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GENERAL GUSTY WINDS, showers and isolated thunderstorms with potential small hail are expected to continue through this evening along with moderate to heavy downpours. Heavy mountain snow above 3000 feet elevation is anticipated through this evening, as well. Lingering showers through Wednesday, followed by dry weather for the remainder of the week are forecast. (NWS)
STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): That was a wild one yesterday! Today could be more of the same, we'll see? Scattered showers & 47F with .60" more rainfall collected this Tuesday morning on the coast. 1 more day of rain & thunder then clearing skies return Wed thru Sat. More rain is forecast Sun & Mon. Next week is looking dry so far, no really.
2024: Oct 1.26" - Nov 14.53” - Dec 12.05”
2025: Jan 1.65” - Feb 10.18” - Mar 6.37”
YTD: 46.04”
WELFARE CHECK LEADS TO ARREST FOR ATTEMPTED MURDER
On March 28, 2025 at approximately 4:00 PM, officers from the Fort Bragg Police Department responded to a welfare check in the 100 block of Ebbing Way in Fort Bragg, following reports suggesting a female was potentially an assault victim.
Upon arrival, officers knocked at the residence’s front door and heard a female screaming for help and a male voice attempting to quiet her and preventing her from opening the door for law enforcement. Finding the door locked, officers forcibly entered the home and encountered the male suspect, later identified as Christopher Grewer, 67, of Fort Bragg, who refused to comply and retreated upstairs.
After a brief struggle, officers successfully apprehended Grewer without injury. The investigation revealed that Grewer had engaged in a verbal altercation with the victim which escalated to physical violence on March 27, 2025. Officers identified evidence indicating that Grewer assaulted and strangled the victim with an electrical cord on three separate occasions while threatening her life should she contact law enforcement. Grewer also confiscated the victim’s cell phone, preventing her from seeking medical assistance.
The victim sustained multiple physical injuries consistent with strangulation and physical assault, requiring transport to Adventist Mendocino Coast Hospital for treatment. The victim was later released after being treated.
Following this investigation, Grewer was booked into the Mendocino County Jail for Attempted Homicide, Domestic Violence, false imprisonment, and Violation of a Court Order. Officers sought and obtained an Emergency Protective Order for the victim and a bail enhancement for Grewer, raising his bail to $500,000.
Anyone with information regarding this incident is encouraged to contact Officer Pacheco with the Fort Bragg Police Department at (707) 964-2800 ext. 246 or email apacheco@fortbragg.com.
This information is being released by Chief Neil Cervenka. All media inquiries should contact him at ncervenka@fortbragg.com.
BARGER'S BAD BARGAIN
A 21-year-old Ukiah man was arrested on March 26 after Ukiah Police officers spotted him driving a stolen vehicle.
Alexander Timothy Barger, 21, of Ukiah was taken into custody without incident after officers stopped him in a parking lot near T-Up on East Perkins Street.
The department’s automated license plate recognition system alerted officers around 8:20 p.m. that a stolen Nissan Versa was traveling through Ukiah. Dispatchers confirmed the vehicle had been reported stolen from Auto Distributor of Santa Rosa and was still outstanding.
Officers located the Nissan a short time later and attempted to stop it. Barger, the driver, turned into a parking lot and began exiting the vehicle when officers arrested him.
Barger was booked into the Mendocino County Jail on suspicion of possession of a stolen vehicle, committing a felony while out on bail, and driving on a suspended license due to a prior DUI conviction.
ADD GUNFIRE TO THE HAZARDS OF OLD AGE
On Thursday, March 27, 2025 at about 10:50 P.M., Mendocino County Sheriff's Office Deputies were dispatched to the 41000 Block of Little River Airport Road in Little River for a welfare check. The caller reported hearing possible gunshots at a neighboring residence, and the caller became concerned for their elderly neighbor after calling the resident and the phone line disconnected.
Upon arrival, Deputies contacted Ignacio Andrade-Zamora, 58, of Little River, who allowed them to enter the residence to check on the female occupant. As Deputies entered, they observed evidence of a firearm being discharged inside the residence, so Andrade-Zamora was detained. Deputies located the female resident and requested medical personnel respond to the location and provide medical aid to the female. The female resident was checked by medical personnel at the scene and was determined to be uninjured during the assault.
A search warrant was obtained and Detectives from the Sheriff's Office Investigations Bureau responded to assist with the investigation. Additional evidence was located to establish probable cause a violent assault with a firearm occurred and Andrade-Zamora was responsible for the assault. Numerous firearms and firearm accessories were seized by Deputies and Investigators during the service of the search warrant.
Andrade-Zamora was placed under arrest for Attempted Murder, Elder Abuse, and Use of a firearm during the commission of a felony.
Andrade-Zamora was booked into the Mendocino County Jail where he is being held in lieu of $500,000 bail.
This incident is actively being investigated and anyone with information regarding this investigation is requested to contact the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office Dispatch Center at 707-463-4086 (option 1). Information can also be provided anonymously by calling the non-emergency tip-line at 707-234-2100.
AV UNIFIED NEWS
Dear Anderson Valley USD Families,
I hope this letter finds you having a fantastic time with your children while they are on Spring Break! I will keep it short, but wanted to be sure to notify you of some important information, as well as upcoming events!
As a reminder, April 21st was reserved as a storm day and, barring any unexpected big storms that require the district to close for a day of school, it will be a “student-free” day. Please mark your calendars: No school on April 21st!
School Site Council / DELAC Meeting & Dinner Thursday, April 10 4:00-6:00
Thank you to members of these committees for your flexibility; we changed the date in order to combine the meetings and get a “whole district” perspective!
If you are on one the School Site Council or ELAC for either school, or on the DELAC for the district, we hope you can attend! (Those not on these committees are also welcome to attend to learn more and to provide feedback!)
We will be reviewing our successes and areas for growth, district-wide.
We’ll be making some decisions about supports for students in 25-26 and will be planning how to allocate our limited funds as we strive to do great things for kids in 25-26
The meeting will commence at 4:00 at the AVHS library and those who attend the meeting will be welcomed to a special dinner at 5:15 p.m. Childcare will be provided, if needed, by our awesome AVHS Student Leadership team.
Vacancy on the Board of Trustees
Saoirse Byrne has resigned from the Board due challenges around scheduling conflicts. We in AVUSD are deeply grateful to Saoirse for her leadership on the board. She has kept the importance of outdoor instruction and the building of creativity and free expression at the forefront of our conversations. Her passion for student learning and her fresh perspective have been a great benefit to the district.
If you or someone you know might be interested in joining the Board of Trustees, please review this Board of Trustees Vacancy document and let us know!
Thank You, Mr. Ramalia!
We are sad to share that Mr. Ramalia will be looking for a principalship closer to his home for 2025-26. He will be with us through the end of the school year and is “all in” until July 1. We are so grateful for his stepping in, in October, and for his kind spirit and calm demeanor. The district is already looking for the next principal and has several applications, and the interview process will start soon. Thank you, Mr. Ramalia for making that long drive this year and for always showing up with a smile and a kind word for everyone. You will be missed!
AVES Enjoyed the Student of the Month Awards Ceremony!
Congratulations to all the students who received awards and thank you to those parents who were able to attend!
Congratulations to these Students of the Month!
Adrian R Kinder
Gael N 1st
Marianna G 2nd
Oscar R 3rd
Noelle C 4th
Norberto C 5th
Ailyn M 6th
Congratulations to these Panther Pride Certificate Recipients!
Giulietta C 1st
Martin V 1st
Jessica P 2nd
Oliver S 2nd
Jaelynn S 3rd
Luciana B 3rd
Johnny K 4th
Samuel V 4th
Alexis G 4/5
Kenia C 4/5
Maggie M 6th
Stuart S 6th
Anderson Valley Education Foundation Opportunities for High Schoolers
Don’t miss these internship opportunities! For quick access, check out this Internship Job List. Deadlines are approaching so students who have not yet begun looking at these internships should do so ASAP.
Summer School will be June 23-July 22
8:30-12:30 / ASP 12:30-5:30 Transportation provided
(bus leaves for the day at 3:00 p.m.)
AVES will provide activities including sports, crafts, science, art, and field trips. Here is the AVES Summer School flier
AV Jr High will provide fun learning activities. (More info coming soon.)
Sr High School provide credit recovery opportunities. (More info coming soon.)
We Value all Our Families: Immigration Support and Updates
Please find links to additional information for families below:
Mendocino County Office of Education: Immigration Resource Page
Immigration and California Families: State Immigration Website
National Immigration Law Center: “Know Your Rights” (English | Spanish | Additional Languages)
If you would like to be more involved at school, please contact your school’s principal, Mr. Ramalia at AVES or Mr. McNerney at AV Jr/Sr High, or our district superintendent, Kristin Larson Balliet. We are deeply grateful for our AVUSD families.
With respect,
Kristin Larson Balliet
Superintendent
Anderson Valley Unified School District
klarson@avpanthers.org
"WHEN the still sea conspires in anger, and her sullen and aborted currents breed tiny monsters, true sailing is dead" — Jim Morrison
BETH SWEHLA (AV Ag Teacher):
If you raise chickens (any chickens) you had better pay attention to California AB 928. It took me 5 minutes to express my opposition to this bill.
Everyone that raises backyard chickens in California needs to know about California AB 928 bill. It is very time sensitive to express your opposition to this bill.
Hey everyone, are you tracking AB 928? The bill is supposed to make it easier to crack down on cockfighting but the devil is in the details. The exemptions they carved out aren't exemptions at all.
The bill makes it look like you are safe if you have chickens for food (exemption A) but that's not exactly true.
You need to be in FULL compliance with all local, state, & federal regulations. This opens up all of us for double penalization.
How many of us have ever traded something for eggs? Or even outright sold them? How many people have more than local code says they should? Are the coops in the exact right spot?
Most chicken owners are required to be licensed CA Egg Handlers. Pay a $75 fee every year, follow a litany of rules including candling and grading each egg, and have an inspector come out to ensure you're in full compliance with Prop 12 (this proposition is also courtesy of HSUS).
The bill makes it look like kids in 4H/FFA are safe but that's not really the case.
I was just talking to someone whose daughter had to drop out of 4H for a few years when she suffered a traumatic brain injury. She'd be a criminal if she kept her birds.
Same with kids who age out. Once they turn 19, their flock is illegal. They'd need to sell or euthanize their flocks.
Poultry shows would shut down and show breeders who are largely responsible for preserving many rare breeds & 49 endangered heritage breeds would have to destroy their flocks as well.
One of the requirements for show breeders to be exempt is NPIP certification. Which is horrendously expensive (over $1000/yr) and requires an onsite inspection. The state CDFA vet is not conducting inspections so even if you were able to pay all the fees, the process is essentially impossible to complete.
Then there's no exemption at all for hobby breeders or breeders who don't show. Which I think is most people on here who are selling chicks.
All of us who are breeding chickens but don't show them would be criminalized. Same with "rescue" bachelor flocks.
Also 8 wk old chicks that are trying to crow are considered roosters.
Let them know how you feel about this here: https://ajud.assembly.ca.gov/
ADAM HIGHT
Hello Laytonville! As many of you know, I took over the lease at It Takes Two to Tangle and Mendo Trim Tools. I believe in our town's future and didn't want to see another business close. While I didn't expect to make a profit, the amount of clutter to remove from the property has been challenging. Retail is tough here, especially when community support seems to favor Willits, making it difficult for local retailers to buy in bulk for discounts and profit. I also know talented stylists who could earn more elsewhere.
I want to create opportunities here and believe we can build something special. That's why I'm exploring ideas, including this grant application.
HANDS-OFF PROTESTS
Just for information…there are 2 local “Hands-Off” protests on Saturday, April 5. Ukiah 10am to noon, then Fort Bragg noon to 1:30 or so. There are many valley residents signed up to attend. Hope you can join us!
FIRE SAFE APRIL MEETING
Wednesday, April 2, 2025
4:45 p.m.
Coast Community Library, downtown Point Arena
RADIO CHECK-IN 4:00 pm. on repeater channel 2
Agenda
- Introduce the IBHS program for certification designating your home as complying with certain insurance companies' fire safe standards
- Mendocino County's Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) is being updated - discuss possible implications for Point Arena
- United Policyholders update on California fire insurance - renter's insurance and homeowners insurance
- Possible chipper days in Point Arena
- Any items brought up by meeting attendees…
See everyone Wednesday!
WILL THE GRAND JURY INVESTIGATE ITS OWN COLLUSION?
On Tuesday, the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors acknowledged the important work of the Civil Grand Jury by issuing a Proclamation Recognizing March 2025 as Civil Grand Jury Awareness Month. Most of the members of the current Civil Grand Jury and Judge Ann Moorman were in attendance at the Board meeting. Judge Moorman is responsible for impaneling, supervising and providing guidance, to the Grand Jury.
Civil grand juries are included in the California Constitution and have been in existence since California became a state in 1849. They perform a vital function in a democracy. They review the operation of local government, including the County, cities, school districts and special districts. They perform investigations of local government programs, and they make recommendations to those agencies on their findings with a goal of improving government operations and making government more responsive to the communities they serve. Each year the court solicits volunteers for a new civil grand jury. Jurors are impaneled to serve a one-year term, beginning July 1st of each year.
Mary Littem Thomas, current foreperson of the Civil Grand Jury, spoke about the important role it serves in the community. She stated that the Civil Grand Jury’s charge is “to provide oversight, mainly for the taxpayers and how their money is spent but [also] to work for the betterment of this county.” She added that the proclamation and Board recognition will help recruit members of the public to join the Grand Jury. “It’s a noble effort. We work tirelessly.” She noted that an added benefit is that grand jurors form friendships that outlast their tenure on the Grand Jury. “We build bonds and excitement in all the interests and investigations we do.”
Board Chair John Haschak thanked the Civil Grand Jury for promoting “transparency, accountability and efficiency in the County and all the other governmental agencies in Mendocino County.”
Mendocino County residents interested in joining the Civil Grand Jury for the 2025-26 term are invited to complete an application at Grand Jury (ca.gov) on the court’s website. Applicants must be US citizens, at least 18 years old, reside in Mendocino County, and be fluent in English to communicate both orally and in writing.
For more information contact:
Kim Turner
Court Executive Officer
100 N. State Street, Room 303
Ukiah, CA 95482
(707) 463-4664, then select Administration from the phone menu.
Mark Scaramella Notes: Not only does this unprecedented picture of the Grand Jury with the people they are supposed to be scrutinizing unprecedented and highly compromising, but when taken together with the Grand Jury Foreman’s remarks at the Board of Supervisors meeting last week, an clear indication that the Grand Jury has no intention of rocking any boats this year. Grand Jury foreperson Mary Littem Thomas told the Supervisors she and her colleagues were “glad to partner with you” the Board and that they have been “very impressed with what we have learned.” Mendo Grand Juries are toothless to begin with, but we have never seen them announce up front that they have no intention of doing their job.
PS. And why does anyone care if the grand jurors “form friendships that outlast their tenure on the Grand Jury”? (Ms. Littem Thomas is the fifth person from the left and to top off the palsy-walsyness of the group, Presiding Judge Ann Moorman is on the far left. Supervisors Mulheren, Norvell, Haschak, Williams and Cline are 3rd, 4th, 9th, 12th, and 16th from the left. But then, maybe they’ll surprise us.
PPS. The woman second from the right is probably not locally famous frequent flyer Kalisha Alvarez, but if it is, her presence would certainly make for some interesting Grand Jury discussions.)
TIME FOR A NEW 5TH DISTRICT SUPERVISOR
Editor:
Before I launch into the many reasons I think Mendocino County’s Fifth District should replace Ted Williams as their supervisor, I want to make a point. We will call it Point A: I fully realize that our tiny county is adrift in a massive sea of state, national, and international forces, and the County Supervisor is a pretty low rung on the political ladder. Thus I don't want to hold Ted to account for things he has no say over. My critique will center on the fact that he does have a platform. He has political capital, and pretty much never uses it. He could be organizing with and advocating for his constituents and create partnerships for things they need.
With the upcoming election in 2026, it is certainly time for the Fifth District to consider just how voters should replace Ted Williams and just who his replacement will be. The truth is his eight years have been marked by abject failure in our County. When he and I were both running for the seat in 2018, when my stroke took me out of the running before our November run-off, Ted was selling himself as the young, can-do outsider who was going to get our County working again. By any metric he has failed his constituents.
Perhaps the clearest example is the recent dismissal, by Judge Ann Moorman of the farcical case against Chamise Cubbison, County Auditor and Tax Collector. The case was a clearly vindictive prosecution by DA David Eyster. But the way Williams and our BOS threw Chamise under the bus is truly shameful. On just the DA’s say so, they removed an elected official from her office (shades of Elon Musk?) thus throwing the County’s financial affairs into chaos, and exposing the County to a potentially expensive wrongful termination lawsuit. To anyone who is paying attention those offices should never have been combined. But Ted ignored that advice too, and forced Chamise into an impossible position. I still maintain contacts in the SEIU since they endorsed me in 2018 and morale of County employees is at an historic low.
On other fronts, can anyone identify even one move that has been made to establish affordable housing for working people, or even one initiative for decent wages? See Point A. Admittedly, I may have missed some, but it seems pretty quiet out there. We remain a wine and tourist dependent economy. Who can raise a family on those wages? Again, I’m not aware of a single effort by Williams in this area. In fact when we were both running in 2018, the County stood to benefit from the legalization of marijuana. We were loaded with legacy growers who had generations of farming knowledge, and were looking forward to no longer having to hide. They were looking forward to full economic participation in County affairs.
I remember at a candidates cannabis forum Ted said he would get the County permitting application down to 1 page and a $25 fee. This was a chance for some real living wage jobs, It was an exciting time! I still maintain some of my contacts in that community, and not a single one feels like Ted did Jack S*@! In fact most of them have quit trying and have moved on or even sold their land. Refer again to Point A.
In considering his replacement I would recommend someone who is not interested in career moves outside our County. It should be someone who is interested in maintaining their roots in our community; I know some Coastlib Dems have been whispering in Ted’s ear about Sacramento, maybe even the governorship. Even I found that hard to believe until his ill-fated Assembly run. Clearly he sees his current position as a rung on his career ladder.
An opposing candidate must have laser sharp focus to keep the campaign on County affairs. When John Redding ran against Ted in 2022, John is a Republican, and with the fear of Trump at such a peak fervor, Ted easily kept the focus on national issues that a BOS would never have been involved with, and John was unable to keep the focus on relevant county issues. So Ted’s opponent needs to stay on point, and expose his actual record.
It will be difficult. He is surrounded by a remarkable cadre of enablers and apologists who fall for his charm. But I believe it can and must be done for the health of our community.
Thank you,
Chris Skyhawk
Fort Bragg
CORRECTING THE 2024 VOTE GLITCH RECORD
Last week the ICO reported that “the department of elections is one of many in the county that have shown evidence of disorganization at best and mismanagement at worst. During the 2024 presidential primary election, incorrect ballots were mailed to nearly all 52,800 registered voters, forcing the county pay thousands of dollars to have them reprinted and reissued. Another error was made two weeks before the election when about 50 people were sent incorrect ballots because of a redistricting that had not been properly loaded into the voting system.”
The main problem in Mendo is not in the departments. It’s in the CEO’s office and the Board of Supervisors. We disagree that there are “many” departments which have shown disorganization and mismanagement. Perhaps Human Resources, but that’s being run out of the CEO’s office too. The other departments are as well-run as can be expected in a small rural county. It’s unfair to dismiss them all without examples. The example provided is demonstrably wrong.
The statement about the elections department is incorrect. Mendocino County was not “forced to pay thousands of dollars to have ballots reprinted and reissued.” The vendor which made the error absorbed that cost and issued the corrected ballots without cost to the County. The redistricting error was minor and didn’t cost anything and didn’t affect any elections after it was fixed. Neither of these things are “evidence of disorganization or mismanagement.”
Apparently, we were not the only one who noticed the ICO error. According to an email exchange between the ICO reporter, Karen Elowitt and Registrar Katrina Bartolomie:
“Hi Katrina [Bartolomie, County Registrar of Voters],
Apologies for the error in the article last week, regarding who bore the cost of reprinting the ballots last year. I was the writer of that article. We will issue a correction in this week's paper. To clarify, can you tell me the name of the vendor that was responsible for the error, so that we can include that in the correction? If you are able to share the amount of money that it cost them to reprint, we can add that too.
Regards, Karen Elowitt
PS. I may do a separate (but related) article about the problems the county experienced with Integrated Voting Systems, and the errors that company made with other counties' ballots.
Bartolomie: From a year ago? Why? With the state our Country is in, elections doesn’t need any bad exposure that I think you may be dredging up. Our November election went very smoothly, as did our prior elections over the past 20 (or so) years have gone well’ we’ve not had issues like this before.
Elowitt: I know that IVS was decertified as a ballot printer last May, and I will follow up with the Secretary of State to see if the IVS appeal to be reinstated was successful or not.
Bartolomie: You might want to speak with “Rodney Rodriguez” at the Secretary of State office; he is the head of certifying and decertifying election systems and printers.
Elowitt: With this in mind, I have some additional questions for you: Has Mendocino County contracted with a new vendor for ballot printing, and if so, which one?
Bartolomie: Yes, we are using MSI out of Sacramento
Elowitt: Does a new vendor need to be approved by the County Board or any other legislative body locally?
Bartolomie: No, we chose the printer. All election ballot printers need to be certified through the Secretary of State’s office.
Elowitt: Will additional quality control measures be instituted at the county level to preclude another mix-up like the one that happened last year, or are you confident in your current process (as outlined in this press release)?
Bartolomie: This was not our error – we did our regular review process we do before every election. IVS hired a third party to set the image, ballot tint and watermark. That vendor sent the incorrect (test) file to be printed, rather than the correct ballot file. The link is a Q and A that we created to help voters with their questions.
Elowitt: Will a future printer be vetted differently than the previous one, to screen for any possible quality control issues?
Bartolomie: We did ask for extra verification on the printer side for our November ballot, but if one of their people sends the wrong ballot file, like happened to us – we wouldn’t know until they were all sent out.
Elowitt: Do you have any additional information or comments to make about the ballot printing process?
Bartolomie: When I spoke with the Chief Deputy Secretary of State when we discovered this error, she told me, a ballot issue like this this was not a common error, but it definitely wasn’t an uncommon error, this happens from time to time, it was just our turn to have a problem.
Elowitt: Thank you in advance,
Karen Elowitt
Mark Scaramella adds: We think the ICO should also apologize for mischaracterizing the organization and management of the elections office.
LONG JOHN/TUBBY TUNES ON KZYX
I was part of the original crew at KZYX… joined before the Oct 1989 sign on. Sean Donovan had the knowledge to get the station on the air… yes, some folks did not like him because of his brusque manner, and some folks also didn’t like Marco because he was a malcontent… and I’m a radio guy who was in the middle. CPB is a 2 edged sword… yes, they can help pay for equipment, vital what a station is starting, but also has requirements as to paid staff levels. Sean is like a radio gypsy, starting stations (such as KHNS, Haines, AK) and that’s how he makes his living. Nobody was FORCED to join the effort for a radio station… all contributions and efforts were voluntary, and the people knew what the deal was with Donovan heading the effort… no secrets there…
I don’t know how often KZYX polls the community to see what the listeners like & don’t like. I do know there ARE some folks that DO like NPR, and that’s fine, nothing wrong with that. I don’t know how much of the budget is going to buy & outfit the new headquarters & studio in Ukiah (a substantial cost), n or the funding sources. As I understand it the owners of the Philo location want to do something else with that property, and the microwave signal to Cold Springs transmitter site was having vegetative growth impair the link.
I’ve been involved with several radio & tv stations as a DJ, Board member, & Manager… and even built & licensed KPHT Fat 99…mostly non comm, but also commercial stations too.
The recurring issue I see with KZYX is its revolving management staff. It’s rare to see a GM there for more than 2 years, and the infighting between internal factions on the Board, and from outside, like the guy who wanted the FCC to cancel the license.
I’m a big fan of stability, but also see dangers of entrenchment. We’ve seen both amateurs and professional (such as Nicole Sawaya) folks run the station. Some folks think the station should be like a commune, but that again leads to infighting and instability..
Some folks will always love KZYX, some will always want to change it to fit how they think it should be run… the Big Question is: can KZYX survive itself ???
PS, folks might remember my Tubby Tunes radio show on KZYX starting Fall 1989. I’m now self-syndicated on several of Mendocino County’s best non-comm radio stations… More info on my FB page LongJohn95454
MENDOCINO COUNTY WAY BACK WHEN - Joseph G Snell mystery, Willits News, 1970:
SOCIAL WORKER APPRECIATION MONTH: SUPPORTING COMMUNITY
Fort Bragg, CA - March is Social Work Appreciation Month, a time to recognize the dedication and impact of social workers who tirelessly advocate for individuals and families in need. Social work is more than a profession—it is a calling, one that requires compassion, resilience, and an unwavering commitment to positive change.
Entering the field of social work is often a deeply personal decision—one that shapes an individual’s perspective on community and empathy. For Kim Perkins-Thompson, this journey began in her teenage years. Having lost her mother at a young age, Kim, like many teens, struggled and rebelled, eventually requiring intervention.
Growing up with her father and the support of her adoptive mother in Marin County, she then moved to a small community on the Northern California coast. Kim experienced the strength of a close-knit community but also the limitations of available resources. "If there had been preventative services available, it would have helped. However, I had adults in my life who were modeling helping behaviors—both professionals in the child welfare system and those who were volunteers or natural mentors," Kim recalls. It was these individuals who planted the seed for her future in social work.
“After high school, I stepped into adulthood with a strong desire to do this work and help people, but life got in the way,” Kim says. She started a family, got married, and worked a series of entry-level jobs living paycheck to paycheck struggling to get by.
After moving to Fort Bragg with her family, Kim found herself on the receiving end of social services. As her young family relied on supplemental programs such as CalFresh and subsidized housing, her passion for helping others reignited which led her back to school. She secured a position with the Mendocino County Department of Social Services, Family & Children’s Services division, as a social worker assistant, finally stepping into the field she had long aspired to join.
In her 40s, with two children still at home, Kim took a bold step and enrolled in Mendocino College’s Human Services Certificate program. With the support of her husband, she made the long drive to Ukiah three evenings a week. "I thought the certificate would be it for me. I hadn’t grown up with the internet, and the idea of online school was intimidating. Honestly, going back to school at all was daunting!" she admits.
However, after earning her certificate in Human Services and associate degree, a professor, Dan Jenkins, encouraged her to look into the Title IV-E Education Program. Dan’s wife, Alese, had been one of the social workers who had supported Kim in her teens. "Alese was one of the greatest social workers and someone who inspired me to do this type of work," Kim reflects.
With encouragement from Dan, Alese, and her colleagues, Kim pursued her education further. Through the Title IV-E Education Program, she was able to fund both her bachelor's and master's degrees in social work. "If you work at Family & Children’s Services, you can get your education paid for, and you don’t have to search for an internship – it's all available right here."
Kim also found immense support from the coastal Mendocino County community. "I received a scholarship from Soroptimist International of Fort Bragg, presented to me by the daughter of a childhood mentor. As I was nearing graduation from Humboldt State University, I ran into Mary Williams, a local therapist who encouraged me, along with many social workers, therapists, and professors. That’s how small communities work—we lift each other up."
In 2022, Kim graduated with a master’s degree in social work. Today, she is a dedicated social worker in the continuing unit of Family & Children’s Services. In the Fort Bragg office, where all aspects of child welfare are handled by a single unit, she and her colleagues support each other in every way—from emergency response to team lunches.
Kim emphasizes the importance of family reunification whenever possible. "Some people may see it as jumping through hoops or navigating the system, but we don’t think of it that way. Our goal isn’t just to help people; it’s to facilitate meaningful, lasting change—because everyone is capable of it."
Working in a small community means Kim often sees former clients around town. Her education at Humboldt State University, which focused on rural and Indigenous communities, prepared her for this. "Sometimes, I’ll be at a football game, and a kid will run up and jump into my lap. My family knows not to ask questions—they just roll with it," she says with a smile.
She views these interactions as affirmations of her work’s impact. "It’s rewarding to walk through the grocery store and see families I’ve worked with thriving. Some kids don’t even remember me, and that’s a good thing. It means they’re moving forward, living happy, healthy lives."
Social workers are in high demand throughout Mendocino County, California, and across the United States. If you’re interested in pursuing a career in social work, consider Mendocino College’s Human Services degree and certificate program by visiting Mendocino College Human Services Programs.
For more information on the California Title IV-E Education Program, visit UC Davis Human Services Title IV-E Program.
FROM E-BAY, A SEMI LOCAL POSTCARD OF INTEREST: An advertising card from the 1910 Cloverdale Citrus Fair.
CATCH OF THE DAY, Monday, March 31, 2025
MICHAEL ALPERS, 56, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs, controlled substance, probation violation.
CARMEN ARENS, 40, Ukiah. Probation revocation.
AALIYAH CHAUDHARY, 22, Sacramento/Ukiah. Suspended license.
JASON DELCARLO, 41, Fort Bragg. Domestic violence court order violation, failure to appear.
CLAUDIA ESPINOZA-JIMENEZ, 40, Ukiah. DUI.
ALEXXANDER FOUCAULT, 31, Redwood Valley. Domestic violence court order violation.
RICHARD MCCORMICK JR., 37, Ukiah. Criminal threats, controlled substance, parole violation.
BEAU NUNEZ, 39, Fort Bragg. Domestic abuse, stalking and threatening bodily injury, false imprisonment, damaging wireless communications device.
JOHN PALACIOS, 56, Ukiah. Trespassing, resisting, failure to appear.
SEBASTIAN RABANO, 45, Ukiah. Parole violation.
NIA RICH, 21, Ukiah. Assault, vandalism.
BOBBY RILEY JR., 53, Crescent City/Ukiah. Failure to appear.
RODRIGO RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ, 31, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. Failure to appear.
JORGE TAFOYA, 41, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, probation revocation.
GIANTS’ JORDAN HICKS DOMINATES ASTROS over 6 innings in homecoming start
by Shayna Rubin
HOUSTON — As he locked in for his season debut, Jordan Hicks let his eyes wander around Daikin Park.
The park might have a different name than the one he grew up attending — this place was called Minute Maid Park before the name change this year — but he could find all the spots he sat in as a young fan. The Houston native would get to at least 20 games a year and grew up on some of the Astros' most legendary players from Lance Berkman to Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell.
Hicks is entering his seventh year in the big leagues and, through it, pitched in 29 other ballparks before the schedule, rotation and stars aligned for the San Francisco Giants’ starter to get the ball at the ballpark of his boyhood. He savored the moments before he took the mound knowing that at least 80 of his friends and family would be in the stands watching.
“Definitely had a few moments throughout the day,” Hicks said. “Walking on the field for the first time and remembering all the places I sat and all the games I came to as a kid. After the game started I was pretty locked in.”
With the cheers from his people fueling him, Hicks turned out the best start of his Giants career. Painting the zone with his high-heat sinker that topped out at 100 mph and averaged 98 mph, Hicks tossed six shutout innings and allowed one hit in a 7-2 win over the Astros.
Hicks began his start with a tricky 21-pitch first inning mired by an eight-pitch walk to Isaac Paredes, but showed signs of brilliance to come when he struck out Yordan Alvarez looking at a 99 mph sinker that whipped over the plate’s edge. He’d go to that outside edge consistently.
“They were giving me the outside corner,” Hicks said. “So if they’re going to let me have that outside corner, I’m going to try to paint it.”
Perhaps catcher Patrick Bailey’s framing helped Hicks steal a few strikes, but he was precise and consistent on that half of the plate. He struck out the side in the second inning, all looking at dotted sinkers. After Christian Walker’s single in the first inning, Hicks went on to retire the next 14 batters he faced — a streak broken up when Jose Altuve drew a walk with one out in the sixth.
“He was up for this game and you could see it from him right away,” manager Bob Melvin said.
It’s one good start, but a positive sign that Hicks is growing after a bumpy conversion from reliever to starter in 2024. He and the Giants’ coaching staff anticipated he’d burn out and hit a wall last year. He had a solid two months, throwing an average 94 mph on his fastball, ran out of steam and missed most of the second half with shoulder inflammation.
Hicks came to spring training 15 pounds bigger, ditched nicotine and decided he’d get back to throwing the high heat that had made him a bullpen staple in St. Louis. Throwing hard is Hicks’ comfort zone, so the Giants want to get more of these kinds of starts out of him now. If this is a sustainable pace for Hicks is still to be seen — but a concern the Giants are comfortable with.
Meanwhile, the Giants put together a few stolen bases and executed situational hitting to get two early runs on the board. In the second inning, Heliot Ramos beat out a potential double-play ball (he was called out, then ruled safe on review), stole second base and scored on Wilmer Flores’ line drive single to left field.
In the fifth inning, it was Mike Yastrzemski tearing up the base paths. He singled, stole second and advanced to third base on Tyler Fitzgerald’s bunt single. That made it easy for LaMonte Wade Jr. to loft a sacrifice fly, scoring Yastrzemski.
Flores returned with one big swing to put the game away. He hit a three-run home run in the sixth inning, marking his third HR in four games. Now on a healthy knee, he’s already one home run shy of his 2024 home run total.
“Just to see a smile on his face and the type of big hits and production we’re getting out of him right now, it makes our lineup that much better,” Melvin said.
In the eighth, reliever Spencer Bivens hit Cam Smith with a pitch and took a Jose Altuve line drive off the fingertip, which led to Paredes’ two-run double off the left field wall. Matt Chapman got those runs back with a two-run single in the top of the ninth, scoring Jung Hoo Lee and Willy Adames.
(sfchronicle.com)
LOUELLA
by Marcia Ball
Well, why in the devil did you tell Louella
Everything you know?
She's got a great big mouth
And she'll talk about you
Everywhere she goes
She'll talk about your man
She'll talk about his wife
And now they're after you with a butcher's knife
Oh Louella, big-mouth Louella
Well, telegram, telephone
Tell Louella everybody knows
If you tell Louella, you might as well put it on the radio
She'll spread the story around
She's very indiscreet
She'll put your private life out in the street
Oh Louella
Well, I told you once, I told you twice
You wouldn't listen tom me
You got together with big-mouth Louella
And you told her everything
The cat's out of the bag, you spilled the beans
You should have locked your lips
And thrown away the keys
Oh, Louella
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY
First you need to change American attitudes about cars and independence. HOV lanes have become a gigantic failure as government thought they could change the minds of Americans and did not. I would like to see America use a few billion dollars and build MAGLEV trains right down the middle of the Interstate highways. AMTRAK disappears overnight. The biggest problem? Government cannot figure its way out of a wet paper bag. Light rail in bigger cities have pretty much failed as income producers and have become debt producers.
AN UNACCOUNTABLE LEADER
Editor:
All bureaucratic entities, whether governmental or corporate, have some degree of mismanagement and/or waste. They aren’t perfect, and the bigger they are the more difficult monitoring their operations becomes. We have a network of such watchdogs, like the recently fired inspectors general and the Office of Management and Budget, which reports to the president. The primary goal here is stability and efficiency. Without it, any system of governance is in peril.
To have an untrained goon squad like the DOGE, whose employees reportedly are paid up to $200,000, to guide the firing of tens of thousands of government workers without an analysis of resulting impacts is not much different than a rogue billionaire buying a social media giant, then gutting it, only to see it shed half its value and market share. Sound familiar?
Meanwhile, the new regime is not held accountable. Flaunting an unsubstantiated stream of “savings” is what scammers do. How about a new Department of Presidential Excess — or DOPE — since Donald Trump apparently has an open checkbook? It cost taxpayers $1 million for him to attend the Super Bowl and $750,000 to drive a car around the oval at the Indianapolis Speedway. A bumpy ride indeed.
John Brodey
Santa Rosa
“SEE ENOUGH and write it down, I tell myself, and then some morning when the world seems drained of wonder, some day when I am only going through the motions of doing what I am supposed to do on that bankrupt morning I will simply open my notebook and there it will all be, a forgotten account with accumulated interest, paid passage back to the world out there.”
Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem
WORRIED ABOUT SOCIAL SECURITY CHANGES? THERE’S ONE KEY THING TO DO NOW AMID CONFUSION.
by Aiden Vaziri
The Social Security Administration recently announced significant changes to how it handles identity verification for individuals applying for benefits.
These changes, framed as a way to combat suspected fraud under the Trump administration, have raised concerns, particularly among beneficiaries without internet access or those who struggle with technology.
The confusion escalated on Wednesday when the SSA reversed its decision to cut phone services for some elderly and disabled Americans after facing backlash from advocates.
Here’s a breakdown of the changes and how they may affect you.
What’s Changing?
Starting April 14 (previously scheduled for Monday, March 31), the SSA will limit phone services for certain transactions.
Many applications, including those for retirement or survivor benefits, will require online or in-person identity verification. Those who cannot access the internet or set up online accounts will need to visit a Social Security office.
Although the SSA initially planned for these changes to apply universally, they backtracked after widespread pushback.
“We have listened to our customers, Congress, advocates, and others, and we are updating our policy to provide better customer service to the country’s most vulnerable populations,” said Leland Dudek, the acting Social Security commissioner, in a statement.
The new rules will only apply to survivor, retirement and auxiliary benefits, leaving disability and Medicare claims unaffected.
Why Are People Concerned?
Last week, the SSA revealed plans to mandate in-person identity verification for millions of recipients, alongside the closure of 47 field offices across 18 states.
This would have particularly impacted those needing to verify their bank details and families with children receiving benefits who cannot verify certain information online.
Critics argue that these changes create unnecessary barriers for vulnerable populations. Many recipients lack the technological skills or equipment to navigate the online system, while others face significant transportation challenges when visiting offices in person.
A memo from the SSA estimated that between 75,000 and 85,000 additional people would need to visit field offices each week, further burdening an already strained staff.
“Ending phone service and requiring in-person office visits would have a very serious impact on older Americans everywhere,” Nancy LeaMond, AARP’s chief advocacy and engagement officer, said in a statement Wednesday. “Our members nationwide have told us this change would require hundreds of miles and hours of travel merely to fill out paperwork. Merely delaying the implementation of this change is not enough.”
About 72.5 million people, including retirees and children, rely on Social Security benefits.
What Should You Do Right Now?
To prepare for the upcoming changes, create a free and secure My Social Security account.
The online portal allows you to request a replacement Social Security card, check application statuses, estimate future benefits, and manage your current benefits.
You can also set up online notices to replace paper mail and receive text or email alerts when new notices are available. The portal allows you to sign up for direct deposit, update your address and print benefit letters.
Creating your account today ensures you can handle many tasks online without needing to visit an office.
What’s Next?
The SSA has pledged to continue evaluating the situation, and some advocates hope for further adjustments. In the meantime, Social Security recipients are encouraged to familiarize themselves with online tools or plan visits to local offices.
For those with limited mobility or no internet access, these changes may present additional challenges, but with preparation, it’s still possible to manage benefits effectively.
For more information, visit the SSA’s official website or call their hotline at 800-772-1213.
(SF Chronicle)
CALIFORNIA-MEXICO BORDER, ONCE OVERWHELMED, NOW NEARLY EMPTY
by Andrea Castillo
When the humanitarian aid workers decided to dismantle their elaborate tented setup — erected right up against the border wall — they hadn't seen migrants for a month.
A year earlier, when historic numbers of migrants were arriving at the border, the American Friends Service Committee, a national Quaker-founded human rights organization, came to their aid. Eventually the group received enough donations to erect three canopies, where it stored food, clothing and medical supplies.
But migrant crossings have slowed to a near halt, bringing a striking change to the landscape along the southernmost stretch of California.
Shelters that once received migrants have closed, makeshift camps where migrants waited for processing are barren, and nonprofits have begun shifting their services to established immigrants in the U.S. who are facing deportation, or migrants stuck in southern Mexico.
Meanwhile, the Border Patrol, with the assistance of 750 U.S. military troops, has reinforced six miles of the border wall with concertina wire.
On a recent day at the aid station erected by the Service Committee a few miles west of the San Ysidro border crossing, just one mostly empty canopy remained. Three aid workers wearing blue surgical gloves were packing up boxes labeled "kids/hydration," "tea and hot coco" and "small sweater." There was no need for them now.
Border Patrol agents in the San Diego sector are now making about 30 to 40 arrests per day, according to the agency. That's down from more than 1,200 per day during the height of migrant arrivals to the region in April.
Adriana Jasso, who coordinates the U.S.-Mexico program for the Service Committee, recalled that hectic time and the group's aid effort. "This was the first time we took on this level of providing humanitarian aid," Jasso said.
But these days, she said, "it's the closing of an experience — for now. Because life can be unpredictable."
In May 2023, the Biden administration ended a pandemic-era policy under which migrants were denied the right to seek asylum and were rapidly returned to Mexico. In the lead-up to the policy change, migrants descended on the border by the thousands.
Two parallel fences make up much of the border barrier near San Diego. Asylum seekers began scaling the fence closest to Mexico and handing themselves over to Border Patrol agents, who would tell them to wait there between both fences for processing.
Days often passed before agents returned to the area, known as Whiskey 8. In the meantime, Jasso and her colleagues doled out hot instant soup, fresh fruit and backpacks through the slots in the fence.
The last time Jasso saw any migrants there was Feb. 15 — a 20-person group made up mostly of men from India and China.
Then a storm came in, dislodging two of the canopies. Jasso and her team took that as a sign to tear the rest of it down. The stench of the contaminated Tijuana River wafted in the morning air as Jasso hauled out a plastic shelving unit from the canopy.
Inside the canopy, one of the last remaining items was a stuffed Minnie Mouse, her bubblegum pink shoes shaded gray with dirt. A young girl had handed it to Jasso through the fence.
"Border Patrol refused to let her take it," Jasso said. "I promised her I would take care of it and that somebody would love it as she did."
Just as Jasso was packing up at Whiskey 8, Border Patrol held a news conference a few miles away.
Parked against the border wall, east of the San Ysidro border crossing, a Border Patrol SUV and a green Humvee served as a backdrop to illustrate the partnership between the departments of Homeland Security and Defense.
A gate in the barrier opened and Border Patrol, Marines and Army officials showed reporters how both fences were now sheathed in concertina wire.
Loud music could be heard from Tijuana, where construction workers were building an elevated highway right up against the wall separating Mexico from the U.S.
Troops created an "obstacle design" by welding metal rods to the top of the fence, pointing toward Mexico, and attaching more layers of wire over that.
Jeffrey Stalnaker, acting chief patrol agent of the San Diego sector, said the additional wire, installed since troops arrived on Jan. 23, has slowed illegal entries.
Stalnaker said federal prosecutors in San Diego had also accepted more than 1,000 border-related criminal cases this fiscal year. And following Trump's tariff threats, Mexico vowed to send 10,000 National Guard troops to its northern border. Those troops now meet with U.S. agents a few times a week and conduct synchronous patrols on their respective sides of the border, Stalnaker said.
"What we see behind us here today is the result of a true whole-of-government effort, from the Marines laying down miles of concertina wire along the border infrastructure to the soldiers manning our scope trucks and remote video surveillance cameras," he said.
Only Border Patrol agents can arrest migrants entering the country illegally, but Stalnaker said that using military personnel to detect migrants has freed agents to spend more time in the field.
Last April, San Diego became the top region along the border for migrant arrivals for the first time in decades. Stalnaker said there's been a 70% decrease in migrant arrests so far this fiscal year, compared to the same period last year.
"To say there has been a dramatic change would be an understatement," he said.
But Stalker noted that Border Patrol expects an increase in attempts by migrants to enter California by boat "as we continue to lock down the border here and secure it."
Farther east, Jacumba Hot Springs was once the site of additional open-air camps, where hundreds of migrants slept on plastic tarps (or in tents, if they were lucky) and huddled around campfires fueled by brush to stay warm.
Sam Schultz, a retired international relief worker who has lived near Jacumba for nine years, once made daily deliveries of water, hot meals and blankets to migrants there. When the camps popped up a few miles from his home, he felt compelled to help.
The tents that once covered a camp site just off Old Highway 80 are gone. Schultz's son recently hauled them away because they're no longer needed.
Schultz still visits three sites a few times a week to check if water left out for migrants needs replenishing.
"The water hasn't been touched," he said.
Legal aid and humanitarian organizations that helped migrants have shifted their operations away from the border.
Immigrant Defenders Law Center, headquartered in Los Angeles, served migrants who were bused there from the border by the Texas governor; the group also provided legal help to those waiting in Tijuana for appointments with Customs and Border Protection. After his inauguration, President Trump quickly canceled existing appointments and ended use of a phone application used by the Biden administration to schedule them.
Lindsay Toczylowski, the law center's co-founder and CEO, said that since arrests by immigration agents have increased around Los Angeles, the organization has begun to focus on defending recently detained immigrants from deportation.
Erika Pinheiro, executive director of Al Otro Lado, said many of those deported to Mexico are being sent farther south, so there aren't as many people stuck in Tijuana. She said the organization has brought staff to Mexico City and to Tapachula, which borders Guatemala.
Pinheiro said the San Ysidro-based organization recently scaled up a project supporting non-Spanish-speaking migrants in Mexico — refugees who now cannot seek asylum in the U.S. but also can't safely return to their country of origin.
The American Friends Service Committee has also shifted its work to focus on offering "know your rights" presentations at schools, churches and community centers.
But back at Whiskey 8, Jasso said the organization will continue offering direct humanitarian aid to migrants moving forward.
She recalled learning about three migrants who died earlier this month in the Otay Mountain wilderness after calling for help during a storm that brought near-freezing temperatures to the harsh terrain.
With migrants now unable to seek legal ways of entering the U.S. through the asylum process, advocates anticipate that more will begin to risk their lives by attempting to enter illegally through more remote and dangerous terrain. Some desperate enough might even try to jump over all the newly installed concertina wire.
(LA Times)
WILLIAM FAULKNER’s tenure as postmaster at the University of Mississippi offers a glimpse into his unconventional character. Appointed in 1921, Faulkner found the job “tedious, boring, and uninspiring.” He often opened and closed the post office at his discretion, read patrons’ magazines, and discarded mail he deemed unimportant. Additionally, he spent considerable time writing and playing cards in the back office while patrons waited.
His dissatisfaction with the position culminated in his resignation in 1924, during which he humorously wrote, “I will be damned if I propose to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp.”
TORPEDO BATS
Early in the 2023 season, Aaron Leanhardt started asking New York Yankees hitters what they needed to perform better. He was a minor league hitting coordinator for the team, and with league-wide batting average the previous year at its lowest point in more than a half-century, Leanhardt approached that spring with a specific question: How, in an era ruled by pitching, could offense keep up?
"Players were frustrated by the fact that pitching had gotten so good," Leanhardt said.
An MIT-educated physics professor at the University of Michigan for seven years, Leanhardt left academia for athletics specifically to solve these sorts of problems. And as he spoke with more players, the framework of a solution began to reveal itself. With strikeouts at an all-time high, hitters wanted to counter that by making more contact. And the easiest way to do so, Leanhardt surmised, was to increase the size of the barrel on their bat.
Elongating the barrel -- the fat part of the bat that generates the hardest and most contact -- sounded great in theory. Doing so in practice, though, would increase the weight of the bat and slow down swing speed, negating the gains a larger sweet spot would provide.
Leanhardt started to consider the problem in a different way. Imagine, he told players, every bat has a wood budget -- a specific amount of weight (usually 31 or 32 ounces) to be distributed over a specific length. How could they invest a disproportionate amount of that budget on the barrel without throwing off the remainder of the implement?
The answer led to what could be the most consequential development in bat technology since a generation ago when players forsook ash bats for maple. The creation of the bowling pin bat (also known as the torpedo bat) optimizes the most important tool in baseball by redistributing weight from the end of the bat toward the area 6 to 7 inches below its tip, where major league players typically strike the ball. Doing so takes an apparatus that for generations has looked the same and gives it a fun-house-mirror makeover, with the fat part of the bat more toward the handle and the end tapering toward a smaller diameter, like a bowling pin.
The bat had its big debut over the weekend, as the Yankees tied a major league record with 15 home runs over their first three games. Nine of those came from five Yankees who adopted the bowling pin style: Jazz Chisholm Jr. (three), Anthony Volpe (two), Austin Wells (two), Cody Bellinger (one) and Paul Goldschmidt (one). The hullaballoo over the bats started almost immediately after Yankees announcer Michael Kay noted their shape on the broadcast, and by the end of the weekend players around the league were inquiring to bat manufacturers about getting their hands on one.
The Yankees' barrage of long balls permeated beyond players' fascination and into the zeitgeist. Some fans and even opposing players wailed fruitlessly about the legality of the bats -- Brewers reliever Trevor Megill called the bats "like something used in slow-pitch softball" after watching his teammates surrender home run after home run over the weekend. But the bats abide by Major League Baseball's collectively bargained bat specifications for shape (round and smooth), barrel size (no larger than 2.61 inches in diameter) and length (a maximum of 42 inches). Most also didn't realize that the bowling pin bat was used for some of the most consequential hits of 2024 thanks to one of its earliest adaptors.
Yankees slugger Giancarlo Stanton is owed as much credit as any player for the bowling pin revolution. Leanhardt's logic behind the bat's geometry made sense to Stanton, whose average bat velocity of 81.2 mph last year was nearly 3 mph ahead of the second-fastest swinger and more than 9 mph quicker than the average MLB swing. Even with outlier metrics, Stanton gladly embraced a bat that could make his dangerous swing even better -- and used it while pummeling seven home runs in 14 postseason games.
(espn.com)
“She was so magnetic, so strong. She tested me, but she tested herself. She was brutal in pursuit of truth, of good, of the absolute most she could do. We talked a few times, alone and at length: She found life simple on some levels, as in we get what we pursue. Her stardom and her power did not surprise her, because she wanted them and she pursued them. She was not as lucky in love, so to speak, and she claimed that was the great mystery — the mixing of people. That, she said, was what created religion and war and confusion.”
— Sidney Lumet on Anna Magnani/Interview with James Grissom
EVEN ROGAN'S DISGUSTED:
Joe Rogan has sensationally split with Trump on his key mass migration policy, slamming the possibility that innocent people could be languishing in a 'hell on earth' prison due to an administration error.
The Trump administration's decision to invoke the wartime Alien Enemies Act in order to send hundreds of suspected gang members to a notorious El Salvadorian prison has sparked lawsuits and protests.
But Rogan's condemnation of the decision amid reports innocent civilians were wrongly mixed up with criminals could be the biggest blow to the administration yet.
'It's horrific,' he said.
'You got to get scared that people who are not criminals are getting, like, lassoed up and deported and sent to, like, El Salvador prisons.
'This is kind of crazy that that could be possible. That's horrific. And that's, again, that's bad for the cause.
'The cause is: Let's get the gang members out. Everybody agrees. But let's not, innocent gay hairdressers, get lumped up with the gangs.'
Rogan's wildly successful podcast is credited with attracting young male voters to the MAGA movement, after Trump appeared in an episode during his presidential election campaign.
— DailyMail.uk
CONVERGENCE CALLING
by James Kunstler
“The current conflict between Europe and America is not reducible towards contrasting approaches towards Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.” —Frank Furedi on Substack
“Contrary to Western media's trash talk, Russian military has not been degraded. If anything, it has been significantly upgraded.” —Alex Krainer
You’re going to see what a truly consequential span of weeks, looks like, as Western Civ goes into full churn on April’s doorstep. Remember, TS Eliot called it the “cruelest month.” Too many uncomfortable things are converging, too many ongoing operations are unwinding, too many tensions are breaking.
The conclusion of “Joe Biden’s” Ukraine War fiasco looms. You can tell because The New York Times published a gigantic piece Sunday detailing how the Pentagon and the CIA actually ran all of Ukraine’s tactical operations out of a base in Wiesbaden, Germany — after building a colossal Ukraine war machine post our 2014 color revolution in Kiev. Since the very start of the hot war in 2022, we did all the targeting for the weapons we gave them and planned their every move. What a surprise! (Not.)
The motive behind all that, as conceived by US neo-cons and NATO neo-morons, was to “weaken” Russia, bust it up, and seize its resources. All the sanctions piled on only induced Russia into an import-replacement campaign that actually strengthened its economy, while the war led to a revolution in Russian war-fighting tactics and advanced weaponry. Now, the whole thing is ending in Ukraine’s defeat and the West’s humiliation.
The Times could have published this in 2023-24, but it would have been a major embarrassment for “Joe Biden” and his shadow managers moving into the election. They put it out just now because the jig is up and the paper desperately needs to pretend that they it’s ahead of events to preserve the last shreds of its credibility.
Mr. Trump, the uber-realist, knows that the Russians are going to roll up in Ukraine this spring and there is increasingly not much that can be done about that, except to try to put the best face on it — which is, that it wasn’t his war. As long as the coke freak Zelensky remains in charge, Ukraine will be negotiation-unworthy, as the Russian phrase goes. So, US-Russia peace talks were largely diplomatic showbiz. Both Putin and Mr. Trump were painfully aware of this, and hence, Mr. Trump’s latest performative bluster about “more sanctions” will probably not amount to anything.
And also hence, the synchronized idiocy on display in France, Germany, and the UK. They were all-in on the neo-con scheme that is now falling apart and its failure has driven them plumb crazy. As the US drops out of the stupid proxy war, they declare their intention to take it from here and go beat-up Russia. Their war-drums are teaspoons beating on so many quiches.
Soon-to-be chancellor Friedrich Merz proposes an 800-billion-Euro debt spree to finance the re-arming of Germany, which, just now, is utterly incapable of war. He is insane. German industry is collapsing from a lack of affordable natural gas (as arranged by “Joe Biden” blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines, danke schön). Turning Volkswagen factories to missile production will not help the German people one bit. It probably will remind them about the Weimar hyper-inflation, though.
Macron pledges to put French boots on the ground in Ukraine. Ain’t gonna happen. Today, his stooge judiciary found political rival Marine LePen guilty of a Mickey Mouse offense in order to bar her from running against him in the next election. Ain’t gonna work. He will provoke the biggest national uprising since the Bastille. His government will be too busy putting down French Revolution 2.0 to play war games in history’s graveyard of armies. Maybe he’ll try nukes. I’m sure that’ll work — if you’re eager to see Russian hypersonic “hazelnuts” rain down on the Île-de-France.
And then, there is the amazing idiot PM Keir Starmer in the UK, calling on his “coalition of the willing” to step up and intervene in the lost cause that is Ukraine. How many hands went up on that call? For practical purposes, the Brits have no war-fighting capacity whatsoever, and no resources for generating such capacity. And, anyway, they are facing some dreadful combo of a civil war / internal jihad against their own indigenous population, plus an economic collapse cherry-on-top.
In short, Europe has so many incipient existential problems that the whole story is about to shift its focus from the already-sealed fate of Ukraine to the very dark prospects for the core nations of Old-World Western Civ. I wouldn’t plan a vacation there this year.
Meanwhile, expect a pile-up of consequence in our own sore-beset USA in the upcoming cruelest month. Today, the DOGE team visits the CIA. It could spell an end to decades of mad frolics emanating from that gigantic black box of black ops. Director John Ratcliffe has cordially invited Mr. Musk’s technicians and he is probably eager to discover exactly what mischief has been hidden from him by the immense, secretive, foul bureaucracy he lately assumed command over.
The Epstein materials recently recovered out of the FBI’s rogue New York offices of the agency are considered so critical by Director Patel that he assigned 1000 agents to review and process the docs full-time. That includes redacting names of many additional sex-trafficked children. Expect to see the release of a lot of that in the next thirty days with dire reverberations in the celebrity realms of politics, finance, and showbiz.
JudgeGate is moving toward its climax at the same time. Tuesday this week, Rep. Jim Jordan’s House Judiciary Committee will hold hearings on the DC circuit’s lawfare offensive against Mr. Trumps executive authority. It would be nice hear from DC district judges James Boasberg, Amy Berman Jackson, Tanya Chutkan, Beryl Howell, and Amir Ali, who have been zealously active in what looks like a coordinated lawfare campaign against the chief executive. Norm Eisen is not a judge, but he is the central conductor of the lawfare orchestra, and he has a bit of ‘splainin’ to do. One can even imagine something like a RICO referral emerge from that rather brazen operation. Anyway, the whole matter is going to land in the Supreme Court before April is out.
Also expect a lot of movement in the Covid-19 story coming out of the newly-reorganized CDC, NIH, FDA, NIAID, and other corners of the public health bureaucracy. Evidence is piling up fast of tragic and awful blowback from the Covid vaccine. There is too much to be ignored any longer and momentous decisions must follow, starting with taking the Pfizer and Moderna shots off-line. The entire regime of data collection, processing, and public release is about to change and the nation will be shocked by what gets disclosed.
Then there are the financial markets. They do not like the kind of shifts in public perception that return of consequence must bring. Gold alone is sending out a very vivid distress signal for everything else pretending to be an asset or a form of collateral. The equity markets have been wobbling for weeks. Look out below as the Easter eggs roll.
LEAD STORIES, TUESDAY'S NYT
What to Watch in Today’s Big Elections in Wisconsin and Florida
U.S. Deports More Detainees to El Salvador, Calling Them ‘Violent Criminals’
Pentagon Eliminates Lower Fitness Standards for Women in Combat Roles
What Ivermectin Can (and Can’t) Do
The Revolving Restaurant Is Back Again (and Again)
TRUMP EXECUTIVE ORDER ATTEMPTS TO WHITEWASH AMERICAN HISTORY BY ERASING UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS
by Dan Bacher
President Trump’s latest Executive Order, “Restoring Truth And Sanity To American History,” does the very opposite.
The order reeks of the erasure of uncomfortable history that authoritarian political regimes have tried to achieve for centuries. The order in fact negates both truth and sanity, displaying a complete lack of knowledge about history that perpetuates racism, sexism and white supremacy.
You can expect to watch the history of labor, the anti-slavery and civil rights movements, Native American genocide, segregation, U.S. imperialism, anti war movement, women’s movement, Chicano movement, incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War 2 and other uncomfortable “politically incorrect” histories be removed or covered up if the Trump regime doesn’t encounter fierce resistance.
THE VAST GAZA DEATH UNDERCOUNT
by Ralph Nader
The vast undercount of Israeli-caused deaths in Gaza is regularly reported as 50,000. The actual toll from violent military action and the indirect deaths (stemming from infectious disease, epidemics, untreated chronic illness, untreated serious wounds, and starvation) is well over 400,000 and growing by the day.
No crowded enclave like Gaza – the geographical size of Philadelphia – with 2.3 million people under a long-term siege blocking essentials can withstand over 115 thousand tons of bombs, plus artillery, grenades, and snipers targeting civilians, with uncontrollable fires everywhere. How could 97.5% of its inhabitants survive? Tens of thousands of Palestinian children, women, and men lie under the rubble. Tens of thousands of diabetics and cancer victims have no medicine. Five thousand babies a month are born into the rubble.
As declared by the Israeli war ministries, “no food, water, medicine, electricity and fuel,” the words of genocide or mass murder of utterly defenseless civilians who had nothing to do with October 7, 2023 — hikes the ratio of “indirect deaths” to the higher range of three to fifteen-fold by the Geneva Declaration Secretariat’s review of prior conflicts.
In my lengthy article, published in the Capitol Hill Citizen, (August/September 2024 issue) I noted that the total ban by Netanyahu of foreign and Israeli reporters from entering the killing fields of Gaza allows the undercount by Hamas to be the anchor on the lethal truth. Hamas counts only names of the deceased given by hospitals and mortuaries, which were largely destroyed many months ago. Hamas, like Netanyahu, favors an undercount for obviously different reasons – the former to lessen the ire of its people for not protecting them and the latter to diminish international sanctions and condemnation.
It is not as if there are no higher estimates by credible groups. UN agencies, international aid groups, and specialists in disaster casualties at places like Brown University and the University of Edinburgh, and reports in the prestigious medical journal LANCETall point to a major undercount. They cite minimum reasonable estimates. But the mass media just keeps citing the Hamas undercount, awaiting some magical number that meets an impossible level of precision.
Interestingly, the mass media has no problem reporting estimates of deaths under the Syrian Assad dictatorship, during the Sudanese conflict, or the Russian war on Ukraine. It seems only the Palestinians are not allowed to live by the Israeli/U.S. terrorist regimes and are not told how many of them are being annihilated. Imagine, whole extended families in apartment buildings and tents.
More curious is why the so-called Left, in their denunciations, are still clinging to the Hamas figure. A famous commentator from Haaretz and a civic leader in the U.S. gave me the same answer. The Hamas figures are horrific enough!
Can you imagine Israeli governments undercounting their fatalities by nearly 90%?
More curious is what is keeping the few strong defenders of Palestinian survival in Congress from asking the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress to come up with a minimum accurate figure from the available empirical and clinical evidence?
What kept the majority of Democrats in the Senate under Biden from subpoenaing the evidence accumulated by the State Department on the death/injury count? The State Department has been resisting our Freedom of Information request since May 23, 2024. What about tapping into the work of sixteen Israeli human rights groups, including the military reservist groups like “Breaking the Silence”?
Numbers matter in wars and natural disasters. They matter in the intensity behind the civic, political, and diplomatic efforts worldwide to stop the killing, secure a permanent ceasefire, let in the thousands of trucks bearing humanitarian aid (food, water, medicine, fuel, and other essentials), and enter into serious peace negotiations.
Instead, Trump is backing the expulsion of the Palestinian survivors, supporting the annexation of the West Bank, and leaving devastated Gaza as a real estate opportunity for Israeli and American developers.
This attitude is what Jim Zogby (founder of the Arab-American Institute) exposed when years ago he delivered a lecture on “The Other Anti-Semitism” before an Israeli University audience. The other antisemitism, exhibited by Biden and Trump, is backed by F-16s and other weapons of mass destruction that have killed over 100,000 children along with their mothers, fathers, grandmothers, and grandfathers.
A deep racism backed by a genocidal delivery system day after day is funded by American tax dollars delivered by a homicidal Congress. A Congress that has refused, since 1948, testimony by leading Israeli and Palestinian peace advocates before House and Senate Committees to provide justice for the Palestinian people.
"SO IT'S PLAIN AS DAY that there’s absolutely no crime Israel could possibly commit that Trump’s State Department wouldn’t defend. Netanyahu could live stream himself kicking a baby Palestinian off a cliff and telling the camera he did it because he wants to commit genocide, and the next day Tammy Bruce would respond to all questions about the incident by yelling the word “Hamas!” with her fingers in her ears.
Bruce has a much easier job than her predecessor Matthew Miller, who under Biden was obligated to facilitate the Democratic Party’s role as the nice guy face of the US empire. When the press would ask Miller about Israeli atrocities, he’d have to put on a whole show about how the Biden administration is in conversation with Israel and waiting for more information about these very serious allegations, all while fighting to keep his notorious smirk off his face.
To be clear, these two positions are not meaningfully different from one another. Pretending to care about very serious atrocity allegations while continuing to sponsor those atrocities is exactly the same as not pretending to care about very serious atrocity allegations while continuing to sponsor those atrocities. One is a pile of dead children with a smiley face sticker on it, the other is a pile of dead children with a frowny face sticker on it. The children are just as dead either way.
And you really couldn’t ask for a better illustration of the difference between Democrats and Republicans than this. The Democrats are just the polite, photogenic face of the bloodthirsty US empire, while the Republicans are the empire unmasked. The Democrats commit genocide and ethnic cleansing while denying they’re committing genocide and ethnic cleansing, while Republicans commit genocide and ethnic cleansing without bothering to disguise what they’re doing as something else. One’s prettier, one’s uglier. That’s the only difference."
FROM JFK TO DONALD TRUMP: HOW THE USA BECAME WEDDED TO ZIONIST ISRAEL
by Rick Sterling, Transcend Media Service
There are many contrasts between the 35th president, John F. Kennedy, and the 45th and 47th president, Donald J. Trump. One extreme example is regarding U.S. policy toward Israel.
JFK and Israel/Palestine
Unknown to many people today, JFK supported Palestinian rights and sought a sustainable peace in the region.
In 1960, when JFK was campaigning to be president, he spoke at the convention of the Zionists of America. In his speech, Kennedy was complimentary about Israel but frankly said,
“I cannot believe that Israel has any real desire to remain indefinitely a garrison state surrounded by fear and hate.”
That warning, issued when Israel had only existed for 12 years, was ignored.
Kennedy did not just issue warnings. To the chagrin of the Israelis, JFK established friendly relations with Egypt’s President Nasser. The Kennedy administration provided loans and aid to Egypt.
The JFK administration supported UN resolution 194 which called for the right of return for Palestinian refugees driven out of their homeland. Although Israel committed to abide by UN resolutions when it was admitted to the United Nations in 1949, the Israelis reneged on this commitment and were hostile to the resolution. The day before JFK was assassinated, the New York Times reported (p 19), “Israel Dissents as U.N. Group Backs U.S. on Arab Refugees” and “U.S. Stand Angers Israel.” The second item begins, “Premier Levi Eshkol expressed extreme distaste today for the United States’ position in the Palestinian-refugee debate.”
John Kennedy’s brother Robert was Attorney General and headed the Department of Justice. For two years, up until the end of 1963, the DOJ made increasingly strict demands that the American Zionist Council (AZC) register as agents of a foreign country. In response, the AZC stalled, delayed, and created the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
The most intense disagreement between Tel Aviv and Washington was regarding the nuclear site under construction at Dimona. JFK was intent on stopping the expansion of countries which possessed nuclear weapons. Although Israeli Prime Minister Ben-Gurion said the nuclear site was for peaceful purposes, JFK insisted that the US needed to inspect and confirm this. The inspection deadline was December 1963.
In each of these four areas of contention, US policy changed dramatically after JFK was assassinated and Lyndon Johnson became president. Dimona was never properly inspected, and LBJ did not object to Israeli acquisition of nuclear weapons. The demand that the American Zionist Council register as an agent of a foreign country was dropped. Over time, the US withdrew their support of UN resolution 194, and LBJ was hostile to Nasser and ended US loans and support. Details of this process are described in this article and this book.
Israel Policy since JFK and Today
With few exceptions, US policy has been subservient to Israel’s wants ever since JFK. An extreme low point was the treachery of President Johnson in covering up the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty during the June 1967 “Six Day War”. News about the Israeli killing and injuring of over 200 US sailors was suppressed for decades.
Now we are in a new extreme low point. In his first presidency, Trump flouted international law and longstanding US policy by moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The significant move was driven by mega donor Sheldon Adelson who wanted it announced on Trump’s first day in office. Another prime concern of Adelson was to torpedo the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran. Trump responded as expected and withdrew the US from the agreement, effectively killing it.
Now President Trump’s administration is trampling on the right to free speech and aggressively suppressing critics of Israel. This repression on behalf of Israel was taking place under Biden but has escalated dramatically. Authorities have imprisoned a perfectly legal resident, Mahmoud Khalil. They have forced Columbia University to punish students without just cause and to impose obvious restrictions and prohibitions on speech and opinion. Why did they do this? It appears to follow the wishes of megadonor Miriam Adelson. She is president and chief funder of the Maccabee Task Force, which has campaigned on these issues for months.
As reported at Responsible Statecraft, “Adelson’s support for the administration’s campaign to stifle criticism of Israel on college campuses isn’t a new focus but her alignment with the levers of state powers to implement her vision are unprecedented. In fact, tax documents reveal that she is directly overseeing a social media campaign targeting Khalil and Columbia University.”
In addition to suppressing free speech and punishing critics of Israel, the Trump administration has bombed and attacked They are doing this despite the fact that Yemen did NOT threaten U.S. ships in the region. The Houthi government only threatened Israeli ships after Israel unilaterally broke the ceasefire and prevented food and other necessary humanitarian aid into Gaza. Israel, with U.S. support, is blatantly defying the International Court of Justice which ordered Israel to “Maintain open the Rafah crossing for unhindered provision at scale of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance” and “Immediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah Governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” Israel is in violation of this order and the US is complicit by providing most of the weapons.
President Trump, who campaigned and won election on the pledge to STOP needless wars, has started a new war with Yemen which is of no benefit to the US but serves the interests of Netanyahu’s Israel. Will he authorize attacks on Iran, in further subservience to Bibi?
Corruption of the Political Process
When Jewish donors to JFK’s 1960 campaign suggested they should determine his Mideast policy, JFK was shocked and definitively said NO. As reported by Seymour Hersh in “The Samson Option”, Kennedy talked with a friend who described what happened:
“As an American citizen he (JFK) was outraged to have a zionist group come to him and say, â˜We know your campaign is in trouble. We’re willing to pay your bills if you’ll let us have control of your Middle East policy.'“
At that time, JFK vowed to change the US electoral system to prevent this corruption if he got elected. As president, he tried,but faced big hurdles and did not succeed.
Ever since JFK’s death, pro-Israel forces have had undue influence on U.S. policy. If the International Court of Justice decides that Israel is committing genocide, as seems likely, the U.S. will be the primary collaborator in the war crimes. The US is increasingly alone in supporting the zionist state as it practices apartheid within Israel, theft of land in the West Bank, and massacres in Gaza including attacks on hospitals, schools, and UN facilities. Fourteen countries now support South Africa’s charges of genocide against Israel.
Under Democratic President Joe Biden, U.S. policy to Israel was unwaveringly obsequious. Despite 70% of Democratic Party voters wanting the U.S. to get a ceasefire in Gaza, the Biden/Blinken team refused to do this. The Democratic Party leaders zionist ideology combined with zionist financial influence superseded their party members’ wishes. Netanyahu ignored Biden’s “red lines” with impunity.
Republican President Trump has taken this to a new level. His zionist donors determine his Israel policy. To protect Israel, Trump issued an executive order which weaponizes antisemitism. Universities are being compelled to implement a new definition of antisemitism which conflates criticism of Israel with ethnic discrimination. Trump’s campaign to “Make America Great Again” has evolved into “Miriam Adelson Gets All”.
It is a remarkable descent from the days when JFK did what was best for the U.S. as well as being best for Palestinians and non-zionist Jews.
FROM “THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE WAR IN UKRAINE” IN THE NEW YORK TIMES:
At a hastily arranged meeting on the Polish border, General Zaluzhny admitted to Generals Cavoli and Aguto that the Ukrainians had in fact decided to mount assaults in three directions at once.
“That’s not the plan!” General Cavoli cried…
Fifteen months into the war, it had all come to this tipping point.
“We should have walked away,” said a senior American official.
But they would not.
When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the White House nearly a month ago, the New York Times packed its pages with stories denouncing Donald Trump and J.D. Vance for abandoning Ukraine, and the impolitic “dressing down” of a friendly foreign leader. The Times like most Western news outlets for years suggested that anything short of a full-throated expression of support for war was a betrayal of the “democratic world order” that would lead to instant battlefield deaths.
Now that the war appears lost, and newspapers abroad (conspicuously, not here) are full of news about an apparent bombing of Vladimir Putin’s motorcade, and the future of NATO hangs by a thread, the Times has run a 13,000-word “Secret History” that shows the same U.S. officials who denounced Trump and American voters for saying it out loud long ago concluded that they, too, should probably “walk away.”
The piece is also an extraordinarily comprehensive betrayal of Zelensky and Ukraine, exponentially worse than the “dressing down” by Trump. Authored by longtime veteran of controversial intel pieces Adam Entous, it’s sourced to 300 American and European officials who seem to be responding to their apparent sidelining via a shameless tantrum, exhibiting behavior that in the field would get military men shot. Not only do they play kiss and tell with a trove of operational secrets, they use the Times to deflect blame from their own failures onto erstwhile Slavic partners, cast as ignorant savages who snatched defeat from the jaws of America-designed victory. It’s as morally abhorrent a piece of ass-covering ever as I’ve seen in print, and that somehow is not its worst quality.
The people who quarterbacked the NATO side of the Ukraine war are so pleased with themselves, they can’t keep from boasting about things that will make the average American want to pitchfork the lot of them. Entous describes a tale told “through a secret keyhole” that reveals how America was “woven into the war far more intimately and broadly than previously understood.” (Translation: it was hidden from us.) Sources not only make it clear that the public was lied to on a continuous basis from the outset of the conflict, they describe how we were lied to, apparently thinking the methods clever. Some are small semantic gambits the idiots wrongly believe exculpated their actions, but the main revelation involves one gigantic, inexcusable deception. From Joe Biden down, they all lied about the risk of World War III.
They risked our lives and our children’s lives, knowingly, repeatedly, and for the worst possible reason: politics. Afraid to admit a mistake, they planned individual excuses while letting bureaucratic inertia expand the conflict. Worse, as was guessed at on this site late last year, the Biden administration after last November’s election increased the risk of global conflict by “expanding the ops box to allow ATACMS and British Storm Shadow strikes into Russia,” in order to “shore up his Ukraine project.” If you and check this “secret history” against contemporaneous statements of American and European leaders, you’ll find the scale of the lies beyond comprehension. Heads need to roll for this:
The Entous feature begins as all war histories sourced to military and intelligence officials do, as a tale of triumph and ingenuity. Two months after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022, two Ukrainian generals were picked up on the streets of Kyiv and driven across the Polish border by British commandos in plainclothes, after which they flew in a C-130 to “Clay Kaserne, the headquarters of U.S. Army Europe and Africa in Wiesbaden, Germany.”
Lt. Gen. Mykhaylo Zabrodskyi recalled being led “up a flight of stairs to a walkway overlooking the cavernous main hall of the garrison’s Tony Bass Auditorium,” where he looked down on a “warren of makeshift cubicles, organizing the first Western shipments to Ukraine of M777 artillery batteries and 155-millimeter shells.” The area that became a “full-fledged headquarters” had been a “gym” used for Army band performances and “Cub Scout pinewood derbies.”
Entous is literally leading us down a rabbit-hole. The “warren” of cubicles to which he referred became the war’s command center:
Side by side in Wiesbaden’s mission command center, American and Ukrainian officers planned Kyiv’s counteroffensives. A vast American intelligence-collection effort both guided big-picture battle strategy and funneled precise targeting information down to Ukrainian soldiers in the field.
One European intelligence chief recalled being taken aback to learn how deeply enmeshed his N.A.T.O. counterparts had become in Ukrainian operations. “They are part of the kill chain now,” he said.
The Wiesbaden cubicle-dwellers relayed battlefield intel to Ukrainians, where “again and again… Americans found it, and the Ukrainians destroyed it.” A mid-2022 rocket barrage in Kherson that killed “generals and staff officers,” along with a “predawn swarm of maritime drones, with support from the Central Intelligence Agency” that attacked the Russian port at Sevastopol, were together an early “proof of concept” that boosted confidence.
However, the “arc of the war shifted” when Ukrainians began calling their own plays:
The Ukrainians sometimes saw the Americans as overbearing and controlling — the prototypical patronizing Americans. The Americans sometimes couldn’t understand why the Ukrainians didn’t simply accept good advice… Where the Americans focused on measured, achievable objectives, they saw the Ukrainians as constantly grasping for the big win, the bright, shining prize.
The Ukrainians, we learned, “increasingly kept their intentions secret,” and were “angered” by America’s reluctance to “give them all of the weapons and other equipment they wanted,” while refusing to take “politically risky steps” to help them. The Times sources then blamed the “fractious internal politics of Ukraine” for causing the first major disaster. The Times in May of that year called Bakhmut an “apparent loss” of a city that assumed “outsize importance” and “would have more symbolic than strategic value for Russia,” analysts said. Sunday, Entous was free to call Bakhmout a “stillborn failure.” After this sudden bout of frankness, Entous in a flashback indulged in another.
The partnership operated in the shadow of deepest geopolitical fear — that Mr. Putin might see it as breaching a red line of military engagement and make good on his often-brandished nuclear threats.
The it in that passage was the partnership. Our own officials worried that the mere act of creating the “we see it, Ukraine smashes it” collaboration, which sources boasted quickly became a “killing machine,” might be viewed as a “red line” by Putin, who in turn might “make good” on his nuclear threats.
If you’re wondering when we ever heard an American official acknowledge a non-zero threat of nuclear retaliation throughout this conflict, the answer is, never. In fact we were consistently told by Biden and everyone else that the opposite was true, that “World War III won’t be fought in Ukraine,” because the United States was not bringing its own troops into the theater of battle.
According to the Times, as Biden was saying these things, his administration “time and again… authorized clandestine operations it had previously prohibited.” This in turn forced us to “dispatch” advisers “to Kyiv and later… closer to the fighting,” out of concern of more line-crossing. The military and the CIA were then given permission to launch strikes “deep inside Russia itself,” which prompted thoughts from Entous:
In some ways, Ukraine was, on a wider canvas, a rematch in a long history of U.S.-Russia proxy wars — Vietnam in the 1960s, Afghanistan in the 1980s, Syria three decades later… It was also a grand experiment in war fighting, one that would not only help the Ukrainians but reward the Americans with lessons for any future war.
How many times were we scolded that this was no “proxy war,” and not a quagmire like Vietnam or Afghanistan? A hundred? A thousand? As early as April 28, 2022, right when this “partnership” run out of the Wiesbaden “warren” began, Biden explicitly denied we were in a proxy war, and said Russia was only making such claims to excuse their failures in defeating Ukraine.
Internally, concern along these exact lines was growing. American M777 howitzer batteries were effective at first against Russian troops, but soon they learned to pull material behind the 15-mile limit of those shells. Ukraine and some American and NATO officials began demanding the administration escalate by deploying “High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, known as HIMARS, which used satellite-guided rockets to execute strikes up to 50 miles away.” This is the moment when the Biden administration passed the point of mass-deception no return:
The ensuing debate reflected the Americans’ evolving thinking. Pentagon officials were resistant, loath to deplete the Army’s limited HIMARS stocks. But in May, General Cavoli visited Washington and made the case that ultimately won them over… At the White House, Mr. Biden and his advisers weighed that argument against fears that pushing the Russians would only lead Mr. Putin to panic and widen the war. When the generals requested HIMARS, one official recalled, the moment felt like “standing on that line, wondering, if you take a step forward, is World War III going to break out?”
Unbelievable! The U.S. began delivering HIMARS missiles to Ukraine in June 2022, which means for almost two years a White House that claimed not to be worried about World War III or nuclear war was worried about exactly that, each time they took a “step forward.” There were many steps after HIMARS, all catalogued by Entous, who began short-handing the nuclear war concern by referring to “red lines.”
When we upgraded from HIMARS to ATACMS missiles, expanding the range to 190 miles, it was “a particularly sore subject for the Biden administration,” because Russian commander Valery Gerasimov had “warned General [Mark] Milley that anything that flew 190 miles would be breaching a red line.”
After the disaster of Bakhmut, the U.S. kept raising its stakes. “A year ago, the coalition had been talking victory,” Entous explained. “As 2024 arrived and ground on, the Biden administration would find itself forced to keep crossing its own red lines simply to keep the Ukrainians afloat.” Entous then explained the “red lines kept moving,” as ATACMS were followed by SMES, or “subject-matter experts,” obvious American military advisers whose presence in Kyiv had to be tripled (to three dozen, they say) as failures mounted.
Then they crossed “the hardest red line,” the Russian border. Here the administration couldn’t resist a good calculated risk:
The Russian offensive exposed a fundamental asymmetry: The Russians could support their troops with artillery from just across the border; the Ukrainians couldn’t shoot back using American equipment or intelligence… Yet with peril came opportunity. The Russians were complacent about security, believing the Americans would never let the Ukrainians fire into Russia. Entire units and their equipment were sitting unsheltered, largely undefended, in open fields.
Who could pass up an opportunity like that? The Biden administration decided to create an “ops box” near north of Kharkiv, a territory “encompassing an area almost as large as New Jersey,” within which Ukrainians could conduct operations using American weapons and intelligence. In keeping with the ass-covering nature of this media exercise, we were told this decision was made “against the generals’ recommendation” (one imagines some are still serving and want to keep their stars).
To many watching from afar, it seemed like simple common sense that using American weapons and American support personnel to attack Russians in Russia risked drawing this country into a shooting war with a nuclear enemy at any moment. Those of us who said these things were dismissed as alarmist, Putin-loving fellow-travelers. Now we have Entous describing American officials feeling the same after the opening of “ops box” attacks:
With Wiesbaden’s points of interest and coordinates, as well as the Ukrainians’ own intelligence, HIMARS strikes into the ops box helped defend Kharkiv. The Russians suffered some of their heaviest casualties of the war… The unthinkable had become real. The United States was now woven into the killing of Russian soldiers on sovereign Russian soil.
We never heard any concern of this type. Instead, we were told repeatedly that if anyone was risking World War III, it was Putin, and moreover that any nuclear risk would not involve Europe or the United States, but Ukraine. Former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul described nuclear combat as unlikely at the outset of the war, noting Russia had no reason to strike at us, because “they are not under an existential threat. NATO is not going to invade Russia.” A little over a year later, America was “woven into” the killing of Russians on Russian soil.
Worse, according to the Times article (which on many occasions offered dubious assurances that the American military and the CIA banned attacks in Russia), Ukrainians broke a promise by sending troops into the city of Kursk while carrying “coalition-supplied equipment,” a violation of “ops box” rules. Entous added:
The box had been established to prevent a humanitarian disaster in Kharkiv, not so the Ukrainians could take advantage of it to seize Russian soil. “It wasn’t almost blackmail, it was blackmail,” a senior Pentagon official said.
We were supplying weapons to a “partner” who was blackmailing us into a conflict with a very dangerous enemy by using American equipment to invade a region, Kursk, that’s about as far south of Moscow as Columbia, South Carolina is from Washington. (CNN described the surprise attack as a “major success.”) The U.S. might have “pulled the plug” then, the Times tells us, but were said to be afraid of a humanitarian catastrophe. Meanwhile, while Zelensky and his friends in the West were still preaching victory, in private they’d settled on a more realistic goal: “to capture and hold Russian land that could be traded for Ukrainian land in future negotiations.”
If you’re counting, that means we were lied to about the risk of World War, the chance of “victory,” the desire for negotiations, the success of last year’s counteroffensive, the solidity of our relationship with Ukraine, and the significance of U.S.-backed incursions into Russia. This was before Democrats lost the election last November, after which Biden crossed one more line:
Mr. Trump won, and the fear came rushing in… In his last, lame-duck weeks, Mr. Biden made a flurry of moves to stay the course, at least for the moment, and shore up his Ukraine project… He crossed his final red line — expanding the ops box to allow ATACMS and British Storm Shadow strikes into Russia — after North Korea sent thousands of troops to help the Russians dislodge the Ukrainians from Kursk… The administration also authorized Wiesbaden and the C.I.A. to support long-range missile and drone strikes into a section of southern Russia used as a staging area for the assault on Pokrovsk, and allowed the military advisers to leave Kyiv for command posts closer to the fighting.
Racket readers will recall in late November I wrote about the Biden administration commencing a game of “nuclear chicken,” one that had Duma defense committee chair Andrei Krasov calling the launching of Western missiles deep into Russia “the last red line.” The lame-duck administration blew off concerns about nuclear brinksmanship, with Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh saying, “We are not at war with Russia,” and “the party here that continues to escalate this war is Russia.” Britain’s Keir Starmer at the G20 conference in Rio shrugged off questions about the use of British Storm Shadow missiles, saying NATO needed to “double down,” not show restraint:
From the outside it certainly appeared that U.S. officials, at a time when their lame-duck president was wandering into foliage in Brazil, were upping the ante in Ukraine as a way of rendering rapprochement impossible before the new government took office. No other explanation made sense. On the other hand, heightening global nuclear risk just to guarantee continuation of a doomed policy seemed impossibly cynical, even for whoever was running the White House by then.
Now we find out from inside sources this was done precisely to prolong the “Ukraine project.” There are a hundred details in this “Secret History” that serve as stark warnings to anyone who thinks protection from Armageddon is secure in the hands of career military and intelligence officials. Not only did we allow ourselves to be “blackmailed” into escalating a conflict with a nuclear power, the management of the “partnership” broke down because of a Heathers-style spat between the key brass twits, Ukrainian general Valery Zaluhniy and Mark Milley.
When Milley second-guessed Zaluhniy, the latter would respond with teen-like silence, or by ghosting Milley’s next call. Underscoring: the country to which we were giving hundreds of billions in aid didn’t feel a need to pick up the phone. Entous describes the general lack of communication via a moment of levity: “Biden administration officials would joke bitterly that they knew more about what the Russians were planning by spying on them than about what their Ukrainian partners were planning.”
The solution to the Miller-Zaluhniy feud, no joke, involved a blimp maker:
To keep them talking, the Pentagon initiated an elaborate telephone tree: A Milley aide would call Maj. Gen. David S. Baldwin, commander of the California National Guard, who would ring a wealthy Los Angeles blimp maker named Igor Pasternak, who had grown up in Lviv with Oleksii Reznikov, then Ukraine’s defense minister. Mr. Reznikov would track down General Zaluzhny and tell him, according to General Baldwin, “I know you’re mad at Milley, but you have to call him.”
The storied Wiesbaden partnership devolving into a game of telephone refereed by a blimp-maker might be the thirtieth- or fortieth-most horrifying detail in the story. There are too many to count.
The standard position of “liberal internationalists” like McFaul is that a United States that does not project its power and engage abroad is inviting mischief and aggression by hostile actors. In other words, not stepping in to oppose Putin militarily in Ukraine would make nuclear war more likely, not less. This could make sense, if officials entrusted with “democracy promotion” weren’t always dangerous imbeciles. McFaul for instance was the point man for dealing with Moscow, and couldn’t a beer there without a translator. They think Nguyễn Văn Thiệu is the same as Hamad Karzai is the same as Voldymyr Zelensky and it never penetrates their thick skulls except by accident that every culture is different and unpredictable, as Lloyd Austin somehow only found out years into the war.
When Austin came for a “surprise visit” late last year, he noticed “out the window of his armored S.U.V. snaking through the Kyiv streets” that the country had a lot of “men in their 20s, almost none of them in uniform.” Austin managed a thought: In a nation at war, “men this age are usually away, in the fight.”
When Austin pressed Zelensky to lower the draft age to 18, Zelensky reportedly snapped in return: “Why would I draft more people? We don’t have any equipment to give them.” To another “official,” the light flickered on, realizing this was “not an existential war if they won’t make their people fight.”
While the Times piece does little to clear up whose fault the military and diplomatic failure was (there were numerous passages of the “mistakes were made” variety), it’s clear we were lied to about everything. Zelensky and his set will no doubt tell their side now, and it’s possible Ukraine’s freelanced heightening of risk to Americans will come out seeming less treacherous. Either way, it’s clear the Biden administration should have cut the cord years ago, to prevent Americans from being dragged into World War by “partners” with every incentive to pull them in. Instead, the administration berated its critics as treasonous cowards who’d have let Hitler swim to London.
Everyone involved in this caper should go to jail, forever, beginning with whatever person or persons deployed the autopen to bomb Russia to “shore up” the Ukraine project of Biden’s corpse. These people make Westmoreland and Clark Clifford seem like Einstein and Bohr.
In another section, a “U.S. official” explained how NATO got around the seemingly very dangerous optics of providing Ukraine with lists of “targets”:
Given the delicacy of the mission, was it unduly provocative to call targets “targets”? Some officers thought “targets” was appropriate… The debate was settled by Maj. Gen. Timothy D. Brown, European Command’s intelligence chief: The locations of Russian forces would be “points of interest.” Intelligence on airborne threats would be “tracks of interest.”
“If you ever get asked the question, ‘Did you pass a target to the Ukrainians?’ you can legitimately not be lying when you say, ‘No, I did not,’” one U.S. official explained.
That’s a scene from Catch-22 or MAS*H. It’s inconceivable that anyone would think this was an actual intelligence solution. Apparently our people did think like this, as officials used a similar semantic workaround when giving Ukrainians locations of human targets. As another “senior U.S. official” put it, “Imagine how that would be for us if we knew that the Russians helped some other country assassinate our chairman.. Like, we’d go to war.”
Can I get a No shit, Sherlock? Are these people real?
(New York Times)
Sheesh. Add a big dose of sexism to the hazards of reading Mendocino County Today!
Telephone Operator, Ukiah
That first photo, supposedly of a telephone operator, a flawed jest for sure— takes me way back to another time. I still remember the party lines—with real telephone operators— from Kansas farm life when I was a young boy. And off and on over my younger years, I had the occasion to speak with a real-life operator, looking for a number, calling long distance. The description, “telephone operator,” now sounds old and dated. We are—nearly entirely and to our detriment— rid of all human operators in our phone systems, thanks to the new, wonderful, flawless digital world. Thank God for progress. Don’t need those pesky humans, plus they drew a salary and benefits, cut into profits.
But they were helpful and pleasant, those operators, who were, I think, almost entirely women. They always got the job done, way back in time. It was a time when we didn’t know what was to come, did not fully appreciate a helping voice coming from a real, live human being. The telephone system worked well, was affordable, served folks all over the country, cities, towns, countryside. Soon, as we older ones die off and get out of the way for even more spectacular digital progress, no one will remember those hard-working female souls and the pretty darn good telephone system we had back then.
I am sure those operators appreciate your found memories. And soon we will no longer have any humans answering the phones at the Social Security Administration. Yes, it takes a long time to get to one now, but that is not the fault of the few haggard souls remaining at their thankless posts. A few years (months?) from now our entire working lives will just be evaluated by an AI bot who gives us all the same answer: “Oops, all the money is gone. The Democrats stole it!”
Dear Chuck,
My aunt was a “Telephone Pioneer” serving AT&T for 45 years as a Night Chief Operator. The cordiality and efficiency of those (yes, mostly) women connected people through “remote” hookups that are, in this century, evolving into “connectivity” modes that are sorely lacking in either quality, and getting worse every day, it seems. As a child in a “big city” in the early forties, we no longer had “party lines” but the interaction with operators was a comforting and reliable source of supply for millions of “network” members. The transactions conducted on today’s “automated” connection systems are recorded, sorted, categorized, valued, and sold as commodities themselves.
I just love the rarety of sharing interests and thoughts with other readers, and always look forward to yours. “Only Connect.” And so we shall.
Same here, Betsy, as to sharing interests and thoughts, and I always appreciate yours. Thank you.
It’s an experiment, Justine. Thank you for your participation.
I wondered about that. You have been floating these types of photos for some time. I was more riled by the true crime reports that followed.
It was just another very hot 1955 Summer day in Ukiah with no air conditioning at the Pacific Bell switchboard.
Well, well, today’s MCT is reassuring…we’re still working at full speed to commit suicide as a country. Whadda shock! By the way, immigrants are not on my list of fears and threats to my well being. Rat politicians, like trump and his ilk, are at the top of it.
Harvey, your last 2 lines say it well. The vast majority of immigrants are hard-working humans who are thankful for a better, safer life in this country. From most of them we have nothing to fear, indeed we should thank them for doing some of the back-breaking, hard labor other folks don’t want to do. But “Rat politicians, like trump and his ilk”–they really are the ones to fear and the threats to our well being.
Hope you are well and safe and good out there in the out-back land, Harvey.
You and Harvey are the type to pay a migrant minimum wage and then 1099 them at years end.
Nope, I would not do that, Peter. I pay folks well who do any work for me. Folks have a hard enough time as it is, whether immigrant or other status.
Soon as the tariffs create more American jobs and stop competing with slave labor these migrants will make a true living wage.
Agree with you there, hope this plan works, many problems there in the short-term, but let’s hope for success. Also more support for labor unions to bargain for workers in large firms in every area of the economy. Bezos and Musk and other wealthy guys care not a whit about working folks and mistreat them.
You may be right about musk but his employees are paid well and 170 year olds receiving social security doesn’t pass the smell test.
No, it doesn’t, Pete. Guess why? It never happens.
Musk is saying there are 15 million people with SS#s who have stated birthdays that make them 120 years + old. Apparently the IRS has known of this problem since 2005. Hanlon’s razor would suggest this is likely primarily due to mistakes on the part of the IRS, and not fraud. But the problem needs to be cleaned up. Another problem with the IRS, that DOGE has point out, is fraudsters are using SS#s for newborns to borrow money, and of course with no intent to pay it back.
Show some proof to back up your nonsensical spouting of trumpisms, or is it muskisms? You MAGAts are the most gullible bunch on earth…as the trumpies are well aware.
Peter, you are quick on the accusations and slow on the facts. Not a good look.
My accusations may be generalized but Tesla pays 106k per year, china, Ukraine, Brazil among many others use forced child labor and the government is full of corruption. I wish those weren’t facts
All of which have little to do with accusing Harvey and Chuck, offering pie-in-the-sky predictions and making unsubstantiated statements about social security recipients. Deny, deflect, distract; gosh that sounds familiar!
I lumped them in with the other far lefties just like you do to my side daily.
With no SS# there can not be a 1099 issued, which brings up another DOGE discovery, millions of illegal immigrants being issued SS#s. This begs the question of how accident free and secure the SS system is.
Has that “discovery” been confirmed, or is it just more blathering on the part of Tesla and right-wing blabbermouths who never bother with reality? Funny, but I’ve been hearing that tripe since I was a kid. Same with Social Security fraud accusations. Typical right-wing tactics. They never let facts interfere with their ranting.
The DOGE facts are as credible as they come. The presentation of those facts, and the implications leave much to be desired.
Again, please provide some evidence for your conclusion.
I do believe you are transferring your inclinations onto others. Lotsa conservathugs do it.
Re: AB 928, aka the Chicken Bill.
In my opinion the Chicken Bill article mischaracterizes AB 928. I’ve linked to the bill so you can see for yourselves. AB 928 prohibits more than three roosters per acre or 25 total despite your acreage. Now, there are a bunch of exceptions which if you meet then AB 928 won’t apply to you. The first exception reads “A person who keeps or raises roosters for purposes of food production if the person is subject to local, state, or federal inspection laws or regulations.” The word “subject” does not mean “to be in FULL compliance” — it just means that the laws that would normally apply still do. In other words, the situation in place today.
And all of this only applies if you have more than three roosters per acre, or for rural folks more than 25. I don’t know of anyone with a flock with that many roosters. Do you?
The whole thing isn’t worth getting people worked up about. AB 928 gives California the tools to go after cock fighter breeders, which I wager we all agree should not be part of Californian life.
Jim Gagnon
AB 928: https://trackbill.com/bill/california-assembly-bill-928-roosters-restrictions/2668171/
Many people have roosters for meat. As Beth Swehla states, the requirements for compliance are beyond most people with home grown chickens. Of course the law won’t be enforced unless a neighbor turns in another neighbor for having chickens. And those few with fighting chickens will continue to do what they do, just a bit more discreetly. Cock fighting is already illegal in California.
Our assemblyman Rogers is carrying this bill. If I had chickens, I would call his office.
More than 25 roosters for meat? Frankly, if it’s a farm with hundreds of roosters, wouldn’t we all feel safer if it met California’s standards and regulations? AB 928 removes the fig leaf cock fighter breeders have been using when they claim all those roosters are for meat.
Except for the neat photo of the velella (also wonderfully named by-the-wind sailors), this MCD is too scary.
I am going to have to wait until which of the articles are revealed as April Fool’s Day jokes. It would be nice if it is most of them.
Here’s some decent news, Jim–
“Cory Booker Slams Trump’s Policies in Marathon Senate Floor Speech”
“The New Jersey senator criticized the president’s plans for Social Security, education, immigration and health care, saying the “nation is in crisis.” He began speaking Monday night. He was still going on Tuesday afternoon…
Before his speech, Mr. Booker said on social media that he was heading to the Senate floor because Mr. Trump and Elon Musk, the billionaire who is one of the president’s top advisers, had shown what he called ‘a complete disregard for the rule of law, the Constitution and the needs of the American people.’
‘In just 71 days, the president of the United States has inflicted so much harm on Americans’ safety, financial stability, the core foundations of our democracy and even our aspirations as a people for — from our highest offices — a sense of common decency,’ Mr. Booker said in his speech. ‘These are not normal times in America, and they should not be treated as such.’…”
NEW YORK TIMES, 4/1/25
Dan Bacher does a bang up job in today’s edition, Jim. But the rest is, as you say, scary. Without the AVA we wouldn’t have any idea what the nobility is cooking up, at our expense.
I have liberal friends who demonstrated against globalization, and NAFTA in the past. Now I have conservative friends in support of tariffs, and against NAFTA. So, what is it?
Manbun deserves what he gets. Agree on the grand jury, no balls. Ted tries to get into things, his priorities are a bit off often, but I haven’t seen anyone with any great ideas step up yet. Time for this board to stop being passive to complaints and attack them with resolutions. One step at a time. We flounder in day-to-day business with not a single noticeable major improvement to work towards. First get with-in budget, that could be done in one day exactly as Mark has outlined a number of times. They disserve us when they do not read the AVA, that is excluding a fairly large chunk of the county. Thank you AVA.