Mendocino County Today: Saturday 5/17/2025

Gradual Clearing | Mow View | Avon Ray | Book Fair | Foodbank Cuts | Coast Clowns | County Notes | Ukiah Construction | Ted Talk | Ed Notes | Author Talk | Yesterday's Catch | Lizard Act | UCDMC Cuts | Public Lands | July Hay | Tax Relief | Not Identified | Model Mirror | Snitch | Marco Radio | Alladin's Cat | Trumponomics | Sierra Moraine | First Impression | Giants Win | Nap Time | Fauci Speech | Tired Butterfly | Capitalism Book | Med School | Meta Investigation | The Lottery | Life Itself | Combustion | 8647 Days | Empty Glass | Cool? | Tesla Subframe | Fat Drug | Lead Stories | Honest Reform | Money Slide | 50s Movies | Luci/Jackie | The Captain | American Past

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A WEAK SYSTEM will increase cloud cover and present low chances for a few showers or light drizzle Saturday. Breezy northwest winds continue this afternoon, and again Sunday. A warming trend then develops next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A mix of clouds with 49F this Saturday morning on the coast. So much for my clear skies & calm winds forecast yesterday as some fog rolled in creating some winds with it. Clearing skies & breezy today as a front passes thru. Clearing skies & breezy into Monday, we'll see?

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BILL KIMBERLIN: I did a lot of mowing over the last few days so I could sit here and enjoy the view.

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AVON CLINTON RAY

March 4, 1944 - May 8, 2025

Avon Clinton Ray, beloved husband, son and friend, passed away peacefully at home on May 8, 2025, at the age of 81.

Born on March 4, 1944, at St. Mary’s Hospital in San Francisco, Avon was the son of Lenore E. Ray and Avon C. Ray. He carried his family’s name with pride throughout his life.

On April 17, 1965, Avon married the love of his life, Carrie. Their marriage was marked by unwavering devotion and enduring companionship, and was a testament to their deep bond and shared journey.

Avon was employed in the food and beverage industry until his retirement. He was an active and engaged member of his community throughout his life. He was a proud member of the Evening Active 2030 Club where he held numerous leadership positions and contributed meaningfully to the club’s mission of service and fellowship. He was also an accomplished cribbage player, participating in the American Cribbage Congress Grassroots Program where he earned numerous awards for his skill and sportsmanship.

An avid outdoorsman, Avon was a longtime member of Ducks Unlimited and cherished the camaraderie and tradition of hunting with his close circle of hunting buddies. He had a competitive streak and a steady aim, winning many belt buckles for trap shooting. He found joy in the friendships and memories built during those times.

Avon is survived by his loving wife Carrie who stood by his side for 60 years of marriage, his brother Michael Ray, sister-in-law Virginia, Ray, and his nieces and nephews.

A private service will be held to honor his life and memory and a later time.

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You’re Invited to a Joyful Celebration of Reading! 

Come join us at the Ukiah Valley Kids' Book Fair — a fun and heartwarming event dedicated to inspiring a lifelong love of reading. Our mission is to promote literacy and education for children of all ages through engaging, hands-on activities that spark curiosity and creativity.

Families will have the chance to meet authors, illustrators, educators, and organizations who are passionate about helping every child discover the joy of books. Whether you're just learning your ABCs or already devouring chapter books, there’s something here for everyone!

Let’s come together to build a vibrant, supportive community where reading is fun, learning is exciting, and every child’s story matters. 

When: 10:00am-3:00pm
Where: City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, 4951 Bodhi Way, Ukiah, CA, 95482

Free Admission And Parking

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MENDOCINO COUNTY FOOD BANKS FACE FEDERAL CUTS, LEADING TO LAYOFFS, PROGRAM CUTS

by Lin Due

At the Fort Bragg City Council’s Monday evening meeting, Amanda Friscia, executive director of the Fort Bragg Food Bank as well as the Mendo Food Network, delivered a sobering report on the devastating impact of federal budget cuts on the county’s most vulnerable people.…

https://mendovoice.com/2025/05/mendocino-county-food-banks-face-federal-cuts-leading-to-layoffs-program-cuts/

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COUNTY NOTES

by Mark Scaramella

According To The Latest CEO Report, the County’s cannabis department took in a whopping $11,509 in pot permit fees in April. That’s about $138k per year which barely covers the cost of the cannabis department manager’s salary and benefits. This of course fits right in to one of the cannabis department’s top enumerated priorities: “Ensure Fiscal Efficiency.” According to the Cannabis Department’s April report they issued 10 Cannabis Business Licenses, plus a few renewals and withdrawls.

The cannabis department’s license chart looks like a stoner prepared it, so it is too jargonized and decontextualized to make any sense of. But considering that there have been about 2,000 applications since the program began in 2017, 625 licenses in eight years is about 78 per year, or just under 7 per month . Pretty dismal, considering that Mendocino County was once one of the premier pot growing counties in the country.

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CEO Darcie Antle will add County Air Pollution Control Officer to her long list of titles this month. Why? According to the consent calendar item on next Tuesday Supervisors Agenda: “the District has a vital and time sensitive need for management and support given the vacancies of all management positions, and the County’s Chief Executive Officer is willing to provide that management and supportive role for as long as necessary…”

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Also on the consent calendar is a proposed expense of $19,000 for an attorney to provide “legal advice and analysis regarding negotiation of tax sharing and the annexation process between the County of Mendocino and other local entities.”

So if you thought 1. That is what our County Counsel is for, and 2. the agreement was finalized last summer, you’d be wrong.

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An outfit called “MGE Engineering” based in Sacramento is being hired to manage the long-planned Lambert Lane Bridge Replacement project in downtown Boonville. The footings of the old Lambert Lane bridge over Robinson Creek collapsed under heavy rains about a decade ago and the stalwart County road crew shored up the bank and then installed an old-fashioned war surplus “Bailey Bridge” in its place “temporarily” ever since while the County went through the arduous and costly hoops to arrange for the bridge replacement project.

Some utility prep work has already been done at the site in anticipation of the bridge project. The Sacto engineering outfit will be paid $63k starting soon and continuing through June 30 of 2027 when, presumably, the replacement project will be completed.

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UPDATES ON UKIAH CONSTRUCTION

by Justine Frederiksen

In their latest update regarding the major construction work underway on two of the busiest streets in the heart of Ukiah, city officials advise that some customers can expect short-term water outages.

“Water main construction is complete on (East) Gobbi Street between Orchard Avenue and Main Street, and water laterals and tie-ins are being scheduled and replaced now,” city officials explained in a press release. “This process will involve short water outages,” and all customers who will be affected “will receive a 72-hour notice before the outage.”

Officials also add that “some of the work near the intersection of (East Gobbi Street and Orchard Avenue) will be performed at night to reduce water service disruption impacts to residents and businesses. Drivers should use caution, especially during any nighttime construction. Water tie-ins and laterals, fire hydrants, testing, and reconnects will continue for another 2-3 weeks.”

Upon completion of the water laterals and tie-ins, concrete crews will construct the sidewalk and ADA ramps (anticipated to take approximately one week). Intermittent impacts to traffic in the immediate area of construction should be anticipated throughout the project, (and) flaggers will assist residents/businesses as necessary.”

During his latest update to the Ukiah City Council on current construction projects, Tim Eriksen, the city’s Public Works Director and City Engineer, said while there were plenty of ongoing projects, “the Urban Core Project is probably the one that everyone is super excited about at the moment, (especially if you are a Gobbi (street) traveler” as crews work on the water line.

Since they know exactly where to put the water line due to past work on the street, Eriksen said that “the work putting in the line is going fast, but the traffic on the street is not because we’re having to close that down often, so if you can stay away from (East) Gobbi, that’s probably the best.”

As for West Gobbi Street, Eriksen said that “we are planning to pave West Gobbi the week after school (gets out), which is the part between State and Dora streets.” As for paving on East Gobbi Street, city officials said that is “anticipated mid-summer.”

As for Main Street, city officials reported this week that “concrete crews have nearly completed sidewalks and ADA ramps, and are beginning to construct and pour the driveway aprons. Main Street reconstruction and paving is scheduled for mid-June following West Gobbi Street paving, (and) reconstruction and paving of Main Street will take approximately two weeks.”

As for work on East Perkins Street, city officials report that “potholing (drilling into the street to verify utilities) throughout the project area (Orchard Avenue to Hospital Drive is scheduled to begin late June. As a reminder, Perkins Street construction will be limited to storm drain work on the north side of the street near Orchard Avenue and extending west towards Hospital Drive, the addition of an eastbound lane between the Lucky store west entrance and Orchard Avenue, updated traffic signals, some sidewalk work, and new pavement and striping.”

City officials also pointed out that the project to construct a new Mendocino County Courthouse near East Perkins Street “is a state-funded and state-managed construction project. The city does not have jurisdiction or oversight over the project, (but) will do its best to notify residents when we receive any updates regarding planned impacts.”

As for the hours of work, construction is expected to occur Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. until 5:30 p.m., with some night time to be scheduled. Officials described the nighttime work as “limited work, 2 to 3 nights total, for water tie-ins/laterals near Orchard Avenue on Gobbi Street.” That work is expected to occur between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m., though the “exact dates are not yet scheduled.” No work will occur on Memorial Day, May 26.

(Ukiah Daily Journal)

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ED NOTES

AS A BOY, I was an early newspaper reader, the sports pages specifically because sports, especially the 49ers and the old San Francisco Seals, captured my imagination early. Major League baseball still hadn’t arrived on the West Coast. For a baseball fan, then, the Seals and the Pacific Coast League were it. But one day, I read my first news-news story and, like everyone else in Northern California, I kept reading that story as it unfolded over the next two years. It had begun with the kidnap and murder of a 14-year-old Oakland girl, Stephanie Bryan, by a 27-year-old U.C. student named Burton Abbott. The story ended with Abbott’s execution at San Quentin two years later.

Stephanie was grabbed in 1955, Abbott was executed in 1957. Justice had been swift and maybe not always so sure in those days, but if you killed someone you could count on the state killing you in a matter of months.

Abbott maintained to the end he’d been framed, that Stephanie Bryan’s purse and undergarments found in the crawl space beneath his house had been placed there by a relative who didn’t like him. But the girl’s body had been found on Abbott family property in Trinity County, and if Abbott was framed, it was about as thorough a frame job as could be devised.

STEPHANIE BRYAN was only a couple of years older than me, which may have diverted my attention from the sports page to the front page. I could relate to her, more or less, as a peer. But I wasn’t the only one diverted. For two years, Bay Area papers ran the Abbott case on their front pages every day. I can still remember one story that said a girl, presumably Stephanie, had been seen struggling with a man in a speeding car headed north. With every edition of the four dailies out of San Francisco you could almost feel a collective chill go up the Bay Area’s collective spine. (My best friend’s father used to pack up his family for Sunday outings to Alameda just to stare at Abbott’s house where so many horror tourists showed up every day that the police had to cordon off the street.) A young girl walking home from school snagged in broad daylight? It was the Bay Area equivalent of the much earlier Lindbergh kidnapping. This kind of thing never happened in those days. Now, in these days, much more spectacular criminal events occur on a daily basis.

I REMEMBER a single week in Mendocino County, a rural area assumed to be beyond the primary psycho zones, that saw two babies almost killed out of parental fecklessness; a man running naked and bloody down a central Ukiah street required a whole defensive backfield of cops to restrain him, and there were two episodes classified as “elder abuse.” In one of those a 60-year-old woman caring for an 80-something-year-old woman bit the 80-year-old so severely that the old lady scuttled out her Fort Bragg door for help. In the other, a daughter in her forties simply hauled off and slugged her 80-year-old mother in the face, hospitalizing the old lady. And there was the usual sea-to-sea scumbaggery, of course, everywhere in the land, all of it non-occurring a short half-century ago in the days of my placid, uneventful youth.

THE POINT? Couple of points: The first is that the country is unraveling faster than even us pessimists have expected. Aberrant, even murderous behavior, has become so prevalent we barely notice the media accounts but can’t help but notice it the instant we step out our front door. We now live in a daily envelope of insanity which, to finally get to the trite point I’m making, is that it’s the chaos that feeds the fear in the gun people, but the gun people’s sense of reality is much more accurate than, say, Congressman Huffman’s sense of reality.

SO, MR. PONTIFICATOR, what’s your solution? There might not be one in any conventional sense because the economic apparatus is also collapsing from its own ongoing criminality, but I’d start by reversing the flow of the money upwards to establish a social floor consisting of guaranteed work, housing, medical care, free education through the college level, and everything else that would remove the national fear and anxiety. Won’t happen, of course, because the limo people of both political parties are simply couriers for the money accumulators, but it’s the only way to stabilize life for the ever more millions who have been destabilized and are now going crazy every day everywhere in the United States. The gun people are as unlikely to go for socialist strategies of psycho-social remediation as the libs are. The system has de-stabilized itself, and here we are on the slippery slope to national ruin, and all the untied people, millions of them, are going crazy.

HUEY P. LONG, governor of Louisiana, 1930: “How many men ever went to a barbecue and would let one man take off the table what’s intended for 9/10th of the people to eat? The only way to be able to feed the balance of the people is to make that man come back and bring back some of that grub that he ain’t got no business with! Now we got a barbecue. We have been praying to the Almighty to send us to a feast. We have knelt on our knees morning and nighttime. The Lord has answered the prayer. He has called the barbecue. “Come to my feast,” He said to 125 million American people. But Morgan and Rockefeller and Mellon and Baruch have walked up and took 85% of the victuals off the table! Now, how are you going to feed the balance of the people? What’s Morgan and Baruch and Rockefeller and Mellon going to do with all that grub? They can’t eat it, they can’t wear the clothes, they can’t live in the houses. Giv’em a yacht! Giv’em a Palace! Send ‘em to Reno and give them a new wife when they want it, if that’s what they want. [Laughter] But when they’ve got everything on God’s loving earth that they can eat and they can wear and they can live in, and all that their children can live in and wear and eat, and all of their children’s children can use, then we’ve got to call Mr. Morgan and Mr. Mellon and Mr. Rockefeller back and say, come back here, put that stuff back on this table here that you took away from here that you don’t need. Leave something else for the American people to consume. And that’s the program.”

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Friday, May 16, 2025

MIKE DALE, 50, Laytonville. Battery with serious injury.

YECSON DELAHERRAN-RIVERA, 42, Ukiah. County parole violation.

HENRY FRAHM, 49, Ukiah. Continuous sexual abuse of child.

REBECCA GILLESPIE, 38, Riverside/Ukiah. Probation revocation.

MARK PALLEY, 52, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs, probation revocation.

ROGELIO SANCHEZ, 43, Boonville. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

SAMUEL SANCHEZ, 35, Ukiah. Contempt of court. (Frequent flyer.)

KURTIS SMITH, 39, Ukiah. Parole violation.

JALAHN TRAVIS, 26, Ukiah. Under influence.

DIEGO VALLEJO, 22, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

KYMBERLY WILLIAMS, 23, Ukiah. Domestic abuse.

JUSTICE WRISTEN, 29, Fort Bragg. DUI.

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FRED GARDNER: Lizard Love? Or an old male dealing with a potential usurper? I’ve asked my herpetologist friend.

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CHRISTIE OLSON DAY:

When cuts to federal research were announced in February, I posted here about the potential damage to UC Davis Medical Center, which so many of us count on being there when we need it. Here’s an update from UCD Chancellor May:

“Projected federal policy changes affecting the UC Davis Medical Center — which serves as the top health care facility for patients stretching from our region to the Oregon border — are estimated to be between $338 million and $499 million.”

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DON’T LET TRUMP SELL OFF OUR PUBLIC LANDS TO BIG OIL!

Dear Editor

Donald Trump is offering a massive public lands giveaway to the fossil fuel industry.

He’s ordered the U.S. to “drill baby drill” on public lands, and he’s fast-tracked new oil and gas projects, bypassing environmental and public review. His allies in Congress are even pushing to open Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

If they get their way, the fossil fuel industry will wreck our national landmarks for profit and pump millions more tons of planet-warming pollution into the atmosphere in the process.

So if we don’t want to see drilling rigs the next time we head outdoors, we need to send a clear message: Don’t sell off our public lands to Big Oil!

Sincerely,

Susan Henning

Mendocino

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TAX RELIEF FOR THE RICH

Editor:

A millionaire, A billionaire. The two are often conflated by the public to define great wealth. But the chasm between the two is enormous. Consider: $1 million in $100 bills weighs 22 pounds; $1 billion in $100 bills weighs 11 tons. But let’s give oligarchs some tax relief.

Tim Flagerman

Rohnert Park

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NOTA BENE SAYS THE HINDU

Warmest spiritual greetings, Awoke early at the Adam’s Place Homeless Shelter in northeast Washington, D.C. Following morning ablutions, did the usual walk down to the bus stop with trash bags, to pick up all of the litter left by assorted drug addicts, professional alcoholics, the unpleasantly mentally ill, assorted (other) homeless, and the club kids who hang out at Karma and Sound Echo on Queen’s Chapel Road. Having cleaned up the daily mess, proceeded to Whole Foods on H Street for hot Indian cuisine, because the California EBT has run out for the month, and since it’s all paying by cash now, might as well eat the faves. A cold Vietnamese-style coffee washed it all down with gusto. Am presently on a computer at the MLK Public Library. I am NOT identified with the body. I am NOT identified with the mind. Immortal Self (id est: pure spirit, the Dao, the Absolute, God, One’s True Nature) I am. Thanking everyone for today’s emails informing me of how to return to California, and obtain senior housing by using various social service programs, shelters, drug addiction/alcoholic rehabilitation programs, senior advocacy governmental and non-governmental groups, and of course your encouraging me to simply pull my 75 year old ass up by the boot straps. NOTA BENE: The problem is that the problem is the “American experiment with freedom and democracy”. Those of you who are enlightened are encouraged to contact me here:

Craig Louis Stehr, [email protected]

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SNITCH

We hear there’s this guy
Admits he finds all women
He’s ever looked at

Stunning

Claims we all do too
But says we hide our feelings
Keep them way inside

Deeply

Snitch just spilled his guts
Now we’re all in hot water
Boys our cover’s blown

Busted

— Jim Luther

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MEMO OF THE AIR: Good Night Radio all night tonight on KNYO and KAKX!

Soft deadline to email your writing for tonight’s (Friday night’s) MOTA show is 5pm or so. If that’s too soon, send it any time after that and I’ll read it next Friday.

Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio is every Friday, 9pm to 5am PST on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg and KNYO.org. The first three hours of the show, meaning till midnight, are simulcast on KAKX 89.3fm Mendocino.

Plus you can always go to https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com and hear last week’s MOTA show. By Saturday night I’ll put up the recording of tonight’s show. You’ll find plenty of other educational amusements there to educate and amuse yourself with until showtime, or any time, such as:

Tricky thieving courting birds. https://laughingsquid.com/robotic-spy-satin-bowerbird/

What sorcery is this? https://www.youtube.com/shorts/RNUEpYSfOPI

And a survey of folk fashion worldwide. (via Everlasting Blort) https://threadfashionandcostume.blogspot.com/2025/04/jason-gardner.html

Marco McClean, [email protected], https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

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TRUMP’S ECONOMICS

by John Arteaga

So, to bring those among us who are low information citizens up to date; just as The Donald informed us would be the case before the election; that he would be dictator on day one, of course he made many other promises about what would happen on day one; ending several wars, causing the price of eggs and gasoline to suddenly plummet, etc.; all very far-fetched ideas that only a complete sucker would have put any stock in.

But now, after over a hundred days of his misrule, the one thing that can be clearly determined about this governance is that we have made a transition from a democracy (however flawed) into a full on, totally corrupt, unapologetic, kleptocratic oligopoly, where the filthy rich, many of whom became so with massive government subsidies, rule ruthlessly over the rest of us without even pretending to give a damn what the overwhelming majority of us would like to see their government doing with their tax monies.

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, whose company, Tesla, was built with massive federal subsidies, was able, thanks to the bizarre Citizens United Scotus decision, which basically says that we are no longer living under the rule of one person, one vote, but now, more like one dollar, one vote, while not eligible to run for president, was able to basically purchase what seems to be a co-presidency for what was, to him, pocket change; 275 million or so, a rounding error for what he had just paid for Twitter.

The smug arrogance of this guy knows no bounds; I could hardly believe it when I read that he had said that the greatest US weakness was empathy! I don’t think that even Heinrich Himmler was ever quoted saying something so bereft of the universal, essential, human quality of care about one’s fellow man.

As if to illustrate for all the full depth of his complete nullity of this most basic trait of civilized life, the first thing I remember him doing once he and his brownshirted tech bros took a meat axe to federal spending, was to abruptly end USAID, which was providing lifesaving food aid worldwide! There is something particularly sickening about the richest man in the world condemning millions of the poorest people on the planet to death by starvation, even though we were, and have been for generations, set up to provide this vital food aid to the least fortunate amongst humanity; to the millions of those who, through no fault of their own, were born into lands where their traditional indigenous farming is suddenly no longer viable, most often due to climate change.

Trump pulled this incredibly coldhearted, skinflint, kind of nasty, murderous niggardliness against those with the least, during the first term of his misrule, always with the stated intention of saving money so that it could be given as tax breaks to those few at the apex of society who already have more money than they know what to do with.

While this resulted in perhaps millions of deaths by starvation (something of absolutely no concern to Trump and his cohort) it also ruined the many farmers across the country who grew crops for the specialized food relief system managed by USAID. Idiotically, many of these farmers probably voted for this fool, who, after ruining their livelihoods, came to their aid with the US taxpayer’s checkbook, doling out billions to replace the lost income that they would have made growing such crops as Milo, for which there is no domestic market.

So, the taxpayer first saves some money by letting starving people die all over the world, but probably ends up spending even more than they had saved in bailing out the farmers. Another typical Trump lose lose proposition. The art of the deal, indeed. BAD freaking deal, all around.

And what about this idea of stopping wars? Just as every national government that has ruled this country over many decades, Trump’s administration will curtsy and genuflect to the horrific genocidal madness of Israel with its present psycho leader Netanyahu, who is faced with a choice of either continuing his genocidal assault on the Palestinian people or going to prison for his epic levels of corruption.

The reportage of the slaughter going on there is sickening in its distractions from the fact that, no, the Israelis have not killed only 56,000 men women and children, but that that is the number of those bodies of the dead who have been officially processed by the completely destroyed Gaza medical system; there may be that many again yet to be recovered in the collapsed buildings that Israel has created where millions of people use to live, in however difficult circumstances.

The idea that Trump would get out there and talk about Gaza as a real estate development project (once we kill or move all the Palestinian inhabitants there) tells you all have to know about the amoral mercantile rip off being run by the world’s most infamous scam artist.

Perhaps one of the most depressing aspects of this whole mess is the completely neutered, putatively coequal judicial branch of the government. You know that you are dipping into dictatorial rule when the highest court in the land unanimously lays down the law that the poor people rounded up by ICE agents,(their criterion for guilt being basically people’s tattoos etc.), MUST have some semblance of due process and the rule of law before they can be dragooned into some faraway country’s dungeons. What recourse is there when an arrogant regime simply refuses to stop the dungeon-bound planes, to return them to their departures airports per court order? It’s a constitutional crisis!

The image of Kristi Noem, who established early on her bona fides on cruelty by shooting to death her 10 month old dog because she had not been able to train it to hunt yet, sporting her $50,000 Rolex watch in front of the cage full of recently shaved- head tattood gentlemen, the common element of which was their bodies being festooned with tattoos, much like our head of the DOD, Pete Hegseth, whose body is a poster board of white Christian nationalist tats. Sheesh! Is the Islamic world being paranoid about the choice of powerful individuals in the Trump White House? And are we, at Israel’s behest, making war on the entire Islamic world for Zionism? Clearly the US government has been completely taken over by white supremacist Christian nationalist nut cases who are now running the asylum!

For this and other columns; https://inarationalworld2.blogspot.com/2025/05/trumponomics.html

(John Arteaga is a Ukiah resident.)

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FIRST WRITTEN IMPRESSION AFTER VIEWING THE OPENING OF ‘COMING HOME’

by Don Shanley, L.A., February 1978

for Jane Fonda (because she asked me)

Coming out of the theatre
& seeing the lines the lines
of hip LA folk leathered, tan & hot-combed
a guy with a clipboard wants to know why I came
(800 miles for a movie!?)…

I slip by, stumbling-dazed
wanting a grenade to explode
in the middle of Wilshire Blvd. SEEING
the other side of the street
the plastic donuts & marble facades the
Plaza This & Plaza That crumble
& implode all this trendy cheese & wine
all this hygienic shine…

Where are you now Corporal RedHorse?
Where are you now Private First Class Howling LongCrane?
The white eyes peddle our national war guilt
& it’s
Big Business---
…dead,
……redmen
………Marines. Where are you now
Curado, Lopez, Ulinski, Damatta, Desteffano?

Step right up folks!
Oh, it oughta make a bundle
so socially significant
& right
on the heels
of ‘Julia.’

It was all there—
The obligatory love scene,
the suicide … paraplegic … cheerleaders
tits’n ass sports car beach house
“Cute”
“Neat”
Oh sure, but I should think
there’s more than these
edges,
these
accessible sentimentalities,
lichen’d verities, wives’-tales.

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WILMER FLORES HAS 3 HRs, 8 RBIs, Logan Webb goes 8 as Giants rout A’s

by Susan Slusser

The baseball question on Friday at Oracle Park was whether the Sacramento A’s hitting prowess or the San Francisco Giants’ pitching superiority would come out ahead, especially with Giants ace Logan Webb on the mound.

It turned out to be Wilmer Flores’ night entirely. The Giants first baseman cracked three homers, including a grand slam, and drove in a career-high eight runs in San Francisco’s 9-1 victory.

“Pretty cool day,” Flores said.

The non-baseball chatter, meanwhile, centered around what to call this new iteration of the former Bay Area rivalry, with the Bay Bridge Series inadequate for a journey that now includes the Carquinez Bridge and the Yolo Causeway. The I-80 Series seems uninspired. The Grapple with the Capital? The NorCal Challenge? Whatever we’re calling this regional showdown, Webb and the Giants claimed the opener thanks to Flores.

“He’s my favorite player,” Webb said. “It’s fun to watch him every day. It’s amazing at-bats all the time, and that kind of kickstarted the game.”

Flores’ 41 RBIs are tied with Aaron Judge for the most in the majors. His slam in the third was the seventh of his career, and JP Sears made him work for it: It came on the 10th pitch of the at-bat, the most pitches in an at-bat ending in a grand slam by a Giants player since April 14, 2014, when Héctor Sánchez did so at Colorado.

Flores also hit a three-run shot in the sixth and a solo in the eighth, his first career three-homer night. He is the first Giant with a grand slam and a three-run homer in the same game since the team moved to San Francisco in 1958.

“I’ve always thought about hitting three homers, but it doesn’t happen very often,” Flores said. “I’ve hit two in games, but three — a lot of things have to go right for you. … I finally did it.”

According to MLB’s Sarah Langs, Flores is the first Giants player with 40 or more RBIs in the team’s first 45 games since Barry Bonds drove in 45 in 2001. He’s also the Giants’ first right-handed hitter ever to hit three homers in a game at Oracle Park. The only other right-handed hitter to do so was Dodgers shortstop Kevin Elster when the ballpark opened, on April 11, 2000.

Since RBI became official in 1920, the only other MLB player to drive in 80% of the total runs scored in a game (min. 10 total runs) was Yogi Berra on July 3, 1957 (eight RBIs in 10-0 win), according to Opta Stats.

After injuries diminished Flores’ effectiveness last season, when he hit .206 with four homers in 71 games, it might have been hard to project him for this kind of production, especially, as he noted himself, because he is typically a slow starter, with a career .230 mark in April and a .664 OPS, both his worst in any month.

The Giants might have chosen to part with him during the winter after such a down season, but Flores exercised his player option for this year, and that $3.5 million is now looking like a bargain.

“He’s pretty remarkable, where he’s come from last year to this year,” manager Bob Melvin said. “I don’t know if anyone would have predicted this.

“Look, everybody loves Wilmer here. Everybody around the league loves Wilmer. He’s about as respected a guy as you’re going to come across, so it’s great to have someone have a game like that, and it’s doubly good that it’s Wilmer.”

Melvin often describes Flores as having a nose for RBIs and Flores said the key for him is with men in scoring position, he uses a shorter stroke, trying to ensure contact while potentially sacrificing a little power. That wasn’t the case Friday, his slam had an exit velocity of 106.8 mph, and he said he’d made an adjustment to hit fastballs better. “I started earlier,” he said of his swing. “Simple.”

“He uses what he needs to use,” Melvin said about Flores’ exit velocities. “He’s probably not going to be going into the glove (beyond the stands in left center) out there, but they get over the wall, and he finds the barrel, so I don’t think that’s ever been an issue for him.”

The A’s move to Sacramento and their decision not to use the city name (the Chronicle refers to them as the Sacramento A’s) has left everyone a little uncertain about terminology, including Flores.

“Tonight was fun, it feels like every time we play Oakland, it’s a big crowd,” he said.

Oakland?

“Umm … Sacramento,” he said, then added, “They’ll always be Oakland to me.”

The A’s were coming off a game at Los Angeles in which they’d allowed 19 runs, and over the past three games, they’ve given up 37 runs. They entered the game with a 5.18 ERA, fifth highest in the majors.

Webb, who grew up an Oakland A’s fan in Rocklin, kept the A’s high-powered offense quiet, allowing five hits, two walks and the one run in his eight innings of work.

He was at his best with runners in scoring position, as the A’s went 1-for-8; their one run came when Luis Urias ran through a stop sign to score on Tyler Soderstrom’s infield single. With two men still on, Webb got an inning-ending double play. He improved to 5-3 and trimmed his ERA to 2.42, fourth best in the league.

Webb had wanted to finish things out, but the A’s scoring in the eighth ended those hopes and he castigated himself for not getting Urias at first after a tough tapper to the left of the mound.

“I was pretty mad at myself about that, but couple guys were like, ‘You had no chance of getting him anyway,’ ” Webb said. “That’s a really good team over there, we knew they were going to be aggressive. There are a lot of hard-hit balls with a lot of balls on the ground, so you’re not going to get a lot of swing-and-miss, and the defense was amazing today.”

The Giants reinstated second baseman Tyler Fitzgerald (broken rib) from the IL before the game and returned utility player Brett Wisely to Triple-A Sacramento. He walked, doubled and scored a run.

Outfielder Luis Matos was a late scratch with right shoulder soreness and will be reevaluated Saturday. David Villar wound up in the lineup at the DH spot.

Jerar Encarnacion, who is expected to get a lot of time at first base when he comes back from a broken finger, played in two games of a rehab assignment at Sacramento on Saturday and Sunday but hadn’t played since. He was in the Giants’ clubhouse before the game and said the finger feels fine; manager Bob Melvin said Encarnacion had had some soreness so was getting checked by a team doctor. Both emphasized that because he’s not eligible to come off the IL until May 26, there’s no reason to rush.

(sfchronicle.com)

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‘EVENTS OVER THE PAST FEW YEARS HAVE BEEN DISTURBING’: FAUCI SPEAKS AT USF GRADUATION

by Madilynne Medina

One of the country’s top infectious disease experts, Dr. Anthony Fauci, called out anti-science sentiments and conspiracy theories during his commencement speech at the University of San Francisco.

Fauci, who served as President Joe Biden’s chief medical advisor for almost two years before resigning in December 2022, spoke Friday morning during the USF’s College of Arts and Sciences ceremony. After receiving a standing ovation when reaching the podium, he said he believes the country is currently seeing a rise of misinformation and stressed the importance of evidence-based science.

“A significant anti-science element has emerged that is now quite vocal and dominating certain segments of our society, even at the highest levels,” Fauci said. “This segment troubles me greatly because it promotes the denigration of scientific evidence and data, and with that comes the undermining of the foundation of our social order.”

Though Fauci did not mention the Trump administration by name, he emphasized the importance of vaccines, which Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the current Secretary of Health and Human Services, has frequently criticized. Fauci’s tenure as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases lasted through seven presidents, including Trump during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Now, not only in our country but worldwide, the disparagement of scientific evidence is threatening routine aspects of public health as well, including the life-saving importance of childhood immunizations,” Fauci said.

Over the last several months, Kennedy has questioned the safety of vaccines, sparking concern among scientists. In a heated congressional hearing on Wednesday, Kennedy debated the effectiveness of the measles vaccine amid a nationwide outbreak, NBC News reported.

Fauci also called out the spread of scientific misinformation that he said is “propagated” on social media. He added that the spread of “untruths” happens daily and “should deeply concern us all.”

“Unfairly attacking, mischaracterizing and undermining evidence-based scientific findings intertwined with an infusion of conspiracy theories sews public confusion and erodes trust in evidence-based public health principles,” he said.

Recently, the Trump administration, which has been accused of spreading false scientific statements, terminated several research grants, such as those dedicated toward studying online misinformation. At the end of his speech, Fauci urged the graduates to “push back” on misinformation.

“Events over the past few years have been disturbing,” Fauci said. “We cannot let diversity and healthy differences in ideology, which should be our strengths, deteriorate into divisiveness.”

(SFGate.com)

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JULIA BUTTERFLY HILL

Made it to NYC. Completely exhausted and in a LOT of pain. But made it safe and sound. Gearing up to be participating at the end of the show, Redwood, on Broadway tomorrow to do a talk back afterwards with Idina Menzel.

This now will be only the second time since Covid that i have done a public event.

i took many years off from both social media and events. Was done being the public “julia butterfly.” But life has been calling me back into it. It is ironic that such an extreme introvert as myself got called into doing very public work. The calling to serve is stronger than my desire to hide away. i always serve no matter where i am, but the public part of serving has always been challenging for me. But i know that i am able to make bigger impacts because of the spotlight on me when i choose to be more open in the world. So New York, here i am.

The back of my hoodie i wore for most of the trip (gifted to me by a dear friend) says in bold type, “Compassion In Action.”

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250 YEARS OF CAPITALISM: SOULLESS, EXPLOITATIVE AND ALL BUT UNSTOPPABLE

A new book by the New Yorker staff writer John Cassidy plumbs more than two centuries’ worth of grievances about our global financial order.

by Jennifer Szalai

Capitalism And Its Critics: A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AI, by John Cassidy

Given how reliably Americans tend to favor promises of plenty, it has been curious to see a president inherit a humming economy and then proceed to gut the federal work force, start a chaotic trade war and celebrate the scarcity about to ensue. Asked about potential shortages of goods, President Trump has repeatedly offered versions of the same strange example. “I don’t think a beautiful baby girl needs — that’s 11 years old — needs to have 30 dolls,” he told NBC News. “I think they can have three dolls, or four dolls.” (He added, “They don’t need to have 250 pencils, they can have five.”)

Trump makes a few cameo appearances in John Cassidy’s new book, “Capitalism and Its Critics,” for his demonstrated ability to brag about his riches while tapping into growing discontent with the global capitalist system. Some of the critics Cassidy features in this book wanted to replace capitalism entirely; others, like Trump, have sought to preserve a core of self-interest while remaking capitalism’s rules. Rejecting a world financial order fueled by free trade and a bedrock American dollar, the president has been promoting a grab bag that includes both tariffs and crypto — a Trumpian hybrid of the very old and the very new.

But then capitalism has always been a protean force. In the 18th century, merchant capitalism yielded to industrial capitalism; in the postwar era, Keynesianism yielded to neoliberalism. Cassidy, a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker, originally envisioned writing a “shortish history” that began with the collapse of the Soviet Union, but he soon realized that to properly understand the roots of capitalism’s discontents, he needed to go much further back (some 250 years) and write much longer (more than 600 pages).

Despite the obvious differences among the people in this book, they share some complaints. “Over the centuries,” Cassidy writes, “the central indictment of capitalism has remained remarkably consistent: that it is soulless, exploitative, inequitable, unstable and destructive, yet also all-conquering and overwhelming.”

Cassidy begins in the early days of the Industrial Revolution and ends with some thoughts about the economic upheaval that may be wrought by A.I. In between he offers short chapters — 28 in all — dedicated to the life and work of figures both familiar and obscure. The result is an expansive history of capitalism that places less emphasis on economic abstractions like perfectly competitive markets and draws attention instead to how often capitalist systems have fallen short. “It is barely hyperbole to say that capitalism is always in crisis, recovering from crisis or heading toward the next crisis,” Cassidy remarks. In 1857, a financial panic on Wall Street prompted Marx and Engels to believe that a collapse was imminent. “The American crisis,” Marx wrote, “is BEAUTIFUL.” Engels replied, “The AMERICAN CRASH is superb.”

But the state stepped in, as it usually does — averting wholesale disintegration by saving the capitalist system from blowing itself up. This habit of state intervention, of course, runs counter to laissez-faire orthodoxy, with its insistence that markets should be left to their own devices. Cassidy devotes a chapter to Karl Polanyi (1886-1964), the Austro-Hungarian economic anthropologist who argued that free markets were such a “stark utopia” that they required a strong state to lay the ground rules. They were also so disruptive that societies spontaneously tried to reassert some order in response: Writing during World War II, Polanyi described socialism (which he supported) and fascism (which he abhorred) as two disparate reactions to the same capitalist upheaval. As Polanyi put it, “Laissez-faire was planned; planning was not.”

Polanyi was underappreciated in his day, when laissez-faire economics had been discredited by the Great Depression; he was rediscovered in the 1980s, when neoliberalism was ascendant and his grim view of unfettered capitalism served as a stinging rebuke. Cassidy shows how belated recognition was often the fate of capitalism’s critics. The Cambridge economist Joan Robinson (1903-83) was a colleague of John Maynard Keynes, who maintained that the state could get an economy out of a slump by spending money to stimulate demand. Robinson was a Keynesian who nevertheless recognized the limits of Keynesianism. Writing in the 1930s, she theorized about the possibility of unemployment getting so low that bargaining between employers and workers could lead to what was later called a “wage-price spiral.”

At the time, deflation was the biggest threat; it was only four decades later, when stagflation proved resistant to the Keynesian tool kit, that Robinson’s analysis got its proper due. By then she was already frustrated by the state of the economics profession, including the “bastard Keynesians” she accused of simplifying and deforming some of Keynes’s “acid” insights. Toward the end of her life, when asked by an economics student at Oxford if she would have done anything differently, she said she would have studied something more useful, like biology.

Cassidy includes a number of thinkers like Robinson, who attacked capitalism from the left. He also writes about Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman — each in his own way a critic of what turned out to be a dying order, and who went on to become part of a new establishment. Those who have predicted capitalism’s imminent collapse underestimate its ability to shape-shift into yet another configuration. But stability has always been tenuous: Resolving capitalism’s many contradictions has also meant creating new ones.

The most haunting figure in this book is an outlier: Thomas Carlyle, the 19th-century Scottish essayist, whose assumptions about both capitalism and humanity were so dark that he made no room for the possibility of social progress. He was an avowed racist and antisemite. He thought democracy was hopeless, and evinced utter contempt for “the multitude.”

But Carlyle’s unrelentingly bleak vision, his insistence on hierarchy, his veneration of strongmen, don’t look so out of place in today’s reality. Nor does his ability to attract people who should have known better. Cassidy notes that Carlyle’s admirers included Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. The Transcendentalists thought that Carlyle wanted the same future they did. They thrilled to his excoriations of a soulless “mechanical age” and “Mammon-worship.” They were willing to overlook some of his more unseemly “exaggerations,” Cassidy writes, because, discounting all evidence to the contrary, they believed “his intent was benign.”

(NY Times)

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MATCHING TEENS TO ‘GROOMERS’ WAS ONCE PART OF THIS COMPANY’S BUSINESS

A major antitrust trial takes an "ancillary" detour to a chilling tour of online life

by Matt Taibbi

A month ago, on April 14th, one of the largest antitrust trials in recent memory commenced in the Washington, D.C. courtroom of District Chief Justice James Boasberg, now famous for finding the Trump administration in contempt for violating court orders on deportations. Federal Trade Commission v. Meta Platforms, Inc. has nothing to with immigration, instead asking a novel question: did Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook/Meta operation acquire WhatsApp and Instagram for legitimate reasons, or to quash competition in search of social media monopoly?

If that question doesn’t interest you, you’d likely have been dozing when last week, on the 14th trial day, Meta Chief Information Security Officer Guy Rosen took the stand. Rosen was called by the FTC to answer questions about whether or not Facebook invested adequate resources in Instagram after its 2012 acquisition for $1 billion. In 2019, Rosen reportedly believed IG was “understaffed as an app-surface when compared to Facebook” and sought 149 more employees to handle various issues. One notable one was raised by Rosen to IG head Adam Mosseri in an email on May 16, 2018:

Harmful Behavior— e.g., grooming especially — this really worries me given we’re finding a lot of, umm, opportunity on FB, and given IG’s younger audience I bet we’ll find we have work to do there—

Say what? “Grooming— really worries me given we’re finding a lot of, um, opportunity on FB” is not a common line in a legal exhibit. Brendan Benedict, who’s covering the trial for Matt Stoller’s aptly-named and excellent Substack “Big Tech on Trial,” wrote down another reply from Rosen to the company’s head of Data Analytics: “You are correct, there is a growing realization this is underfunded. This was deliberate — I explicitly had the convo with Mark at HC planning and he thought IG has another year or two to catch up. I think we are not sure that is the case anymore.” Another email read, “IG hasn’t done much on harmful content.”

The idea that FB/IG had “work to do” on “grooming,” and that certain kinds of underfunding were “deliberate,” became more explicit when an exhibit was introduced, an internal study from the next year, 2019, titled “Inappropriate Interactions with Children on Instagram.”

To be clear from the start, the mere fact that FB/IG conducted this study showed executives were concerned about the problem, and understood there was “work to do there.” However, the study suggested not only that there was a longstanding problem with “groomers” meeting minors on IG, but that the company’s algorithms were accelerating those interactions.

One slide dropped four consecutive unsettling bullet points:

• Overall IG: 7% of all follow recommendations to adults were minors
• Groomers: 27% of all follow recommendations to groomers were minors
• We are recommending nearly 4X as many minors to groomers (nearly 2 million minors in the last 3 months)
• 22% of those recommendations resulted in a follow request

You can do the math yourself, but 22% of 2 million minors receiving follow requests from “groomers” over a 3-month period is not a small number.

Perhaps more unsettling was a slide reading, “We may be facilitating possible groomers finding young people,” adding, “IG recommended a minor— to an account engaged in groomer-esque behavior.” Additionally, there was a flow chart demonstrating the process…

https://www.racket.news/p/matching-teens-to-groomers-was-once

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“I SUSPECT ALMOST EVERY DAY that I’m living for nothing, I get depressed, and I feel self-destructive, and a lot of the time I don’t like myself. What’s more, the proximity of other humans often fills me with overwhelming anxiety, but I also feel that this precarious sentience is all we’ve got and, simplistic as it may seem, it’s a person’s duty to the potentials of his own soul to make the best of it. We’re all stuck on this often miserable earth where life is essentially tragic, but there are glints of beauty and bedrock joy that come shining through from time to precious time to remind anybody who cares to see that there is something higher and larger than ourselves. And I am not talking about your putrefying gods, I am talking about a sense of wonder about life itself and the feeling that there is some redemptive factor you must at least search for until you drop dead of natural causes.”

– Lester Bangs, Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung

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COMBUSTION

by Witold Wirpsza (translated from the Polish by Ann Frenkel and Gwido Zlatkes)

The comparison between man and candle
Has been suggested then as now:
A flame is ignited
And in the end self-annihilates.

This is libel. I am warning you.
I object.

I am neither wax nor paraffin,
Not even self-steering stearin.
I am not a mold impaled by
A cord.

I assume that I lose none of my essence
As I burn. I rather think
I expand, and when I expire
I will leave behind a terrible trove

Of flammable material, un-
Suitable for burning. It will be
Volatile. Hard. Venomous.
Nutritious. Indifferent. I am warning you!

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CONNECTION TO COMEY'S “8647”: On May 15, 2025, former FBI Director James Comey posted an Instagram photo of seashells arranged to form “8647,” which some interpreted as a cryptic message. Social media posts on X noted that May 15, 2025, was exactly 8,647 days since 9/11, suggesting Comey’s post referenced this milestone. The term “86” is slang for “kill” or “remove,” and “47” refers to Donald Trump as the 47th U.S. President, leading some to speculate the post was a veiled threat against Trump, possibly tied to 9/11’s significance. Comey deleted the post after backlash, claiming he saw the shells as a “political message” without violent intent. The FBI, Secret Service, and Department of Homeland Security are investigating, but the 9/11 connection remains speculative and unconfirmed.

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COOL?

by James Kunstler

“Cool shell formation on my beach walk,” Jim Comey, former FBI Director wrote on Instagram about the message “86 47” laid out in seashells on the sand that he came across, innocently. You’d have to ask yourself: what was “cool” about that, exactly? Especially if, as Mr. Comey claimed on X soon after, that he didn’t know what it meant. Are things that you don’t understand “cool”? Is it just “cool” to learn that you can spell stuff out with seashells? (Who knew?)

Maybe he was surprised to learn that people other than Jim Comey fans might see his cute coded clip and conclude that it wasn’t such an innocent little gag. “47,” of course, refers to Donald Trump in the cavalcade of US presidents. Among the not-strictly-fans was DNI Tulsi Gabbard, who went on TV hours later and said that Mr. Comey should go to prison for it — in so many words. You must suppose she meant after the appropriate procedures: an FBI deposition, a grand jury, an indictment, a trial. After all that, we’d probably get to the bottom of what JC meant by “cool.”

Now, it happens that in this new milieu of memes flying around every which way, the code “86 47” is not a complete mystery. It is apparently employed casually in settings where angry citizens gather to denounce the president. “86” is a term in restaurant kitchens when there is no more of an item that a waiter just brought in an order for. “Eighty-six on the monkfish, Carla,” the line-cook might yell. Apparently, mobsters like the phrase, too, for its pithiness: “Ay, somebody, go eighty-six that stronzo Rocco Vaselino, already! He ain’t paid da vig in a munt.” Soon, there will be no more of Rocco, you see. He will be food for the hellgrammites in the soil of the Jersey pine barrens. . . .

As DNI Gabbard pointed out — in case no one noticed — there have been two recent assassination attempts on Mr. Trump. It is a fact well-known to police psychologists that would-be assassins are curiously suggestible to prompts floating around in the zeitgeist. They tend to take them as commands. Go do this. And if anyone was a commanding figure, it would be Jim Comey, towering hero of the early anti-Trump resistance. Thus, it appears that Mr. Comey called for there to be no more of Mr. Trump. Not cool.

Also, not so cool, in the grand annals of the resistance, is the new book Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, by journalists (cough cough) Jake Tapper (of CNN) and Alex Thompson (Axios). The book purports to explain how the entire governance apparatus of the USA hid the mental decline of “Joe Biden,” the phantom president. Realize, please, that the news media is a vital part of that apparatus, and has been since the invention of the printing press, with its crucial role (until lately) as a regulating mechanism on the engine of public affairs.

In fact, it is precisely the role of the news media to notice things that public officials try to hide, so as to keep citizens apprised of what is really going on. And that is exactly what the news media intentionally declined to do during the four years of “Joe Biden.” But then, at least half the country, seeing “Joe Biden” in action on video, did not fail to notice his ever-worsening feeble bewilderment. Tapper and Thompson seek to shift the blame for this game of Pretend onto the gremlins behind the scenes in the White House who ran the “Joe Biden” show.

Tapper and Thompson are lying, of course, and in exactly the same brazen way as the bigwigs in the Democratic Party who sponsored this treasonous fraud. Jake Tapper, for one, stated repeatedly on-the-air from 2021 onward that “Joe Biden” was a capable and effective chief executive and denounced anybody who tried to argue otherwise. Just as Thompson, while accepting the Award for Overall Excellence at the White House Correspondents’ Annual Dinner in April, lied saying, “We, myself included, missed a lot of this story.” Really? Then what, exactly, was “excellent” about his reporting?

They also missed the story as to how the White House gremlins behind “Joe Biden” were wrecking the country with open borders, election fraud, drag queens in kindergarten, censorship, lawfare, and a colossal stream of secret grift from taxpayers through USAID-linked NGO’s to Democratic Party foot-soldiers like Stacey Abrams. The more plausible story — the truth, actually — is that the companies many reporters worked for, the old big newspapers like The New York Times and the WashPo, and the cable-news channels such as (especially) CNN and MSNBC were losing their audiences until they discovered that Trump Derangement was the only way to stave off complete failure.

Once they got going with that business model in 2016, they wrecked the news media’s credibility. And virtually everything after that has been an ongoing cover-up for their dishonorable malfeasance and the crimes of the party they fronted for. But the levers of power are in other hands now. There will be consequences for government officials who go to war against the people of this land, committing sedition and treason. Suggesting the murder of a president on social media is no light matter. By the time this blog is up, officers of the Secret Service may be visiting Mr. Comey at home. No need to batter down the front door with guns drawn, though. That would be so un-cool.

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TRUMP ON OZEMPIC: A friend of mine who is a businessman. Very, very, very top guy. Most of you would’ve heard of him. Highly neurotic. Brilliant businessman. Seriously overweight. And he takes the fat shot drug. And he called me up and says, ‘Mr. President,’ he calls me…uh…he used to call me ‘Donald,’ now he calls me ‘President.’ So that’s nice respect. But he’s a rough guy, smart guy. Very successful. Very rich. I wouldn’t even know how we would know this, but because he’s got comments. Mr. President, can I ask you a question’ What? ‘I’m in London and I just paid for this damn fat drug, I take.’ I said, It’s not working.

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LEAD STORIES, SATURDAY'S NYT

Long Drives and Short Homilies: How Father Bob Became Pope Leo

A Century-Old Romance That Gave the Pope His Family Name

Republican Revolt Reflects a Core Party Divide Over Spending and Debt

Secret Service Questions James Comey Over Social Media Post About Trump

Trump’s Push to Defund Harvard Prompts Clash Over Veteran Suicide Research

Inside the I.V.F. Deliberations at the White House as Key Report Nears

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Biden’s hubris is symptomatic of bigger failures in the DNC & American political system. Democrats won’t be able to rally in 2026 or 2028 without some serious and honest self-reflection and some serious and honest reforms -- like younger candidates and leadership (people who can make a good case they’ll be around to see the consequences of their legislation in ten or twenty years); like candidates who aren’t exclusively center-right; like candidates who win primaries instead of being anointed. And then maybe, just maybe, we can make some even infinitesimal modicum of progress towards more equitable taxation and a living wage, universal health care, gun control, global warming, consumer protections, a legal immigration system that works, renewing infrastructure, improving education…

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HOLLYWOOD & THE MOVIES OF THE 50s

by Geoffrey O’Brien

At the end of World War II, regular moviegoing was an ingrained American habit, and the studio system sustaining it was to all appearances solidly grounded; in 1948 about 90 million people a week went to the pictures.

Then came a convergence of troubles that initiated a shift of fortune. Within two years that number had declined by a third, and at decade’s end by more than half. The most obvious culprit was television, whose rollout, delayed by the war, was soon taking hold at the rate of 100,000 sets sold a week. Further disruption came from the House Un-American Activities Committee and the blacklisting and “graylisting” that followed its hearings in 1947 on Communist influence in the film industry. Concurrently, the Supreme Court’s antitrust decree in 1948 divested Hollywood studios of the theater chains that had long enabled them to dictate terms for screenings of their movies.

This erosion of top-down control was compounded by the growing clout of actors and their agencies, to the enragement of 20th Century-Fox’s head, Darryl F. Zanuck, who complained, “Last week, in this office, a goddamn agent started to tell me how a script should be rewritten,” and MGM’s Nicholas Schenck, who said, “We took Gable from a nobody, we lavished him with lessons and publicity… Who taught him how to walk? Who straightened his teeth and capped them into that smile?”

And yet in the 1950s Hollywood “released more great films than in any other ten-year cycle in the history of American movies,” in the estimation of the prolific film and theater historian Foster Hirsch. It’s a view I too incline toward, though it is shared by little more than 3% of respondents to a recent poll.

While Hirsch’s ‘Hollywood and the Movies of the Fifties’ is essentially celebratory, he feels the need to push back against “glib, patronizing, uninformed stereotyping”-stereotyping not just of the movies but of the era — and to defend films he fears might now be “ideologically scarred.”

The suggestion of a split reaction, even a division of loyalties between past and present selves, mirrors in a way the internal struggles suggested by so many of the decade’s movies, which bear the traces of unseen combat and whose characters may be at war with themselves as much as with others. The system producing them was being shaken up by rapid change on all levels, from the power of studio chiefs to the increasingly influential tastes of drive-in audiences, who might well prefer ‘Attack of the Crab Monsters’ (1957) to ‘The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit’ (1956). Instability gave an unpredictable edge to the most minor western or crime picture. The old order persisted in many ways — above all in a magisterial command of technical resources and the inherited devices of classic Hollywood style — while the once broadly homogeneous audience splintered into distinct and less reliable subsets.

(New York Review of Books)

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THE CAPTAIN

by Leonard Cohen

Now the Captain called me to his bed
He fumbled for my hand
"Take these silver bars," he said
"I'm giving you command."
"Command of what, there's no one here
There's only you and me --
All the rest are dead or in retreat
Or with the enemy."

"Complain, complain, that's all you've done
Ever since we lost
If it's not the Crucifixion
Then it's the Holocaust."
"May Christ have mercy on your soul
For making such a joke
Amid these hearts that burn like coal
And the flesh that rose like smoke."

"I know that you have suffered, lad
But suffer this awhile:
Whatever makes a soldier sad
Will make a killer smile."
"I'm leaving, Captain, I've got to go
There's blood upon your hand
But tell me, Captain, if you know
Of a decent place to stand."

"There is no decent place to stand
In a massacre;
But if a woman take your hand
Then go and stand with her."
"I left a wife in Tennessee
And my baby in Saigon --
I risked my life, but not to hear
Some country-western song."

"Ah but if you cannot raise your love
To a very high degree
Then you're just the man I've been thinking of --
So come and stand with me."
"Your standing days are done," I cried
"You'll rally me no more
I don't even know what side
We fought on, or what for."

"I'm on the side that's always lost
Against the side of Heaven
I'm on the side of snake-eyes tossed
Against the side of seven
And I've read the Bill of Human Rights
And some of it was true
But there wasn't any burden left
So I'm laying it on you."

Now the Captain he was dying
But the Captain wasn't hurt
The silver bars were in my hand
I pinned them to my shirt

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