source’s interpretation of everything that it would be hard for me to write, because not being there for things is a problem for me, especially at this point in a presidential campaign when I might suspect that I was being used to hurt a disfavored candidate at the expense of the truth.

Matt Taibbi: Well, I don’t think he worries about that too much, but oh, at the expense of the truth, yes.

Walter Kirn: Yeah

Matt Taibbi: That should be a consideration. But again, it’s the same thing as in every key section of that story. So if you go down, there’s a key quote where he says, “He just thinks that anyone who does anything when there’s no direct personal gain to be had is a sucker.” Now, this is attributed to one of Kelly’s friends, a retired four-star General. And he went on to say, “Trump can’t imagine anyone else’s pain. That’s why he would say this to the father of a fallen marine on Memorial Day.” So there’s that, right? It’s another sort of quasi-anonymous quote. Then there’s a section near the bottom that says, “The president believes that nothing is worth doing without the promise of monetary payback, and that talented people who don’t pursue riches are ‘losers.’”

Walter Kirn: So once again, that’s an unwarranted conclusion. “The president believes that no one,” it’s an absolute statement, “who doesn’t want money for something is sane or whatever.”

Matt Taibbi: Right.

Walter Kirn: That’s an extraordinary claim about any person. One might say if one was writing to himself, Trump often seems to believe that the only real motive for behavior is money.

Matt Taibbi: Mm-hmm. Right.

Walter Kirn: But to just reach inside his head like his therapist who has transcripts of his deepest confessions is also something I would be a little hesitant to do.

Matt Taibbi: I remember when Trump approved like the biggest increase in the history of the military budget. It was like a two-year, $160 billion bump in the DOD budget, and the bill was called something like the McCain Defense Authorization Act. I can’t remember the exact title. But when he signed the bill, the story wasn’t Trump bumps military budget up to unprecedented levels. It was Trump refuses to invoke the name of John McCain when signing the bill, like they made an issue out of that. And the thing that was infuriating about… Well, there’s a couple of things. Number one, again, it’s this whole canonization of these figures who are actually highly controversial in their time and now are dealing with the same thing with everyone from Dick Cheney to John Bolton, they’re suddenly being presented as these unimpeachable sources. George W Bush is now somebody we’re supposed to love and respect, right? But also, the Trump increase in the defense budget, that was the kind of legitimate issue that people who on the left should have made hay about, but instead-

Walter Kirn: Maybe even Jeffrey Goldberg should have made hay about it in this article saying that Trump hates the military. Maybe he should have just added, “But he did preside over the largest budget increase.”

Matt Taibbi: Right? I mean, you would wonder why he wouldn’t mention that, and that’s going to lead us to our next question about what The Atlantic is, but yeah.

Walter Kirn: And then another part that I thought was interesting was that Trump was damned by various people in the article for wanting military parades that showed actual hardware, you know, tanks, maybe planes, and so on. But this was held to be yet another example of him not respecting military tradition, because in America, we don’t actually parade tanks and jets, but that’s just not true. We have.

Matt Taibbi: We parade them in different ways, and we do-

Walter Kirn: We have had military parades like that. There have been pictures of them going through Washington. But is it that he over-respects the military or that he under-respects it? Because wanting to have big, showy parades with tanks and jets and missiles would strike a child as liking the military, but here it’s disliking its traditions for being a more civilian style organization.

Matt Taibbi: That just isn’t true, I mean, that we have a more civilian tradition. I would argue that what the Soviets did when they dragged their nuclear missiles through Red Square, or whatever… Does China do something similar where they-

Walter Kirn: Well, I mean they all do. North Korea does.

Matt Taibbi: North Korea, right. I would argue that’s like a thousand times less effective than Top Gun, right? We create in our population this awesome love and admiration for weapons, but we just do it a different way, and-

Walter Kirn: Dude, we just had Josh Shapiro signing artillery shells in the middle of the campaign. “These are going to go off and kill Russians.” I just looked at a picture, I just looked up American military parades on Google, and I saw endless pictures of them. Okay, JFK’s January 1961 inaugural parade did include tanks.

Matt Taibbi: Right

Walter Kirn: It included some tanks. That looks like a lot of them.

Matt Taibbi: That looks like an assload of tanks to me. I guess you can’t use assload in Business Insider, right?

Walter Kirn: The article that it comes from is actually a Snopes fact check of whether it ever happened, because people were bringing it up because Trump was being criticized for it in 2019. “Amidst that contretemps, the White Star Republic Facebook page posted a photograph of long columns of tanks in the streets of Washington DC with a text asserting, ‘Nobody complained about JFK’s inaugural parade.’ As noted above, JFK’s January 1961 inaugural parade did include some weaponry, including tanks.”

Matt Taibbi: And this is a Snopes fact check?

Walter Kirn: Yeah. But some, not as many as Trump wants. I mean, look at that thing.

Matt Taibbi: I mean, you literally can’t wipe yourself with these fact-checking organizations. They’re lower even than reporters are. I don’t know. I guess some is just not all.

Walter Kirn: Right.

Matt Taibbi: That’s their definition of some.

Walter Kirn: But not all of our tanks were at the inauguration.

Matt Taibbi: Right, right.

Walter Kirn: And was that JFK sort of the premier veteran who was also a president-

Matt Taibbi: Of course.

Walter Kirn: … of modern times? I mean, Eisenhower was a general, and I believe he did also have military parades. I’ve seen references to that. You can check that. I’m pretty sure it’s true. So at some point during the Vietnam War, we probably got embarrassed of those sorts of parades. They wouldn’t have worked. Think about it. 1961 was probably one of the last times in America you could get full-throated flag-waving military support or public support, excuse me, for a display of weaponry.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah, because-

Walter Kirn: By 1968, bombs would’ve been thrown, riots would’ve broken out, and so on.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah, you’re not going to go out and have a parade in 1976 like, “These are the weapons that the pajama-clad Viet Cong defeated over the course of an unnecessary however-many-year war.” But look, in the Reagan years, we did reintroduce the whole love of weaponry. It became part of our culture.

Walter Kirn: Right.

Matt Taibbi: And The Atlantic has been very complicit in this whole warship of the military and the intelligence professional.

Walter Kirn: You can worship it too much.

Matt Taibbi: Right, apparently you can worship it too much.

Walter Kirn: And you can worship it too little according to The Atlantic. But like the porridge, you can also get it just right, and Donald Trump’s sin is that he hasn’t gotten it just right. He wavers between wondering why anybody would go off to die in our wars, which I’ve heard a lot of people that aren’t Donald Trump wonder, frankly.

Matt Taibbi: Right, yeah.

Walter Kirn: As a child of the ‘70s, I mean, Trump’s older than me, but I remember people being called worse than fools for going off to die in Vietnam.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah. I mean, normally it wasn’t a criticism of the soldier.

Walter Kirn: No.

Matt Taibbi: But it was-

Walter Kirn: Well, in the ‘70s, sometimes it was.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah, I guess that’s true, I guess that’s true, although some of those stories were also planted or exaggerated, but-

Walter Kirn: Right, spitting on veterans and so on.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah, exactly, all that stuff.

Just a couple of parenthetical notes. The business about Trump refusing to invoke John McCain’s name when he signed the defense bill, I had forgotten how absurd the headlines were from that era. So they range from The Washington Post, Trump signs defense bill but snubs the senator the legislation is named after -- John McCain. ABC, President Trump signs defense authorization bill, doesn’t say John McCain’s name. Let’s see. NBC, Trump snubs McCain during bill signing intended to honor him. And then my personal favorite, Trump Talks for 28 Minutes on Bill Named for John McCain. Not Mentioned: McCain. Right? So that was the entire story about Trump’s historic defense budget increase. And then this whole idea of loving weapons, who can forget the Brian Williams sort of on-air-gasm during the Syrian missile strikes?

Brian Williams: Go into greater detail, we see these beautiful pictures at night from the decks of these two US Navy vessels in the Eastern Mediterranean. I am tempted to quote the great Leonard Cohen, “I’m guided by the beauty of our weapons,” and there are beautiful pictures of fearsome armaments making what is for them a brief flight over to this airfield.

Walter Kirn: So the Leonard Cohen song, I don’t remember its exact name, but one of the lyrics is, “First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.”

Matt Taibbi: Right.

Walter Kirn: ”I’m guided by the beauty of our…” There’s something psycho about the song, but Brian didn’t catch that.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah, no, it’s ironic. It’s the Randy Newman thing. Remember the, “Boom goes London, boom Paris,” right?

13 Comments

Jim Armstrong October 27, 2024

I just posted this to the Water Woes piece that Bruce published twice this last week and Adam Gaska adds to above.
I thought more might read it here.

“The place with by far the worst result (disaster) of ending summer diversion would be Potter Valley itself.
Adding Eel River flood water to Russian River flood water in the winter would adversely the East Fork of the Russian as well as undermine the flood control mission of Lake Mendocino.
Some proponents have said “no problem, we’ll just pump lake water back up to the top of Potter Valley for irrigation.” Hah!
Adam almost always fails to point out that Redwood Valley would actually benefit from the currently discussed “solution.”

- Adam Gaska October 27, 2024
  
  Historically, we did divert lots of water in winter from the Eel to the Russian and Lake Mendocino. There was 150,000 AF being diverted annually until 2007 when the amount diverted annually was lowered to 60,000 AF. 2020-2021, it was 40,000 AF. The large winter diversions were a reason why the Army Corp of Engineers would dump so much water out of Lake Mendocino. They continued to do so even after the diversion was cut by over 50% because the manual they operate with says so. They do have a temporary variance to trial Forecast Improved Reservoir Operations (FIRO). That has kept an additional 10,000+ AF in Lake Mendocino compared to “going by the book”.
  
  I have heard a few people say we can just pump water back up to PV but I don’t think that is feasible. More feasible is building a reservoir or two in PV and using winter flows to flood areas for groundwater recharge. Whatever water is diverted, is water not going into Lake Mendocino. Building a reservoir or two could take decades and cost tends, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars so while it is more feasible than pumping water back to PV, it’s not very feasible either.
  
  Redwood Valley would be a loser in some ways but we are also having some success. Redwood Valley has depended on surplus water from Russian River Flood Control because we did not financially support the building of Coyote Dam. 2020-2021 we were entirely cut off from RRFC. We had domestic rationing as we were getting 100% of our water from Millview and a well at the Masonite property. Ag customers got zero water allocation for two years while still paying their service charges. Within months of being appointed to the board, I was able to secure an emergency water transfer in September 2022 from RRFC of 400 AF, allowing us to supply ag customers and fire up our treatment plant. Since then, enough surplus water has been made available to lift all restrictions on domestic and ag customers. We are in the process of being annexed in RRFC district which hopefully will lead to a contract.
  
  When water was abundant, RVCWD used 2,000 AF a year. Now with surplus water available, we are using around 700 AF a year. During 2020 and 2021, we used less than 400. We have learned to get by with so little that even when we have water available, we are quite frugal. When you are used to having nothing, having anything is a luxury.
  
Harvey Reading October 27, 2024

THE COURTHOUSE DESIGN

Get over it. It’s no worse than most other public buildings, like the white house, the national capitol, or most state capitols, excepting New Mexico, which actually is a pleasure to view.

- George Dorner October 27, 2024
  
  Get over it yourself. This proposed architectural atrocity is butt-ugly.
  
  - Harvey Reading October 28, 2024
    
    Your opinion. Better looking than most guvamint buildings.
    
Adam Gaska October 27, 2024

RE Mendo’s Organic wine grapes.

Mendocino’s crop report is behind but with a new ag commissioner, it sounds like it will be brought current.

According to the state data, there are 23,187 acres of organic wine grapes in California. 5,500 acres are in Napa, accounting for 23.7% of the state’s organic acreage.

https://winecountrygeographic.blogspot.com/2024/10/californias-organic-vines-ccof-stats.html

Mendocino has 4,275 acres according to Mendocino Winegrowers 2021 report. That’s 18.4% of the state’s organic acreage.

https://mendowine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Mendocino-Winegrowers-Fact-Sheet.pdf

At one time, Mendocino County accounted for over 1/3 of the state’s organic acreage but looks like we have been bumped out of the top spot by Napa.

Craig Stehr October 27, 2024

From the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception…30th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Warmest spiritual greetings,
The Sunday noon Mass in the upper church of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. was celebrated in the fullest way, lead by the primary priests of the Basilica, plus the full choir, plus altar attendants, with the altar enshrouded in incense, and the big organ in the upper back of the church in use, the pews filled with the faithful singing, and the Mass filmed for those who could not attend to enjoy at home.

Am at the Catholic University student library on a guest computer this very moment. Will soon go to the D.C. Peace Vigil in front of the White House with food and hydrating beverages. Am staying at a homeless shelter in the northeast section of the district, awaiting possible subsidized housing, or whatever. No telling what the future is going to be. Am living in this moment!

Craig Louis Stehr
Adam’s Place Homeless Shelter
2210 Adams Place NE #1
Washington, D.C. 20018
Telephone: (202) 832-8317
Email: craiglouisstehr@gmail.com
Paypal.me/craiglouisstehr
October 27th, 2024 Anno Domini

Chuck Wilcher October 27, 2024

Noted absences in the MCT: James Marmon in the comments section and Jeff Goll’s photos.

Casey Hartlip October 27, 2024

Re: CA Wine Region of the Year.
How sad and ironic that there will be many thousands of tons of grapes left on the vine as the entire wine industry continues it’s downward spiral. I have many dear friends working in the wine biz and feel for them. People are going to suffer…..not just this year, as this will take a while to improve.

Casey Hartlip/Lakeside AZ

Jim Armstrong October 27, 2024

If Matt and Walter had been around in the day, reading them might have been added to Hercules Twelve Labors.

Falcon October 27, 2024

Courthouse

These California made Designers and Architectss have experience dealing with public in California — they understand the concerns, and expect them -they are a Co-Operative, co-owned by their employees, all have ‘skin in the game.

Civic Building and Civic Center Architecture: Design for the Public
https://hmcarchitects.com/ideas/civic-building-and-civic-center-architecture-design-for-the-public/#:~:text=What%20Is%20a%20Civic%20Center

MAGA Marmon October 27, 2024

Lake County’s new Courthouse.

https://lake.courts.ca.gov/system/files/general/new-courthouse-press-release.pdf

MAGA Marmon

David Svehla October 27, 2024

I have never seen anywheres NEAR as fine an example of abandoned (and overgrown!) drive -in movie porn as now in MCT! Hiding in a car trunk was a right of passage! -Born in 65

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