Mendocino County Today: Tuesday 5/20/2025

WARM AND DRY conditions expected through Wednesday as high pressure builds into the eastern Pacific. Upper level disturbances possible late this week and weekend with cooling and potential for light rain. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): Nothing wrecks a good forecast like a fog bank lurking just offshore. I'll go with clear & breezy again for today's forecast with a bit more confidence per the satellite shot. Word on the street is mostly clear the rest of the week but?

JESSICA SURRYHNE

This is a bit embarrassing, but our community is small, and I'm going out on a limb of hope.

I have recently had a turn of bad luck and lost my phone. It was last seen Sunday night at 9:30 p.m. on Hwy 128 between just before the fairgrounds and Anderson Valley's Market; it may have been flung from the car's roof. This is a long shot, but if anyone has found it, I would be ever so grateful to have it back. It is an Android phone with a darker blue case and a sticker of a baby dinosaur on the back. If you found it while it was still on, the home lock screen would be visible; there would be a picture of my sons. Thank you! Feeling hopeful…

CARTEL-RELATED FATAL HULLS VALLEY SHOOT OUT

On Wednesday, May 14, 2025 at approximately 9:01 P.M., Deputies with the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office were dispatched to a 911 hang-up in the area north of Covelo.

The 911 caller was an unidentified male who advised he needed help for a friend and later disconnected. Utilizing the systems and technology from the Sheriff’s Office Communications Center, the dispatcher was able to trace the 911 call to the 82000 block of Mina Road in Covelo.

Sheriff’s Deputies responded to the area of the 911 hang-up near Covelo and overheard radio traffic of a Deputy in Ukiah being dispatched to the Adventist Health Ukiah Valley Emergency Room for an adult-male subject with possible gunshot wounds. This information was received on Wednesday, May 14, 2025 at approximately 10:55 P.M.

Deputies extensively checked the area of Mina Road for the 911 hang-up. While on Mina Road, Deputies were contacted by subjects in a vehicle who reported an unresponsive male was located a short distance away on Hulls Valley Road.

Deputies responded to the area of Hulls Valley Road, approximately 1 mile from the intersection with Mina Road, and located an unresponsive adult male on the roadway near two vehicles that were unoccupied along the road. This area was determined to be the 23000 block of Hulls Valley Road.

Deputies checked the unresponsive adult male and determined he was deceased from apparent gunshot wounds at 00:42 A.M. on Thursday, May 15, 2025. There were multiple firearms located in the vicinity of the decedent and expended cartridge casings on the ground. There was also blood evidence located along the ground and Deputies followed the blood trail for approximately ¼ mile where they located a large marijuana grow with hoop houses and several camp trailers.

As Deputies continued to investigate the apparent homicide in Covelo, other Deputies responded to the Emergency Room in Ukiah to further investigate the subject with gunshot wounds who was receiving medical treatment. Deputies interviewed the adult male with gunshot wounds and the subject who transported him to the hospital. Based on these interviews, Deputies determined this investigation was related to the shooting incident and deceased subject located by Sheriff’s Office personnel on Hulls Valley Road. Due to the subject’s significant injuries, the adult male with gunshot wounds at the Adventist Health Ukiah Valley Emergency Room was transported to an out-of-county hospital for further medical treatment.

Sheriff’s Office Detectives were contacted and briefed on both incidents as they were determined to be related. Detectives prepared a search warrant for the marijuana grow property on Hulls Valley Road and the shooting scene along Hulls Valley Road. Additional Sheriff’s Office personnel and Investigators with the Mendocino County District Attorney’s Office were requested to respond to Covelo and assist with the investigation.

Deputies canvassed the area of Mina Road and Hulls Valley Road in an attempt to find possible witnesses or other involved subjects. On Thursday, May 15, 2025 at approximately 8:15 A.M., a Deputy located another adult male subject on Hulls Valley Road who was approximately four miles from the intersection with Mina Road. The adult male had numerous apparent gunshot wounds and required emergency medical treatment. An air ambulance was requested, and the adult male was airlifted to a different out-of-county hospital for emergency medical treatment. Basic statements from the subject indicated he suffered gunshot wounds during the same shooting incident on Hulls Valley Road.

The two subjects with gunshot wounds who were transported to different out-of-county hospitals are in stable condition and have been interviewed regarding this ongoing homicide investigation.

Attempts are being made to positively identify the adult male decedent located on Hulls Valley Road. Once the decedent has been identified and their legal next-of-kin has been notified of their death, additional information can be released regarding their identity. A post-mortem examination is being scheduled for the decedent. The official cause and manner of death will not be released until the pathologist completes their examination and reports.

During this investigation, Deputies uncovered evidence which is indicative of illegal marijuana cultivation and sales under the control of a drug trafficking organization. Additional information related to the suspected drug trafficking organization will not be released to maintain the integrity of this investigation.

Anyone with information related to this investigation is requested to contact the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office Communications Center at 707-463-4086 (option 1). Information can also be provided anonymously by calling the non-emergency tip-line at 707-234-2100.

MENDOCINO OFFICIALS BRACE FOR PG&E’S ABANDONMENT OF THE POTTER VALLEY PROJECT

by Monica Huettl

At its May 8 meeting, the Mendocino County Inland Water and Power Commission (IWPC) focused once again on PG&E’s planned withdrawal from the Potter Valley Project and the region’s efforts to secure long-term water supplies. Central to the discussion was the New Eel Russian Facility (NERF), a proposed infrastructure project that would maintain Eel River water diversions into the Russian River after PG&E’s exit.…

https://mendofever.com/2025/05/19/mendocino-officials-brace-for-pges-abadonment-of-the-potter-valley-project/

HERE'S TO YOU, L.E.

Editor,

I hope this letter finds you well. I am writing to express my heartfelt gratitude for the exceptional work your team displayed in a recent situation that i was involved in at 3900 North State. The professionalism and respect your team demonstrated throughout the situation truly impressed me.

In what was a highly stressful and chaotic situation, your officers managed to maintain a calm and respectful demeanor, making sure that the truth was heard. It is clear that your agency is committed to justice and public safety, and I appreciate how you prioritized the well-being of everyone involved.

I am grateful to have been treated with the utmost respect and for the way my concerns were heard. It is reassuring to know that our local law enforcement agencies are dedicated to serving and protecting our community with such proffessionalism, kindness and understanding.

Thank you once again for your hard work and dedication. You are doing a great job, and I sincerely appreciate all that you do for our community. I would like to especially thanks to The Mendocino Co Sheriff's Dept.

Warm regards,

Tona Harden

Ukiah

KIRK VODOPALS

Right To Rescue

Drove through Petaluma Friday evening on our way to Novato for girls basketball tournament.

On passing Petaluma I saw a large billboard depicting a young girl holding a chicken in her arm with the statement below: “Should she got to prison for rescuing this chicken?”

https://righttorescue.com

My initial reaction was, Yes: you’d both be safer there.

Saw the billboard on the way home and felt instant relief of returning to the Mendo bubble as I hit Cloverdale onto the 128. Society is crazy.

FAN'S NOTE: Since the AVA moved to online only, I unfortunately read much less in each issue. My fault, just can’t sit down with it the way I could with the print edition! But in any case, I try to always read the Board of Supes articles, I’ve followed them for years, and it’s strangely fascinating. Makes me see the local politics are really just the same as those in high places, only in microcosm. Mark, your writing makes it worth reading, and I thank you for slogging through all these dull and irritating meetings for so many years!! I’ll keep reading as long as you can stand covering the Board meetings!

DRIVE, DON’T VAPE: MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND ROAD SAFETY REMINDER

According to new research from vape experts Provape, drivers could face hefty fines if caught using e-cigarettes behind the wheel due to existing road safety laws.

With Memorial Day Weekend approaching, drivers are urged to stay extra vigilant and avoid distractions like vaping behind the wheel.

Although there’s no specific U.S. federal law banning vaping while driving, the physical distraction of handling a vape device and the potential visibility obstruction from vapor clouds could give police officers grounds to issue penalties under current legislation.

The visible vapor from e-cigarettes can momentarily obstruct a driver's vision, especially in enclosed vehicles that lack adequate ventilation.

Many drivers remain unaware that vaping while driving could be classified as distracted driving, carrying penalties of up to $2,500 and possible jail time. The penalties depend on the state and how many previous offenses you have committed.

Drivers also face an avoidable risk with their car insurance coverage. Car insurance companies may reject any claims resulting from vaping while driving.

A less obvious risk is that e-cigarette vapor leaves a residue on windshields over time, creating a film that can impair visibility, particularly in low light or bright sunlight. Drivers who vape in their car need to use a proper automotive glass cleaner weekly to help maintain clear visibility.

Joe Tucker, Chief Operating Officer at Provape, commented: "Vaping while driving isn't specifically banned by law, but it falls under distracted driving regulations if it impacts your ability to control the vehicle safely.

“Police officers enforce road safety based on driver behavior rather than specific activities. Officers don't need a law explicitly mentioning vaping to issue penalties if they see it affecting your driving.Â

"Reaching for your device, pressing buttons, and the act of vaping itself all take your attention from the road. Drivers should pull over safely if they need to vape rather than risking both road safety and potential fines.

"Many vapers develop habits of using their devices almost subconsciously and might not even realize they're creating a hazardous situation."

According to CDC data, the percentage of adults who used electronic cigarettes increased from 4.5% in 2019 to 6.5% in 2023.

In 2021, 42.7% of adults aged 45 years and older reported both vaping and smoking cigarettes.

WHEN PINCHES & HASCHAK DISCUSSED THE CEO/CAO QUESTION

by Mark Scaramella

Back in September of 2018 John Pinches and John Haschak were heading into a run-off for the Third District Supervisor seat being vacated by Georgeanne Croskey (a Willits veterinarian who resigned to follow her cop-husband to Ohio after “serving” unmemorably as Third District Supervisor for a few months after Tom Woodhouse resigned for mental health reasons) when they held a debate moderated by Jim Shields of the Mendocino Observer.

Shields asked:

“Ever since the Supervisors adopted the Chief Executive model of government in 2005, the supervisors have seemingly morphed into rubberstamps, ceding most of their authority and initiative to the Chief Executive Officer, thus creating what appears to be a classic case of the tail wagging the dog. The problem with the situation is the Chief Executive Officer is not elected and is not accountable to voters while the supervisors seemingly conduct themselves as if they are not responsible for anything once they ratify the CEO’s proposals. One of the many examples of this dysfunctional process is the recent consolidation of the library, museum and county parks. What are your views of the Chief Executive Officer of government versus the previous Administrative Officer model of government and what actions would you take to rectify, change or repeal the current CEO model of government?

Haschak: “I have looked at the ordinance that created the CAO model and I have looked at the ordinance that created the CEO model. The difference is with the CEO model we are seeing that the power for hiring, firing, discipline… and all that for departments heads lies within the CEO model and that’s where people are feeling disfranchised. I think your question is right on. We need to change this system because people don’t feel like there’s accountability in our government. I think that especially with the Cultural Services Agency proposal, and with the 40% raise that the Supervisors gave themselves and then CEO recommends to the Supervisors that they should get a 40% and then they both go, ‘Oh that’s a great idea — thank you so much and what else can we do for you?’ I think there is a dysfunction going on there and it needs to be stopped. That’s why I said I won’t take that raise and we need to look at what is our democracy and all of that and electing people who are accountable to the citizenry and the people have someone they can go and say, I have this problem; we need to get it fixed. Not, Oh, let me talk to the CEO, let me see if the CEO will let me talk to somebody else. We need to change that model and we need to do it as soon as possible. That would be first when I get in as supervisor. Thank you.”

Pinches: “First of all, I’ve operated under both models. In the 90s we had the CAO model and then we changed it to the CEO model. Frankly there’s very little difference in reality. What you’re seeing in the last year is a lot of criticism of the CEO because people feel she’s taking charge. Well, I don’t wanna sit here and be critical of people I will have to sit on the same board with. But frankly, some of them are just lazy. When Supervisors don’t step up and pay attention to their job the slack gets picked up by the CEO and then he or she in some cases takes the ball. I guarantee you — and I’ve been following this really closely even though I haven’t been on the Board for almost four years now — there is no direction the CEO is giving that isn’t coming from the supervisors. A lot of these decisions like hiring department heads and things like that are actually done in closed session. The discussion of the Cultural Services Agency was done in closed session and one of the supervisors, said, ‘Why don’t we combine them,’ and later she just brought that out under open session. But you remember that when she brought it up in open session it was totally criticized by the public. But then they went back and they formed it under the budget process so it wasn’t really done in public. It was kind of a crazy deal. If I had been there that would never have happened. I’m telling you, for the twelve years I was on the board. I don’t think there was one article that was wrote about how the Board wasn’t in charge and the CEO was. That was because when I was there the Board of Supervisors was in charge. Period. I’ll make sure that happens again. As far as the CEO or the CAO model, that’s very little change as to who’s sitting in that seat. You’ve gotta be strong. You’ve gotta pay attention. You’ve gotta know what you’re talking about.”

Unfortunately, Haschak was elected by a small margin and none of what he said he’d do happened — he never proposed an agenda item for any of it. Without Pinches, as Pinches predicted, the Board slid back to the wimpy, weak, lazy, ill-informed rubberstamp that Jim Shields asked about in his opening question and that Pinches described.

JOHNNY PINCHES, comment line Redheaded Blackbelt:

Johnny Pinches was sui generis (one of a kind) and truly irreplaceable. It’s a travesty that clowns like Ted Williams and John Haschak have destroyed Mendo County finances but have the gall to comment on Johnny Pinches’ budget acumen — they should keep quiet and hang their heads in shame.

After the 2020 census Williams and Haschak conspired to improve their re-election chances — Haschak re-districted Pinches out of the Third District and Williams got rid of Hopland — and that’s how you enshrine mediocrity in government.

“We won’t see another Johnny Pinches in our lifetimes.” — Jim Shields,

Johnny reflects the character of his whole family. June (Pinches) Sizemore and Jimmy Pinches are his sister and brother.

I had the opportunity to work with him as a refrigeration contractor on his many retail projects. He was a partner with the Geigers. Later he built Park-n-Take-It, and I did some work for him in Willits on the place they now call “Brown’s Corner.” He was always fair and honest.

Both of our families have deep history in Northern Mendocino County.

Johnny was Northern Mendocino. We have never had such good representation, and probably never will again.

— Ernie Branscomb

In the above vintage photo, Johnny was not only watching a train, he was watching the last train to roll down those tracks. Very near to the point that they drove the Golden Spike on October 23rd 1914: North Western Pacific Railway drove the Golden Spike at Cain Rock (east of Garberville) connecting Sausalito and Eureka by rail.

So Long Old Boy. Thanks for connecting us to yesterday’s stories.

Best supervisor I ever had. He stood up for the rural folk of northern Mendocino County. I sure hope we find somebody who can come close sometime soon. Supervisor Pinches would have spoken out and plainly about the corruption and chaos in our County politics today. Heck they wouldn’t even have tried it on his watch! RIP. And Thank You

My rancher friends are treasures of knowledge and uncommon sense. So sorry about Pinches’ passing.

The article (on Kymkemp.com) interviews three people Johnny didn’t exactly have a high opinion of.

“All them helicopters have done is put the price of marijuana higher than the price of gold.”

Johnny was respected by all segments of his district. He said he could have formulated a working marijuana policy in Mendo on the back of an envelope. It’s too bad they didn’t let him do it! — On the back of a napkin” to be precise. RIP John Pinches.

LINDA MORALES:

My deepest condolences to John’s Family and friends. I will miss this man who cared a lot for the people of Mendocino County and how we were represented in each of the districts. I worked in the same Department many years ago with John’s Dad Sully when he was one of the County Trappers. John Pinches and his Dad Sully were what Mendocino County once was, Cattle and Sheep Ranchers and Farmers, logging and loggers. John and his Dad raised some very fine working stock dogs. The Pinches family cared a great deal for the district John represented and so did John. Unfortunately Mendocino County did lose a man who used to show up at the board meetings with his rifle in his gun rack in his pick up, something we don’t enjoy anymore. I always liked that about him, he was real. He didn’t care what anyone said about his down to earth ways or his lifestyle or what he had to say. He was one of us who worked the land in an honest way, conserved the water and was a good steward of the land. John Pinches tried to saved our water and ranching. He had a great sense humor and would return your calls made to him concerning his district any time of the day or night. He simply took time to talk to the County Employees if someone needed help. He listened and took time to understand the background of the problem. His down to earth common sense regarding what Mendocino County needed to preserve and protect was always on his mind. I will miss you my friend, until we meet again. Keeping your family in my prayers, Rest in Peace, John, and thank you for everything.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Monday, May 19, 2025

JOSE ACOSTA-MURO, 42, Covelo. Domestic battery.

DAVID AVALOS, 30, Willits. Suspended license for DUI, probation violation.

ALEX BARAJAS, 21, Fort Bragg. Stolen property.

ERIC FONTAINE, 33, Fallbrook/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

TAMARA GARCIA, 31, Sacramento/Ukiah. Recklessly causing fire.

ROGER HENRY JR., 54, Willits. Under influence, controlled substance, felon-addict with concealed, loaded firearm, paraphernalia, ammo possession by prohibited person, probation revocation.

DONALD SHARP, 38, Hopland. Parole violation, resisting.

RAHUL SHUKLA, 33, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. Under influence, felon-addict with firearm.

KEVIN VALDOVINO-SANCHEZ, 23, Covelo. Marijuana transportation.

ELEA VANWORMER, 58, Fort Bragg. Domestic battery.

JOSE VEGA-SANCHEZ, 39, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

101, AN ON-LINE COMMENT:

I came from SF this weekend and once I got past Santa Rosa, I counted no less than 20 sports cars (most of them anyway) doing well over 100 between there and Scotia. 5 CHP seen the entire way, and 2 of them might have been the same one. Half of the speeders were the newer corvettes, a few Porsches a yellow Mclaren by Hopland and one guy on a motorcycle with a rider on back easily going over 100 lane-splitting everybody by Willits. Party lights were not seen at any time following them or pulled over, and I don’t think any of the LEOs would have had a chance.

PG&E, AN ON-LINE COMMENT:

So I just got my new bill. It has changed. Now it shows clearly that I use 59.00$ of power and pay 159.00$ to have PGE send it to me.

PG&E CEO Patricia Pope made $51.2 million last year including a bonus of $6.6 million. Representative Josh Harder announced that he has introduced a new bill, the No Bonuses for Executives Act which would bar PG&E from issuing executive bonuses and instead, investing in the company’s rapidly aging infrastructure. PG&E CEO, Patricia Poppe, made $51.2 million last year including a bonus of $6.6 million. Other PG&E executives made a combined $15 million in the same year. This comes as Rep. Harder pushes PG&E to suspend its tiered pricing model which has led Central Valley families to owe $1,000 or more on their monthly electric bills.

THE SALAD BAR

In front of a guest computer in the downstairs Fabrication Lab area of the Martin Luther King Jr. Public Library in Washington, D.C. This follows a satisfactory morning of picking up litter beginning at the Adam’s Place Homeless Shelter, all the way down Queen’s Chapel Road on both sides, to the B2 Anacostia bus stop, paying particular attention to the detritus left by the club kids who visit Echostage and Karma. And then a scrumptious lunch at Whole Foods from the salad bar was enjoyed. Moving on to a coffee and pastry soon. Identified with the nameless formless Absolute! Otherwise, we need a brand new civilization based on the “Immortal Atman” (Look it up if necessary. The period of free links is over.) Am still at the homeless shelter in northeast Washington, D.C. My father once said: “It doesn’t make any difference how much good you do, Craig, because most people are selfish and stupid”. My reply was: “Regardless, I will continue doing good”. I accept the fact that the spiritually lost American experiment with freedom and democracy does not particularly value me. Clearly, if it were otherwise, there would be enthusiasm for my receiving money and housing. But there isn’t any. The tragedy is thine only. ;-(

Craig Louis Stehr, [email protected]

GIANTS NO-HIT INTO 6th, fall to K.C. in 1st loss in a Robbie Ray start

by Susan Slusser

San Francisco Giants pitcher Robbie Ray throws against the Kansas City Royals during the fifth inning of a baseball game in San Francisco, Monday, May 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Something had to give Monday at Oracle Park, with the San Francisco Giants’ perfect record in Robbie Ray starts butting up against the team’s rough time against opposing left-handers.

And then Kansas City starter Kris Bubic — Cupertino native, alum of Archbishop Mitty High School and Stanford and a Giants fan growing up — held the first 19 hitters of the game hitless. And while Ray worked seven scoreless innings, the Royals got a two-run homer from Vinnie Pasquantino in the eighth en route to a 3-1 victory in the opener of the three-game series.

Pasquantino’s home run off Tyler Rogers ended a string of 14 scoreless innings from the bullpen, which entered the day with the lowest ERA (2.39) and WHIP (1.04) in the majors.

The Giants are now 3-11 in games in which opponents start lefties, the second-worst mark in NL after the Rockies’ 1-11 mark.

Catcher Sam Huff said the team doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about that, but added, “We’re trying to win. It’s just timing, we’re not really worried about it.”

“We’ve been a little better, we’ve won a couple games against lefties,” manager Bob Melvin. “Regardless, it was going to be tougher against him today. … We’ve seen some good pitchers this year, that was right up there.”

Bubic entered the game with a 1.66 ERA, fifth best in the majors. He was zipping along, allowing only two walks until Wilmer Flores reached in the sixth only because second baseman Michael Massey slipped while ranging for Flores’ grounder. Initially, the play was ruled an error, but it was correctly reversed the next inning based on the fielder’s tumble, so no more no-no.

San Francisco had not lost in any of Ray’s first nine starts, and while he gave up his share of hits, the Royals only got one man past first base in his seven innings, as he helped himself with a double play ball in the third and picked off pinch runner Dairon Blanco in the seventh. The latter got K.C. manager Matt Quatraro ejected for arguing Ray had balked. Ray’s four pickoffs are tied for most in the majors.

“I felt really good with everything,” Ray said. “That’s probably the best my stuff has been all year, I felt really confident with every pitch and every count. I’m just looking to build off that one.”

The Giants finally got a little threat going against Bubic in the seventh when Willy Adames walked and Casey Schmitt doubled to left. But when Tyler Fitzgerald lined out softly to shortstop, Adames was off third just enough to get tagged out on the inning-ending double play. “He’s going on contact,” Melvin said. “Anything hit to the left side of the diamond, it can be really tough to get back.”

Bubic’s seven scoreless innings lowered his ERA to 1.47, and his May ERA is 0.36, best in the majors.

Daniel Lynch IV, another lefty, opened the eighth for Kansas City and Huff and Heliot Ramos knocked one-out singles. John Schreiber took over and struck out Flores before Jung Hoo Lee ripped a double to right to trim Kansas City’s lead to one. Matt Chapman popped up foul behind the plate to end the rally. The Giants’ third baseman went 0-for-4, his average dropping to .216.

Jordan Hicks made his first appearance in relief this season, pitching the ninth and throwing hard, registering over 100 mph three times, but he allowed two hits, a walk and a run as the Giants lost a chance to tie the Dodgers top the division.

Hayden Birdsong, who supplanted Hicks in the rotation, will start Tuesday for the Giants, shifting over from his excellent work in the bullpen, where he put up a 2.31 ERA. He threw 65 pitches his last time out so potentially could go 75-80 pitches against the Royals. Kansas City has a right-hander on the mound, Michael Lorenzen.

(sfchronicle.com)

YOGI BERRA'S TOP 35 QUOTES:

“It ain’t over till it’s over.”
“It’s deja vu all over again.”
“I usually take a two-hour nap from 1 to 4.”
“Never answer an anonymous letter.”
“We made too many wrong mistakes.”
“You can observe a lot by watching.”
“The future ain’t what it used to be.”
“If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.”
“It gets late early out here.”
“If the people don’t want to come out to the ballpark, nobody’s going to stop them.”
“Baseball is 90 percent mental. The other half is physical.”
“Pair up in threes.”
“Why buy good luggage, you only use it when you travel.”
“Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”
“All pitchers are liars or crybabies.”
“A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.”
“Bill Dickey is learning me his experience.”
“He hits from both sides of the plate. He’s amphibious.”
“I always thought that record would stand until it was broken.”
“I can see how he (Sandy Koufax) won 25 games. What I don’t understand is how he lost five.”
“I don’t know (if they were men or women fans running naked across the field). They had bags over their heads.”
“I’m a lucky guy and I’m happy to be with the Yankees. And I want to thank everyone for making this night necessary.”
“I’m not going to buy my kids an encyclopedia. Let them walk to school like I did.”
“In baseball, you don’t know nothing.”
“I never blame myself when I’m not hitting. I just blame the bat and if it keeps up, I change bats. After all, if I know it isn’t my fault that I’m not hitting, how can I get mad at myself?”
“I never said most of the things I said.”
“It ain’t the heat, it’s the humility.”
“I think Little League is wonderful. It keeps the kids out of the house.”
“I wish everybody had the drive he (Joe DiMaggio) had. He never did anything wrong on the field. I’d never seen him dive for a ball, everything was a chest-high catch, and he never walked off the field.”
“So I’m ugly. I never saw anyone hit with his face.”
“Take it with a grin of salt.”
(On the 1973 Mets) “We were overwhelming underdogs.”
“The towels were so thick there I could hardly close my suitcase.”
“You should always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise, they won’t come to yours.”
“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

FIDO'S DOPE

by Lester Black

California regulators are planning to ban animal cannabis products from having more than 1 milligram of THC, a proposal that veterinarians say would make the state’s market more dangerous for dogs and cats.

Dr. Gary Richter, an Oakland veterinarian, called the proposed policy a “step backwards” because the strict rules would effectively eliminate most animal-focused products from dispensaries.

“I think what’s going to happen is you’re going to see very few products specifically for pets in a dispensary,” Richter said. That may prompt pet owners to use products designed for humans instead, which can be “dangerous” if animals are given more cannabis than a veterinarian would’ve recommended, he explained.

There’s increasing evidence that medical cannabis can offer “significant therapeutic potential” to treat a wide range of animal health problems, from seizures to pain and anxiety, according to a 2024 article in the Canadian Veterinary Journal. Cannabis products for animals often contain only CBD, a nonintoxicating cannabis compound, but Richter said some pets can benefit from having THC, an intoxicant found in cannabis, to treat more serious problems.

The Department of Cannabis Control presented the proposed regulations in a rulemaking announcement on May 9. The agency justified the near-ban on THC in animal products by saying that while THC “appears to be well-tolerated in healthy dogs,” there is still a risk that animal consumption of THC “may result in acute toxic harm, adverse effects, and death.”

Richter said the agency’s statement is a misunderstanding of the current science.

“The truth is that in appropriate doses, THC is not toxic for pets and can be very, very beneficial from a medical standpoint. And an ever-growing body of research bears this out,” Richter said. “Like many other drugs and pharmaceuticals, when used appropriately, these things can be incredibly helpful from a medical perspective, and when used inappropriately, they can be dangerous.”

Dr. Trina Hazzah, the president of the Veterinary Cannabis Society, which Dr. Richter is also a member of, said in an email to SFGATE the Department of Cannabis Control’s proposal disregards the scientific evidence. The 1 milligram THC limit “undermines legitimate medical options for California dogs and cats struggling with cancer, arthritis, seizures, and neurological conditions,” she said.

The proposed regulations apply only to products that specifically say on their packaging or marketing that they are created for animals. That appears to exempt products like VetCBD, a California cannabis company founded by Dr. Tim Shu, a former veterinarian licensed in California who has since retired from clinical practice. The company’s high CBD and low THC tinctures, which can contain up to 50 milligrams of THC and 1,000 milligrams of CBD per package, are widely recognized for treating dogs, but the product packaging does not mention animals of any kind, nor does the company’s website.

Shu did not respond to questions asking how the proposed policy would affect his company but said in a written statement that the company looks forward to working “with the DCC to ensure all Californians have safe, reliable, legal access to the cannabis products they rely on.”

The Department of Cannabis Control is now accepting comments and is scheduled to have a public hearing for the rules on June 24. Moorea Warren, an agency spokesperson, said in an email to SFGATE that the rules are “informed by robust public discussion and based on strong scientific evidence.”

(SF Chronicle)

THE COYOTES OF SAN FRANCISCO

After a long absence from the city, the animals have become ubiquitous again. Some residents find them delightful, but others view them with disdain.

by Heather Knight& Loren Elliott

Coyotes can sometimes be seen roaming in cities around the country, including Chicago and New York. But in San Francisco, they have become ubiquitous, and the tension between humans and coyotes is growing. (Matt Knoth / Shutterstock)

They walk along busy San Francisco streets. In Chinatown plazas. Across the paths of Muni buses.

One was found dozing in a laundromat.

Some people adore them, and coyote mania has seeped into the city’s quirky culture. Others despise them and have called for their eradication, especially after one lunged at children and killed small dogs. Many people simply wonder where they all came from in the first place.

Dozens of coyotes live in San Francisco, with small packs controlling specific territories like mob families. Golden Gate Park is home to two clans, with the 19th Avenue thoroughfare apparently serving as their dividing line. Other coyotes lay claim to parks, canyons, hills and golf courses that dot the urban landscape.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said a coyote had settled into the backyard of his mansion and lounged on his patio furniture. San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy was filming a John Deere commercial in the city last year when he spotted a woman walking with her child and dog, unaware that a coyote was trailing them.

“I screamed, ‘Yo, there is a coyote!’” Purdy recalled later on ESPN. “That thing went running off.”

How Did They Return?

It was not always like this.

Coyotes are native to California and were widespread in San Francisco in the early 1900s, but residents considered them a part of the Wild West that needed to be removed. They vanished after a government-sponsored campaign that encouraged residents to poison or shoot the animals.

More than 75 years passed before coyotes reemerged in the city in the early 2000s. It is unclear how or why they returned, but blood samples point to a fascinating theory.

San Francisco is surrounded on three sides by water, so one might assume that the coyotes returned through the fourth side, by way of the southern hills that run down the spine of the peninsula toward Silicon Valley.

But scientists found that the DNA of the first arrivals did not match that of coyotes to the south. Instead, it matched the DNA of coyotes found to the north, beyond the strait and bay that separate the city from Marin County.

“Did they walk over the Golden Gate Bridge?” asked Christine Wilkinson, a carnivore ecologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “That’s my top theory.”

Once the first coyotes returned to the city, she said, they probably howled to attract others to follow.

“Coyotes will be where they want to be,” Wilkinson said.

Their numbers in the city reached about 100, or roughly two per square mile, several years ago and have held steady since. People began to notice them more often during the pandemic lockdown, and suddenly, it seemed as if the coyotes were everywhere.

The animals are depicted in several murals around the city. The San Francisco Standard, a local news site, included coyotes alongside Stephen Curry and Mark Zuckerberg in its new list of the city’s power players.

Janet Kessler, a self-taught advocate known as “the Coyote Lady,” regularly gives talks about the animals to packed audiences at local libraries, and she is convinced that most San Franciscans are awed by the creatures.

“I talk to a lot of people in the parks,” she said, “and 95% are thrilled at seeing the coyotes.”

But the coyotes’ encroachment on city living has angered some residents.

At a summer camp held near a coyote den in Golden Gate Park last year, an animal bit a 5-year-old on her backside, forcing her to get stitches. In response, federal agents shot three coyotes in one family there.

Elsewhere, some neighbors were furious when athletic fields and a dog park temporarily closed because coyotes were roaming on them.

But the most outrage came from people at Crissy Field, a popular bayside beach and park, who made up to 10 reports a day of a very aggressive coyote.

On The Hunt

On an unusually warm night in October, a small crew of scientists and federal agents stood at San Francisco’s northern edge, straining to find their target.

The Golden Gate Bridge stood to their left. Alcatraz to their right. Carrying a .22-caliber rifle with a silencer and peering through thermal scopes and binoculars, the agents eyed raccoons foraging in the marsh, geese migrating across the bay and barn owls flying over Crissy Field.

The team’s mark, however, remained elusive. They were after a male coyote, a yearling who had grown far too bold. He had killed at least three small dogs and lunged at children on a school outing.

The hunters were determined to make this night his last, but the apex predator had other ideas.

Generally speaking, the problem, scientists say, is not the coyotes of San Francisco. It is the humans.

Fishermen leave bait on piers, and picnickers leave scraps in parks. Trash cans spill over with detritus that the coyotes relish. Over time, the coyotes have come to associate humans with food.

Another problem, scientists say, is that people let their small dogs off leash even in known coyote territory.

Christopher Schell, an assistant professor and urban ecologist who runs a lab studying city-dwelling carnivores at the University of California, Berkeley, said that San Francisco would be far worse off without coyotes.

“They keep the rest of the ecosystem in check,” he said.

Without them, rats and the diseases they carry would surge, Schell said. They also help control the feral cat population, protecting birds, reptiles and insects.

But coexisting can be difficult. San Francisco’s Animal Care and Control was besieged with calls about the dangerous encounters with the problematic Crissy Field animal.

That coyote still haunts Michelle Sheppard, a longtime city resident and nurse at the University of California, San Francisco.

She was walking Poseidon, her 8-pound puppy, in late September. She let him roam free at the beach, where off-leash dogs are allowed, but made sure he was close by.

“All of a sudden I hear a yelp. I turned around, and a coyote had him in his mouth,” she recalled.

“I was screaming like a crazy lady,” she said. “‘A coyote just took my dog!’”

She dashed after the coyote and finally caught up to him. It was far too late. Poseidon died soon after.

‘It’s not the coyote’s fault’

Back on that October night, the hunters’ goal was to kill the dangerous coyote and then preserve his brain to determine whether he had suffered from any diseases that might have explained his aggression. Killing small dogs was considered normal behavior for coyotes, but when this animal lunged at children, local and federal agencies agreed he must be shot.

After searching for two nights, they finally found him in their scopes.

A federal agent hoisted a rifle, aimed for the coyote’s heart and fired. The bullet struck his lung.

The coyote darted off, wounded.

The team looked for him for hours until they detected heat amid trees in a nearby forest. He had finally died, a year and a half after he was born in a thicket at the Presidio Golf Course.

Phoebe Parker-Shames, a wildlife ecologist who joined the hunters both nights, said she saw the killing as a failure of the public to be good stewards of the land and of the government to better educate people about living with coyotes.

Many residents overreact to the normal behavior of “escorting” — steering humans away from dens with pups inside. Debates have become heated on social media.

Since the October killing, reports of aggressive interactions between coyotes and dogs at Crissy Field have waned.

Parker-Shames and other Presidio workers gathered at the beach for a memorial service for the coyote. She read a poem. A gardener sang an old country song called “Coyotes,” in which the chorus consists of coyotes yipping. The group spread flowers.

Parker-Shames intended to send the coyote’s body to a lab for a necropsy, but coordination with the lab has been delayed because of President Donald Trump’s firings of federal workers in the National Park Service.

The corpse remains in a plastic bag in a basement freezer. She removed the body on a recent day to pick whiskers and an ear snip for research.

“It was hard for all of us because it’s not the coyote’s fault,” she said, wiping away tears.

She placed the body back in the freezer. “Night, night,” she whispered.

Coyotes sometimes compensate for death by reproducing more the following year, Parker-Shames explained.

Seven new pups were born at the Presidio golf course last month, all siblings of the slain coyote.

(NY Times)

Black Flag perform in 1982. L-R: Henry Rollins, Greg Ginn (Photo by Frank Mullen/WireImage)

THE TIJUANA RIVER STINKS. LET’S RENAME IT AFTER TRUMP

by Joe Matthews

“It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles.” — Machiavelli

The Tijuana River stinks. So, what could be more fitting than renaming it in honor of Donald Trump?

Turning the sewage-filled Tijuana into the River Trump would be far more than commentary on a corrupt and lawless American dictator. It would be the best way for California and Mexico to win international attention for a critically endangered waterway.

It also would swipe a page from the playbook of President Trump, who loves renaming things. He’s declared the Gulf of Mexico to be the Gulf of America (sparking anger and litigation from our neighbors). He is turning the Persian Gulf into the Arabian Gulf (who cares if that might risk war with Iran?). And since Trump doesn’t ask permission before renaming, California and Mexico could justify giving the Tijuana a new moniker without U.S. government sign-off.

Of course, the Tijuana needs more than a name. The river flows for 120 miles through Baja California, crossing the U.S.-Mexico border into San Diego County and running through Southern California’s largest natural coastal wetland before ending in the Pacific Ocean, near a surf break called the Sloughs.

The Tijuana should be a natural treasure, but the river is so polluted that the beaches and waters near its mouth are currently closed. For more than 100 years, trash, toxic materials and sewage from communities and their failing treatment plants on both sides of the border have fouled the river.

A line on the embankment marks where the Tijuana River crosses from Mexico to the U.S. in San Diego County in this image from 2020. (Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images)

Neither the U.S. nor Mexico has built or maintained treatment facilities with the capacity to clean the Tijuana’s water, especially when it rains. Tens of thousands of people have been sickened by the pollution, which also sullies the air when the water aerosolizes as sea spray.

The pollution exceeds legal standards in the U.S., Mexico and California — but the violations haven’t yet inspired a comprehensive cleanup. Community groups have devised solutions, but have struggled to find funding. Indeed, a big reason why the Tijuana remains dirty is that it crosses too many jurisdictions — nations, states, localities and the Kumeyaay Nation — no single government is responsible for it.

President Joe Biden’s administration and Gov. Gavin Newsom took modest steps and added funding to encourage a clean-up. In recent weeks, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Lee Zeldin, visited the river and promised to tackle the project, too. But there is little reason to believe this promise is made in good faith. The EPA has reduced its staff and authority so aggressively that it’s likely the agency no longer has the capacity to help clean up the river.

What the EPA pledge does present is an opening to rename the river, draw attention to it and make Trump responsible for its condition.

Maybe the occupier of the White House will take the bait. Trump can’t resist talking about the border, and this is a cross-border river. He loves to blast away at America’s very nice neighbors, and addressing the Tijuana is an opportunity to take shots at Mexico. Trump loves to declare emergencies — and a border emergency here would be an actual crisis, unlike his bogus imaginings of nonexistent immigrant “invaders” crossing into the U.S.

There are risks to drawing Trump into the Tijuana’s problems. When he has taken an interest in California waterways, he’s done dangerous and irresponsible things, like emptying water behind a dam at a speed that threatened lives. It’s not hard to imagine Trump ordering a pointless dam to block the Tijuana River at the border, too.

Also, naming anything in California or Mexico for Trump, no matter how pointed the intended insult, could trigger a backlash from Trump critics and others on the left. Something like that happened in 2008 after San Francisco activists proposed a ballot measure to rename a city sewage treatment plant after George W. Bush. The stunt was meant to embarrass Bush, but San Francisco’s progressive electorate rejected the idea overwhelmingly. Even lending Bush’s name to a building full of crap was too high an honor for that president, apparently.

Ultimately, the real-world risks posed by the polluted river are far greater than the downsides of any resulting political drama.

“An entire generation of children is growing up in South San Diego County having only experienced polluted beaches,” Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre wrote Biden last year.

That missive didn’t produce much action. And Mexico’s previous president (Andrés Manuel López Obrador) and current president (Claudia Sheinbaum) haven’t done nearly enough, either. One could argue for adding their names to the rechristened river as well.

If the Tijuana is ever going to get the urgent clean-up it needs, the best bet, right now, is to make the river Trump’s namesake, and thus his problem.

(Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square.)

THE DELUSION OF PORN’S HARMLESSNESS

by Christine Emba

These days, virality is difficult to achieve. But the British OnlyFans creator Lily Phillips managed it this winter, when she appeared in a documentary titled “I Slept With 100 Men in One Day.”

The film (available on YouTube in an edited form and unexpurgated on OnlyFans) followed Ms. Phillips as she planned for and executed the titular stunt, capturing everything from the shuffling feet of the men waiting outside her rented Airbnb to her shaken visage in the aftermath of the deed. (“It’s not for the weak girls,” she tells the filmmaker Josh Pieters, with tears in her eyes. “I don’t know if I’d recommend it.”)

Excessive? Certainly. Off-putting? To some. But perhaps not unexpected, if one considers how inured American society has become to women’s sexualization and objectification — so much so that extremism seems like one of the few ways for an ambitious young sex worker to stand out.

Pornography floods the internet. A 2023 report from Brigham Young University estimated that pornography could be found on 12 percent of websites. Porn bots regularly surface on X, on Instagram, in comment sections and in unsolicited direct messages. Defenders of pornography tend to cite the existence of ethical porn, but that isn’t what a majority of users are watching. “The porn children view today makes Playboy look like an American Girl doll catalog,” one teenager wrote in 2023 in The Free Press, and it often has a focus on violence and dehumanization of women. And the sites that supply it aren’t concerned with ethics, either. In a column last week, Nick Kristof exposed how Pornhub and its related sites profit off videos of child rape.

There are consequences for members of Gen Z, in particular, the first to grow up alongside unlimited and always accessible porn and have their first experiences of sex shaped and mediated by it. It’s hard not to see a connection between porn-trained behaviors — the choking, slapping and spitting that have become the norm even in early sexual encounters — and young women’s distrust in young men. And in the future, porn will become only more addictive and effective as a teacher, as virtual reality makes it more immersive and artificial intelligence allows it to be customizable. (For a foretaste of where this might end up, you can read a recent essay by Aella, a researcher and sex worker, on Substack defending A.I. child porn.)

In her new book “Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves,” Sophie Gilbert critiques the mass culture of the 1990s and 2000s, noting how it was built on female objectification and hyperexposure. A generation of women, she explains, were persuaded by the ideas that bodies were commodities to be molded, surveilled, fetishized or made the butt of the joke, that sexual power, which might give some fleeting leverage, was the only power worth having. This lie curdled the emerging promise of 20th-century feminism, and as our ambitions shrank, the potential for exploitation grew.

Ms. Gilbert has a talent for pinpointing moments that, in hindsight, signal a change: when the “ferocious activist energy” of the Riot Grrrl movement was supplanted by the Spice Girls’ sexy, consumerist pop; when grown-up, self-assured supermodels are pushed off magazine covers in favor of easily manipulated waifs; when reality television and paparazzi hounds made self-exposure (willing or unwilling) the norm.

And she’s clear about the thread that runs through it all: the rise of easy-to-access hard-core pornography, which “trained a good amount of our popular culture,” she writes, “to see women as objects — as things to silence, restrain, fetishize or brutalize. And it’s helped train women, too.”

But while Ms. Gilbert is unsparing in her descriptions of pornography’s warping effect on culture and its consumers, she’s curiously reluctant to acknowledge what seems obvious: Porn hasn’t been good for us. While her descriptions of the cultural landscape imply that the mainstreaming of hard-core porn has been a bad thing, she pulls her punches.

“I’m not interested in kink-shaming,” she writes, “and I’m not remotely opposed to porn” — immediately after describing a 2019 study that found that 38 percent of British women under 40 reported having experienced unwanted slapping, choking, gagging or spitting during sex. That data point comes at the tail end of a chapter that draws a disturbing and convincing line from the emergence and popularization of violent, extreme pornography in the late 1990s to the photos that emerged from Abu Ghraib in 2004 of prisoners being sexually humiliated.

But in its reluctance to acknowledge what the evidence suggests, “Girl on Girl” is not unusual. Despite significant evidence that a deluge of pornography has had a negative impact on modern society, there is a curious refusal, especially in progressive circles, to publicly admit disapproval of porn.

Criticizing porn goes against the norm of nonjudgmentalism for people who like to consider themselves forward-thinking, thoughtful and open-minded. There’s a dread of seeming prudish, boring, uncool — perhaps a hangover from the cultural takeover that Ms. Gilbert so thoroughly details. More generously, there’s a desire not to indict the choices of individuals (women or men) who create sexual content out of need or personal desire or allow legislation to harm those who depend on it to survive.

But a lack of judgment sometimes comes at the expense of discernment. As a society, we are allowing our desires to continue to be molded in experimental ways, for profit, by an industry that does not have our best interests at heart. We want to prove that we’re chill and modern, skip the inevitable haggling over boundaries and regulation and avoid potentially placing limits on our behavior. But we aren’t paying attention to how we’re making things worse for ourselves. Ms. Phillips’s case is one example of how normalization of pornographic extremes has made even lurid acts de rigueur; it’s not hard to imagine a future that asks (and offers) more than we can imagine today.

Most recently, the only people who seem willing to openly criticize the widespread availability of pornography tend to be right-leaning or religious and so are instantly discounted — often by being disparaged as such. But cracks are beginning to appear in the wall, as shown by sources as varied as the recent, if quiet, revival of the anti-porn feminist Andrea Dworkin (Picador books rereleased a trio of her most famous works this winter) and the heartfelt podcasts of Theo Von, who frequently discusses his decision to stop watching porn.

And members of Gen Z seem more willing to openly criticize it than their careful elders. The Oxford philosopher Amia Srinivasan, whom Ms. Gilbert quotes in the introduction to “Girl on Girl,” notes this in her 2021 essay “Talking to My Students About Porn”: “Does porn bear responsibility for the objectification of women, for the marginalization of women, for sexual violence against women? Yes, they said, yes to all of it.” In my own experience speaking to college students and young adults, they’re dismayed and discouraged by the role pornography has played in their sexual formation. In their eyes, it colors everything.

“I wanted to understand how a generation of young women came to believe that sex was our currency, our objectification was empowering,” Ms. Gilbert writes. “Why were we so easily persuaded of our own inadequacy? Who was setting the agenda?”

The thing is, we all know. Perhaps we should be so gauche — or brave — as to simply admit it.

(Christine Emba is the author of “Rethinking Sex: A Provocation,” a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a contributing NY Times Opinion writer.)

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

As an 8th grade teacher it is obvious that there is a growing misogyny in our culture right now. I also strongly suspect that porn is a big part of the problem. However, there is an obstacle to teachers such as myself doing anything about it. A current paranoia in education circles about pedophiles and “grooming” has made it incredibly difficult for teachers to have frank and honest classroom discussions about sex. Admins and curriculum designers have the shared delusion that 13-14 is too young to talk about porn in a classroom setting. As a male teacher, it sometimes feel like it is dangerous for my career to even say the word “porn” during a staff meeting. But, I think 7th and 8th grade is EXACTLY when open discussions about porn should be happening. This is the age when many kids are first getting exposed to it, and should therefore be when schools can start talking about it. Any parent currently concerned about this should write their school board and demand that porn literacy discussions start getting incorporated into middle school sex ed programs.

BUZZ PATTERSON

Hillary Clinton — As some of you know, I was the Air Force Military Aide for Bill Clinton, lived in the White House, traveled everywhere they traveled, and carried the “nuclear football.” As such, I was always in close proximity to both Bill and Hill. Among the military who served in the White House and the professional White House staff, the Clinton administration was infamously known for its lack of professionalism and courtesy, though few ever spoke about it. But when it came to rudeness, it was Hillary Clinton who was the most feared person in the administration. She set the tone. From the very first day in my assignment. When I first arrived to work in the White House, my predecessor warned me. “You can get away with pissing off Bill but if you make her mad, she’ll rip your heart out.” I heeded those words. I did make him mad a few times, but I never really pissed her off. I knew the ramifications. I learned very quickly that the administration’s day-to-day character, whether inside or outside of DC, depended solely on the presence or absence of Hillary. Her reputation preceded her. We used to say that when Hillary was gone, it was a frat party. When she was home, it was “Schindler’s List.” In my first few days on the job, and remember I essentially lived there, I realized there were different rules for Hillary. She instructed the senior staff, including me, that she didn’t want to be forced to encounter us. We were instructed that “whenever Mrs. Clinton is moving through the halls, be as inconspicuous as possible.” She did not want to see “staff” and be forced to “interact” with anyone. No matter their position in the building. Many a time, I’d see mature, professional adults, working in the most important building in the world, scurrying into office doorways to escape Hillary’s line of sight. I’d hear whispering, “She’s coming, she’s coming!” I could be walking down a West Wing hallway, midday, busier than hell, people doing the administration’s work whether in the press office, medical unit, wherever. She’d walk in and they’d scatter. She was the Nazi schoolmarm and the rest of us were expected to hide as though we were kids in trouble. I wasn’t a kid, I was a professional officer and pilot. I said, “I’m not doing that.” There was also a period of time when she attempted to ban military uniforms in the White House. It was the re-election year of 1996, and she was trying to craft the narrative that the military was not a priority in the Clinton administration. As a military aide, carrying the football, and working closely with the Secret Service, I objected to that. It simply wasn’t a matter of her political agenda; it was national security. If the balloon went up, the Secret Service would need to find me as quickly as possible. Seconds matter. Finding the aide in military uniform made complete sense. Besides, what commander in chief wouldn’t want to advertise his leadership and command? She finally relented because the Secret Service weighed in. The Clintons are corrupt beyond words. Hillary is evil, vindictive, and profane. Hillary is a bitch.

NEW BOOK REFLECTS BIDEN FAMILY’S DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR AND HOW THEIR ‘GREATEST STRENGTH IS LIVING IN THEIR OWN REALITY’

by Miranda Devine

There were so many lies told by Joe Biden, his wife and their aides that it’s hard to distinguish delusion from reality when assessing his disastrous presidency and determining who needs to be held accountable for all the crimes and cover-ups.

But let’s start with Hunter Biden.

According to an exclusive preview of the upcoming book “Original Sin” by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, at the same time that the White House and Hunter were denying the existence of his abandoned “laptop from hell” in early 2022, Biden aides were so concerned about the political fallout that they secretly arranged for the Democratic National Committee to obtain a copy of the hard drive.

“The [re-election] campaign needed to be politically prepared, and Biden needed to be personally prepared,” the authors say.

Biden aides spent months mining the copy, through Hunter’s homemade porn, crack addiction and hooker fetish, not to mention the copious evidence of influence peddling and millions of dollars of payments from China and Ukraine.

In the end, they created a defensive dossier laying out the most damning material that could be weaponized against Joe in his re-election campaign.

Spoiling for a fight

In early 2023, after Republicans took back the House and prepared to hold investigations into Biden family corruption, Joe’s personal lawyer, Bob Bauer, “privately met with the president and the First Lady for an hour to go through all the sordid details,” and perhaps to convince them that running for re-election would put the entire family through unnecessary embarrassment and legal jeopardy.

(Neither Bauer nor DNC communications director Rosemary Boeglin responded to requests for confirmation last week, so we are relying on Tapper and Thompson’s fact-checking.)

Unlike Biden’s aides, Hunter was looking forward to the fight. He had “the delusion that this would be good for him or for his father … He would finally get a chance to fight back after lying low. Biden aides sensed that Hunter saw an opportunity to redeem his reputation.”

According to Tapper and Thompson, Hunter “brushed off” the sordid revelations from the laptop: “The influence peddling, the infidelities, the drug use, the child he had denied.

“He was clean and in a new relationship; that’s all that mattered.”

The authors also reveal that Biden’s team was unhappy about Hunter’s 2021 memoir “Beautiful Things,” which the then-first son saw as an opportunity to whitewash his past and launch himself on the national stage.

“In their view, any day spent discussing Hunter and his antics was a bad day for Joe Biden. The president’s son thought he was politically sharper than most of his dad’s advisers and often told Biden when he thought particular aides weren’t serving the president well. Aides had to pick their battles with Hunter.”

But they put their feet down when they learned that Hunter intended to “do a book tour through South Carolina, stopping at famed Black churches to talk about his crack addiction …

“Biden’s advisers argued it would turn into a circus and come across as tone-deaf. Hunter relented.”

Perhaps the deepest insight from “Original Sin” is an acknowledgment that Joe Biden has spent a lifetime spinning self-aggrandizing fantasy into a shared delusion that ensnared his entire family and closest aides — and ultimately the Democratic Party.

“The Bidens’ greatest strength is living in their own reality,” someone close to the family told the authors. “And Biden himself is gifted at creating it: Beau isn’t going to die. Hunter’s sobriety is stable. Joe always tells the truth. Joe cares more about his family than his own ambition. They stick to the narrative and repeat it.”

Tapper and Thompson describe the shared delusion as “almost a theology, a near-religious faith in Biden’s ability to rise again … Part of that theology is made up of narratives of questionable accuracy. The image of Joe — aviators, ice cream, 1967 Corvette — as avuncular and Jill as warm. These are not universally held impressions among those who know them well.

“The president was fond of using the formal family motto, of giving ‘my word as a Biden,’ but they had another, more private saying: ‘Never call a fat person fat.’ It wasn’t just about politesse; it was about ignoring ugly facts …

“From 2020 until 2024, all of this resulted in an almost spiritual refusal to admit that Biden was declining.”

Reality check

The delusional reality that Joe created is another way of saying that he has always been a pathological liar, with a Houdini-like ability to obfuscate and play the sympathy card to wriggle out of tight spots that would have been career-ending for anyone else.

The “original sin” referred to in the title of the Tapper-Thompson book is Biden’s decision to run for re-election in 2024 despite evidence of significant physical and cognitive decline, which his wife, Jill, and their inner circle tried to hide from the public.

“Original Sin” has opened the door for Democrats to pin all blame for their disastrous loss in the 2024 election on the former president.

But Biden’s prostate cancer diagnosis, announced in a statement Sunday from his personal office on the eve of the book’s publication, will conveniently mute the criticism. It is the ultimate sympathy card.

(DailyMail.UK)

MONDAY FROM THE SUPREME COURT (NYT)

The Supreme Court on Monday let the Trump administration, for now, remove protections from nearly 350,000 Venezuelan immigrants who had been allowed to remain in the United States without risk of deportation under a program known as Temporary Protected Status.

The court’s brief order was unsigned and gave no reasons, which is typical when the justices rule on emergency applications. No vote count was listed, although Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted that she would deny the administration’s request.

The justices announced they would allow the Trump administration to end the protections pending appeal of the case, potentially allowing the administration to move ahead with deportations. The justices also clarified, however, that they would preserve the ability of individual immigrants to bring legal challenges in some instances, including if the government tried to cancel their work permits.

In a separate case, the justices on Friday criticized the Trump administration for seeking to provide only a day’s warning to a different group of Venezuelan immigrants in Texas it had been trying to deport under the expansive powers of the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century wartime law. The Trump administration has accused that group of migrants of being members of the violent gang Tren de Aragua.

WHERE THINGS STAND

Russia-Ukraine: President Trump framed a two-hour phone call with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Monday as a step toward a cease-fire in Ukraine, although he emphasized that its conditions would have to be “negotiated between the two parties, as it can only be.” Mr. Putin maintained in his own remarks that any deal must “remove the root causes of this crisis” — a reference to Russia’s demand for wide-ranging influence over Ukraine.
Immigration ruling: The Supreme Court will allow the Trump administration, for now, to strip legal protections from nearly 350,000 Venezuelan immigrants who were shielded from deportation by the Temporary Protected Status program. The justices allowed the administration to end the protections pending appeal of the case, which could allow deportations to proceed, but preserved the ability of immigrants to bring some legal challenges.
Trump policy agenda: Speaker Mike Johnson must wrestle with divergent ideological, political and regional interests in the Republican Party as he tries to gather support for the major bill at the center of Mr. Trump’s domestic agenda. The once-stalled legislation made its way out of the House Budget Committee, but competing agendas could still sink it.

Jake LaMotta wasn’t chasing fame or friendship, just a chance to fight. He walked a lonely road, taking on the toughest opponents when no one else would, driven by something deeper than glory. For years he was the best without a title, forced to give up part of himself just to get the opportunity he’d already earned.

LaMotta said: “I was always a loner. l've been a loner for a long, long time. I wasn't into being friendly. I fought all the black guys that the other white guys wouldn't fight. That's how come I got so many fights - 1943, I beat four undefeated middleweights in six weeks, and the last one was Sugar Ray [Robinson], the first loss of his career. Three weeks later I fought him again and he beat me. I was ranked number one for five years and I couldn't get a title shot. I had to throw a fight to get that shot.”

LEAD STORIES, TUESDAY'S NYT

Trump Backs Off His Demand That Russia Declare a Cease-Fire in Ukraine

Israel Wavers as Far Right and Military Disagree on Gaza Strategy

Rep. McIver Charged With Assault Over Clash Outside Newark ICE Center

Supreme Court Lets Trump Lift Deportation Protections for Venezuelans

Can TikTok Help Young People Take a Break From Screens?

TRUMP’S DOMINANT EGO CAMOUFLAGES COWARDLINESS & CRUELTIES

by Ralph Nader

Dictator Donald Trump’s ego has gone global and dominates the news cycle. His domestic opponents are left with too little too late rebuttals and, again, are victims of his genius in diverting and distracting them and the media.

Take his “triumphant” trip to the wealthy Arab Nations in the Gulf. Their rulers flattered him 24/7 as the boss of the world while he flattered them in return for their business deals (some benefitting him and his family) and arms purchases. Trump enjoys being in charge. But he wasn’t.

Before, during and after his trip, Netanyahu remained his MASTER on the matters that count to the Israeli perpetrator of genocide. Trump said nothing serious about a ceasefire, nothing about opening the border to Gaza to thousands of waiting trucks (paid for by the U.S. taxpayer) carrying food, water, medicine, and other critical necessities for the starving, dying, besieged Palestinians in Gaza, nothing about the demands that Netanyahu lift his ban on American and other Israeli and foreign reporters going independently into Gaza.

The media interpreted his skipping visiting Israel as a snub when it really was a clever way to avoid facing up to Netanyahu, especially for breaking the January ceasefire that Trump took credit for, and starting the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza. Trump took Netanyahu breaking “his truce” as an affront to his famous ego by cowardly shutting his mouth.

To further favor Netanyahu and his U.S. domestic Lobby, Trump told the new president of war-torn Syria to make peace with Israel and join the Abraham Accords, negotiated by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. At the same time, Israel is using American-made F-16s to bomb Syria (without provocation) hundreds of times while seizing more and more of powerless Syria’s territory!

Domestically, Trump every day boasts about MAGA as he is Wrecking America. Simultaneously, second thoughts are seeping into his MAGA crowd and among the “Amen” sycophants that make up the GOP in Congress. They’re starting to say, in so many words, “Hey, we didn’t vote for this or that.”

Now Trump, aside from his delusionary rhetoric, is playing a Zig Zag game which indicates he senses when he is going off the cliff. His polls are dropping slowly and will drop further when the tariff-induced prices start climbing and the economy signals the dreaded stagflation on the horizon.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party and its so-called leadership is still backing and filling, despite powerful demands at packed Town Meetings in their Districts for their members of Congress to be “comprehensively aggressive,” as one Democratic voter put it.

First, they need to consult the dictionary so that they can discover the words that fit Tyrant Trump and the poisonous tusks of Felon Musk. Political cowards have trouble using plain, strong language to depict Trump’s fascist dictatorship moving into police state seizures of innocent people for using their freedom of speech.

They can learn from some of their predecessors like underdog Harry Truman in his 1948 presidential race with poll-favored Thomas Dewey. Here is “Give ’em hell, Harry” speaking to 90,000 farmers and their families in a field in Dexter, Iowa:

“I wonder how many times you have to be hit on the head before you find out who’s hitting you? … These Republican gluttons of privilege are cold men. They are cunning men…. They want a return of the Wall Street economic dictatorship…. I’m not asking you just to vote for me. Vote for yourselves!”

When Trump, in 2016, started using MAGA as his constant slogan, the Democratic Party paid a consultant to later come up with the yawn-inducing slogan: “Build Back Better.” Kamala Harris used “the opportunity economy” as her catchphrase instead of the electric rhetoric and kitchen table agenda of Bernie Sanders – still the most popular politician in America.

Trump gives the Democrats so many unexploited opportunities. Three examples:

First, the Dems have missed making a big deal out of Trump/Musk shielding the biggest sources of their alleged interest in “rooting out waste, fraud and inefficiency” in the executive branch. They do not touch “corporate crime” ripping off Medicare, Medicaid, et al. for tens of billions of dollars yearly, or huge amounts of corporate subsidies, giveaways, brazen tax dodges, and the bloated, unauditable military budget that Trump wants to increase by $100 billion more than requested by the generals.

Second, he keeps shouting “impeach” the judges who cross him. The Democrats should return the favor by filing Impeachment articles in the House against Trump (See: the 22 Impeachable Offenses). Instead the so-called Democratic Party leaders are clamping down on the tiny number of House Democrats who want to do just that.

Third, the Democrats have failed to mobilize their voters into a powerful grassroots force or even encourage their partisans to do so on their own, as did the “Tea Party” in 2009 against Barack Obama. (Call it the “Coffee Party” to waken the population – liberal and conservative working families – both strip-mined by the plutocrat/oligarch Dangerous Donald.)

Trump recently bloviated “I Run the Country and the World.” The “Coffee Party” masses can focus all their growing pain and suffering from Trumpism with the outcry he well understands “YOU’RE FIRED.” (See my recent column: “YOU’RE FIRED!” –GROWING MILLIONS OF AMERICANS ARE REJECTING TRUMP.)

As the marches, rallies, and town meetings swell, the demand that Trump be fired will boost popular support for his Impeachment and removal from office, as happened with Nixon in 1974 for far lesser transgressions. “Impossible,” you say? Not when the Congressional Republicans see the polls and economic recession dragging their sagging political future for 2026 by continuing their allegiance to Trump.

HOW TO FIGHT TRUMP WITHOUT CAVING TO THE CORPORATISTS

by Richard Eskow and Norman Solomon

RICHARD ESKOW: In a recent column you asked, “What’s preventing a united front against the Trump regime?” You say, “America desperately needs a united front to restrain the wrecking ball of the Trump regime.” I get the “wrecking ball,” but why do we need a united front? What’s wrong with a multi-pronged approach from various groups and actors?

NORMAN SOLOMON: There’s a serious lack of coordination at the political level. The Democratic Party is a constellation of 50-plus state and other local parties, and there are many organizations which are—or should be—independent of the party.

To the extent there is any governing body, it's the Democratic National Committee. The DNC should provide leadership at times like these. But there’s still no leadership, several months into a second Trump regime that’s much worse than the first. There's energy to oppose, but it’s uncoordinated.

Rethinking the Left and the Party

ESKOW: Here’s a challenge. For too long, the American left looked to the Democratic Party for leadership and guidance instead of considering it an instrument that’s available to movements. I think a lot of people assume that “a united front” against Trump means making the left fall in line yet again behind the institutional party’s corporate, so-called “centrist” politicians.

SOLOMON: It’s dubious, and not very auspicious, to follow “leadership” that isn’t leading. I think your word “instrument” is an excellent one. The left should consider the Democratic Party a tool that not only can be used but, under this electoral system, must be used to stop the right and advance progressive causes. No other party can win federal elections and stop what has become a neo-fascist Republican Party.

Most of the people who serve as administrative or elected Democrats consider social movements subordinate to their electoral work. They see progressives—the grassroots activists, the ones with deep concerns, who do research, who communicate, who organize in local communities, who provide hope—as fuel for them to win elections.

That's backward. Campaigns and candidates should be subordinated to progressive social movements, not the other way around. That's how we win. Change doesn't come from the top. The great advances—Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, antiwar, gay rights, civil rights, women's rights, reproductive freedom—came from people who weren’t held into check by the party apparatus. They came from the grassroots, the social movements.

Big Money, Big Problems

ESKOW: Progressives inside the party have told me how complicated it is to work within the party. Each state party has its own rules and its own representatives to the DNC, and there are also other appointed members and other centers of power. They’re up against complex machinery whenever they try to change anything.

Worse, the party allows dark money in its primaries and is heavily reliant on it in general elections. Party operatives—thousands of them, in think tanks and consulting firms and so on—depend on that money for their livelihood.

Kamala Harris raised more money than perhaps any candidate in history. I think that money actually hurt her. It dissuaded her from saying the things she needed to say to win, whether she meant them or not.

How can a popular front incorporate and influence a party that’s dominated by big donors? Isn't that the elephant in the room?

SOLOMON: Well, certainly the money is huge, but we want to be realistic without being defeatists. With the state supreme court election in Wisconsin a few weeks ago, Elon Musk literally tried to buy the election and failed. That was a victory against the tide of big money. But yes, money typically correlates with victory.

I attended the DNC’s so-called Unity Reform Commission meetings in 2017, when the power of the Bernie Sanders forces was at high ebb. The party’s centrists, corporatists, and militarists felt it necessary to give the left some seats on that commission. But they kept a voting majority, which they used to kill some important reforms for transparency and financial accountability.

Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, who was then the Clinton-aligned chair, helped defeat those proposals. And what happened to her? She became deputy chief of staff in the Biden White House, then effectively ran Biden’s reelection campaign. And, after Biden belatedly pulled out and left chaos behind, suddenly Jen O’Malley Dillon was running the Harris campaign.

As you said, a lot of money was sloshing around. It’s hard to spend a billion dollars-plus in a few months and not have a lot of pockets being lined. Lots of it goes to consultants who broker deals, hire other consultants, and arrange TV advertising. They love advertising because it's easy and you don't have to relate to people. (Note: Many consultants are also paid a percentage of each ad buy.)

Meanwhile, we heard afterwards that African-American organizers in places like Philadelphia had been asking Where's our help? Where are our resources?—while TV stations in their states were filled with Harris ads.

That’s not to villainize Jen O’Malley Dillon. She's just an example. Certain people will always win. They’ll always make tons of money, no matter what happens on Election Day.

Would the Party Rather Lose Than Change?

ESKOW: Let me underscore that point about insiders. I think they would all prefer winning to losing. I don't know anyone who’d rather lose. But their incentives are misaligned. There are times when, consciously or not, they feel there are worse things than losing. Take Bernie Sanders, whose policies and fundraising model threatened the Democratic ecosystem that feeds them. In a choice between winning with Bernie or losing—even to Trump—they’d rather lose. Their incentives make losing preferable to turning the party over to unruly Sanders types like—well, like you.

SOLOMON: I think that's a fair point. Remember, when Bernie was at high ebb in primaries, a lot of traditional Democrats on Wall Street and elsewhere were quoted as saying if Sanders is the nominee they might go with Trump.

Imagining a “Popular Front”

ESKOW: Let's try to envision a popular— well, I call it a “popular front.” I don't think others use that term, but I think of the wartime alliance under FDR that included everyone on the left—including Communists, socialists, mainstream labor, radical labor, moderate Democrats—everyone. From the radical left to the center, people made common cause against fascism. I think there is common cause again. You can see it in the threats to the judicial system, to media independence, educational independence, and other pillars of civil democracy. Those pillars were already tattered, and many are already broken, but what remains is endangered.

How can the left build that alliance without either surrendering leadership on its ideas or being subsumed by the “Vote Blue, no matter who” rhetoric that always gives us the same failed party leadership?

SOLOMON: It's a challenge. To use a word that might seem jargony, we should take a dialectical approach. We should look at these contrary, sometimes seemingly contradictory realities and see them all. Fred Hampton was a great young leader of the Black Panther Party, murdered with the collusion of the FBI and Chicago police. There’s video of him saying that nothing is as important as stopping fascism because fascism is gonna stop us all. Malcolm X said that if somebody is holding a gun on you, your first job is to knock the gun out of the hand.

The right is holding a gun on you. There are neoliberals and there are outright fascists. Neoliberalism is a poison. It’s a political economy that makes the rich ever richer and immiserates everybody else, while destroying the environment and creating more and more militarism. But the fascists are holding a gun to our head.

We have an opportunity to creatively acknowledge that two truths exist simultaneously in 2025. We have a responsibility and imperative to join with others to defeat this fascistic group, which means forming a de facto united front with militarists and corporatists. And, at the same time, we need to fight militarists and corporatists.

So, there we are.

A Time for Left-Populism

ESKOW: This may be blue-sky thinking, but it occurs to me that the progressive movement can display leadership and vision in forming that front, at a time when those qualities seem to be lacking elsewhere. It could build a broad alliance while simultaneously attracting people to the left’s ideas and leadership. We wouldn’t try to subordinate people to our will in this alliance, as has been done to us in the past. Instead, in this admittedly optimistic scenario, some people will be attracted by the left’s vision and leadership.

SOLOMON: Absolutely. One of the recent dramatic examples is AOC and Bernie going to state after state, often in deep red districts, and getting huge turnouts. In 2016’s primary, Bernie went to the red state of West Virginia and carried every county against Hillary Clinton.

These examples undermine the mainstream media cliches about left and right because they’re about populism. It's about whether people who are upset and angry—and a lot of people in this country are—are encouraged to kick down or kick up.

The right wing—the fascists, the militarists, the super pseudo masculinists—they love to kick down. That's virtually their whole program: attacking immigrants, people of color, women, people who have been historically shafted. Progressives should kick up against the gazillionaires and the wealthy power brokers who hate democracy.

ESKOW: That kind of populism resonates. Expanding Social Security resonates. Healthcare for everyone resonates. It resonates among self-described conservatives, Republicans, whatever, as well as liberals and progressives. We could be saying to people, “They’re distracting you. It's not trans kids who are ripping you off and making your life so miserable. It's those guys over there.”

It’s been striking to see how passive the party was in the face of this year’s onslaught, and how passive so much of it continues to be. The right got off to a running (or crawling) start on demolishing what remains of democracy. And yet, we were flooded with Democratic operatives like James Carville, who openly use the phrase “playing possum” when describing how the party should respond. Hakeem Jeffries, Minority Leader of the House, said we can't do anything because we don't have the votes. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer helped pass Trump’s budget.

It felt like the party leadership had wiped its hands and walked away from the catastrophe it helped create. People who want to fight Trump will also have to fight this inertia—even though many of the party’s presumptive presidential candidates are distinguishing saying, no, no, I'm going to come out swinging. I'm going to be the candidate who comes out swinging against the right.

I always tell people that if they’re going to work in Democratic Party politics, they should heed the biblical injunction about the world: be in it, but not of it. And I think that activists should go where their inclinations and their talents lead them. They should follow the path that calls out to them.

Working Inside the Party

ESKOW: But if people are called to do Democratic Party activism, what exactly does that look like, given what they’re up against? What’s the mechanism of activist involvement?

SOLOMON: I think the right wing has in the last decades been much more attentive and attuned to the reality that everybody in Congress is elected from somewhere else, not DC. You wouldn't know that when you talk with a lot of the Democrats and Democratic-aligned groups there. Some people in that bubble think that's where the action is, where power is wielded. But, as you say—to the extent we have democracy and there are still some democratic structures as of now—the action is in the grassroots, in communities.

There are well over 1,000 different congressional offices. Members of the House have district offices. They are, in a nonviolent way, sitting ducks to be confronted. Voters are facing questions of life and death, whether it's healthcare or the genocidal war on Gaza that the U.S. continues to arm, or so many other concerns. We could be confronting these people in Congress when they don't do what they should be doing.

Those folks are not gods. They should be confronted. And there's often a dynamic on the left where, if Congressperson X does some things that we appreciate and a couple of things that we think are terrible, there's a tendency to say, “Well, I appreciate the good things. I don't want to be mean just because I differ on one or two things.”

The right wing rarely takes that tack. They go to the mat. They fight for exactly what they believe. That’s been successful for them—very successful.

We have the chance to really make an impact right now. But we’re often told, “Cool your jets. You don't want to be divisive.” Bernie got a lot of that. AOC gets a lot of that. We’re told, “You don't want to be like the Tea Party from the last decade.” And the astute response is, “Oh, yeah, what a disaster. The Tea Party took over the Republican Party. That must have been just a terrible tactical measure.”

It's a way of being told to sit down and do what you're told. The right doesn't do that—maybe because, ironically, they have less respect for authority figures. We don't need deference to leaders who don't provide leadership.

Can We All Just Get Along?

ESKOW: On the right, the nastiness is directed against what was the institutional party establishment. But a lot of centrist Democrats, leaders and supporters alike, seem to get angriest at the left for bringing up certain ideas. It’s like we’re just like spitting in the punch bowl, that it's wrong and rude and who the hell do you think you are? The left has the ideas, but I also think we have to deal with a kind of professional/managerial class culture that can be quite hostile.

It feels like we have to say, “No, we're actually your friends, because a) we can help you and b) in your hearts, you want these things too. Don't be annoyed. We’re not ‘indulging ourselves’ by speaking up. We're helping.”

I struggle with that all the time. And I wonder what your thoughts are.

SOLOMON: That’s the corrosive culture of thinking the people in charge know best. That culture includes a substantial proportion of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. And it also happens because the financial and party pressures on elected officials are intense.

A few minutes ago I mentioned my admiration for Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and their anti-oligarchy tour. They've been great. But we should not erase the historical memory that, even after Joe Biden’s disastrous debate last summer and up until the day he withdrew from the race, Bernie Sanders was publicly adamant that Biden should stay in the race. AOC was adamant that Joe Biden should stay in the race.

That made no sense whatsoever. And as someone on the RootsAction team, that isn’t just hindsight. RootsAction launched the Don't Run Joe campaign at the end of 2022. You didn't have to be a rocket scientist or a political scientist to know that Joe Biden was incapable of running an effective campaign for reelection.

ESKOW: We also saw the Congressional Progressive Caucus leadership endorse Biden a year before the election, if I recall correctly.

SOLOMON: Oh, absolutely. The chair at the time, Pramila Jayapal, endorsed him two years ahead of the 2024 election day.

ESKOW: It’s also striking what wasn't said during those two years. We heard virtually nothing about Medicare for All, which went off the political radar. We didn't hear much about expanding Social Security. Joe Biden promised to expand it in the campaign and never said another word about it.

“Inside/Outside”

ESKOW: We could go on. But to me, and speaking of embracing contradictions, this speaks to the ongoing need for activists. Because here’s the ultimate irony for me about the phenomenon we've just described. Capitol Hill progressives, many of whom I respect, essentially replicated what party insiders did to them in 2015 and 2016 when they were told not to challenge Hillary Clinton.

SOLOMON: Good point.

ESKOW: It says to me we’ll always need outside activists pounding on the door, however annoying they may find us to be from time to time. It’s an “inside/outside” game.

SOLOMON: Jim Hightower said it's the agitator that gets the dirt out in the washing machine.

ESKOW: He also said there's nothing in the middle of the road except yellow lines and dead armadillos.

Call for an Emergency DNC Meeting

ESKOW: Let’s close with this. RootsAction has been calling for an emergency meeting of the DNC to address the crisis of fascism, or what I would join you in calling neo-fascism. What's the thinking there and what's the status of that?

SOLOMON: I think of a quote from James Baldwin. He said that not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed unless it's faced. We're in an emergency, and we're getting very little from what amounts to the party’s governing body, the Democratic National Committee—even acknowledging that it is an emergency. There's pretty much a business-as-usual ambience, although the rhetoric is ramped up.

The DNC, which has 448 members, normally meets twice a year. If, in the midst of emergency year 2025, you remain committed to meeting only twice a year, you're conveying something very profound. You’re communicating that you're not operating in the real world of an emergency.

That's where we are right now. So, in partnership with Progressive Democrats of America, RootsAction has launched a petition (which people can find at RootsAction.org) urging the DNC to hold an emergency meeting. People can still sign it. And we know that the chair of the DNC, who has the power to call such a meeting, knows full well about this petition.

But right now it’s still business as usual. So, I think we need to ramp up these demands.

ESKOW: And meanwhile the party is at historic levels of unpopularity. You'd think that’s one emergency they would recognize.

SOLOMON: One would think so. The latest polling showed only 27 percent of voters had a favorable view of the Democratic Party. You would think that one or two alarm bells would go off. Maybe the “same old, same old” isn't going to do it anymore.

GENOCIDE IS THE CURRENCY OF WESTERN DOMINATION

by Chris Hedges

CAIRO, Egypt — It is 200 miles from where I am in Cairo to the Rafah border crossing into Gaza. Parked in the arid sands in the northern Sinai of Egypt are 2,000 trucks filled with sacks of flour, water tanks, canned food, medical supplies, tarps and fuel. The trucks idle under the scorching sun with temperatures climbing into the high 90s.

A few miles away in Gaza, dozens of men, women and children, living in crude tents or damaged buildings amid the rubble, are being butchered daily from bullets, bombs, missile strikes, tank shells, infectious diseases and that most ancient weapon of siege warfare — starvation. One in five people are facing starvation after nearly three months of Israel’s blockade of food and humanitarian aid.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has launched a new offensive that is killing upwards of 100 people a day, has declared that nothing will impede this final assault, named Operation Gideon’s Chariots.

There will be “no way,” Israel will stop the war, he announced, even if the remaining Israeli hostages are returned. Israel is “destroying more and more houses” in Gaza. The Palestinians “have nowhere to return.”

“[The] only inevitable outcome will be the wish of Gazans to emigrate outside of the Gaza Strip,” he told lawmakers at a leaked closed-door meeting. “But our main problem is finding countries to take them in.”

The nine-mile border between Egypt and Gaza has become the dividing line between the Global South and the Global North, the demarcation between a world of savage industrial violence and the desperate struggle by those cast aside by the wealthiest nations. It marks the end of a world where humanitarian law, conventions that protect civilians or the most basic and fundamental rights matter. It ushers in a Hobbesian nightmare where the strong crucify the weak, where no atrocity, including genocide, is precluded, where the white race in the Global North reverts to the unrestrained, atavistic savagery and domination that defines colonialism and our centuries long history of pillage and exploitation. We are tumbling backwards in time to our origins, origins that never left us, but origins that were masked by empty promises of democracy, justice and human rights.

The Nazis are the convenient scapegoats for our shared European and American heritage of mass slaughter, as if the genocides we carried out in the Americas, Africa and India did not take place, unimportant footnotes in our collective history.

In fact, genocide is the currency of Western domination.

Between 1490 and 1890, European colonization, including acts of genocide, was responsible for killing as many as 100 million indigenous people, according to the historian David E. Stannard. Since 1950 there have been nearly two dozen genocides, including those in Bangladesh, Cambodia and Rwanda.

The genocide in Gaza is part of a pattern. It is the harbinger of genocides to come, especially as the climate breaks down and hundreds of millions are forced to flee to escape droughts, wildfires, flooding, declining crop yields, failed states and mass death. It is a blood-soaked message from us to the rest of the world: We have everything and if you try and take it away from us, we will kill you.

Gaza puts to rest the lie of human progress, the myth that we are evolving morally. Only the tools change. Where once we clubbed victims to death, or chopped them to pieces with broadswords, today we drop 2,000-pound bombs on refugee camps, spray families with bullets from militarized drones or pulverize them with tank shells, heavy artillery and missiles.

The 19th century socialist Louis-Auguste Blanqui, unlike nearly all of his contemporaries, dismissed the belief central to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx, that human history is a linear progression toward equality and greater morality. He warned that this absurd positivism is perpetrated by oppressors to disempower the oppressed.

“All atrocities of the victor, the long series of his attacks are coldly transformed into constant, inevitable evolution, like that of nature… But the sequence of human things is not inevitable like that of the universe. It can be changed at any moment.” Blanqui warned.

Scientific and technological advancement, rather than an example of progress, could “become a terrible weapon in the hands of Capital against Work and Thought.”

“For humanity” Blanqui wrote, “is never stationary. It either advances or goes back. Its progressive march leads it to equality. Its regressive march goes back through every stage of privilege to human slavery, the final word of the right to property.” Further, he wrote, “I am not amongst those who claim that progress can be taken for granted, that humanity cannot go backwards.”

Human history is defined by long periods of cultural barrenness and brutal repression. The fall of the Roman Empire led to immiseration and repression throughout Europe during the Dark Ages, roughly from the sixth through the 13th century. There was a loss of technical knowledge, including how to build and maintain aqueducts. Cultural and intellectual impoverishment led to collective amnesia. The ideas of ancient scholars and artists were blotted out. There was no rebirth until the 14th century and the Renaissance, a development made possible largely by the cultural flourishing of Islam, which, through translating Aristotle into Arabic and other intellectual accomplishments, kept the wisdom of the past from disappearing.

Blanqui knew history’s tragic reverses. He took part in a series of French revolts, including an attempted armed insurrection in May 1839, the 1848 uprising and the Paris Commune — a socialist uprising that controlled France’s capital from March 18 until May 28 in 1871. Workers in cities such as Marseilles and Lyon attempted, but failed, to organize similar communes before the Paris Commune was militarily crushed.

We are entering a new dark age. This dark age uses the modern tools of mass surveillance, facial recognition, artificial intelligence, drones, militarized police, the revoking of due process and civil liberties to inflict the arbitrary rule, incessant wars, insecurity, anarchy and terror that were the common denominators of the Dark Ages.

To trust in the fairy tale of human progress to save us is to become passive before despotic power. Only resistance, defined by mass mobilization, by disrupting the exercise of power, especially against genocide, can save us.

Campaigns of mass killing unleash the feral qualities that lie latent in all humans. The ordered society, with its laws, etiquette, police, prisons and regulations, all forms of coercion, keeps these latent qualities in check. Remove these impediments and humans become, as we see with the Israelis in Gaza, murderous, predatory animals, reveling in the intoxication of destruction, including of women and children. I wish this was conjecture. It is not. It is what I witnessed in every war I covered. Almost no one is immune.

The Belgian monarch King Leopold in the late 19th century occupied the Congo in the name of Western civilization and anti-slavery, but plundered the country, resulting in the death — by disease, starvation and murder — of some 10 million Congolese.

Joseph Conrad captured this dichotomy between who we are and who we say we are in his novel “Heart of Darkness” and his short story “An Outpost of Progress.”

In “An Outpost of Progress,” he tells the story of two European traders, Carlier and Kayerts, who are sent to the Congo. These traders claim to be in Africa to implant European civilization.

The boredom, the stifling routine, and most importantly the lack of all outside constraints, turns the two men into beasts. They trade slaves for ivory. They fight over dwindling food and supplies. Kayerts finally murders his unarmed companion Carlier.

“They were two perfectly insignificant and incapable individuals,” Conrad wrote of Kayerts and Carlier, “whose existence is only rendered possible through the high organization of civilized crowds. Few men realise that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings. The courage, the composure, the confidence; the emotions and principles; every great and every insignificant thought belongs not to the individual but to the crowd: to the crowd that believes blindly in the irresistible force of its institutions and its morals, in the power of its police and of its opinion. But the contact with pure unmitigated savagery, with primitive nature and primitive man, brings sudden and profound trouble into the heart. To the sentiment of being alone of one’s kind, to the clear perception of the loneliness of one’s thoughts, of one’s sensations — to the negation of the habitual, which is safe, there is added the affirmation of the unusual, which is dangerous; a suggestion of things vague, uncontrollable, and repulsive, whose discomposing intrusion excites the imagination and tries the civilized nerves of the foolish and the wise alike.”

The genocide in Gaza has imploded the subterfuges we use to fool ourselves and attempt to fool others. It mocks every virtue we claim to uphold, including the right of freedom of expression. It is a testament to our hypocrisy, cruelty and racism. We cannot, having provided billions of dollars in weapons and persecuted those who decry the genocide, make moral claims anymore that will be taken seriously. Our language, from now on, will be the language of violence, the language of genocide, the monstrous howling of the new dark age, one where absolute power, unchecked greed and unmitigated savagery stalks the earth.

(Chris Hedges is the former Pulitzer Prize–winning Middle East Bureau Chief for The New York Times. An Arabic speaker, he spent seven years covering the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, much of that time in Gaza. Author of 14 books, his most recent are The Greatest Evil Is War and A Genocide Foretold: Reporting on Survival and Resistance in Occupied Palestine. chrishedges.substack.com)

*Discussion in the Café* (1929) by William Roberts

"Art should speak of modern life – its rhythm, its tension, its people."
— William Roberts

16 Comments

George Hollister May 20, 2025

Trump has done two important good things: Internationally our friends are recognizing they should not be depending on us for their selfdefense. And nationally those who depend on the government deficit economy, which we all to some extent do, should be learning that this economy is in long term jeopardy.

- Chuck Dunbar May 20, 2025
  
  Are you saying that one of the “important good” things Trump has done is try to address the national deficit? If that’s what you claim, how about his huge tax breaks for the rich in his first administration, now trying to do the same this time? It’s kind of laughable that anyone supposes he truly cares about the deficit, beyond mere words. TAX THE RICH!
  
  - Harvey Reading May 20, 2025
    
    Thanks, Chuck.
    
    - Koepf May 20, 2025
      
      Thanks, Chuck, I needed company inside my cozy cocoon of ignorance and hate.
      
      - Chuck Dunbar May 20, 2025
        
        Love responses that argue a point with no facts at all, just ignorance and hate.
        
      - Chuck Dunbar May 20, 2025
        
        Consider again, Governor Long’s urgent plea to the rich way back in time:
        
        “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.”
        
        These days, we could just change those rich-guy names for the modern ones–we all know who they are. They need to heed the same message–it stands the test of time.
        
  - George Hollister May 20, 2025
    
    Trump is making the national deficit worse, just like all his recent predecessors. But he has cut programs that depend on deficit spending. Not surprising this has created a stir, which is a good thing. People are being put on notice to not depend on free government money. “Tax breaks for the rich” is more rhetoric that substance. Taxing will never solve the deficit problem, regardless of who is paying, or not paying. At some point the deficit will be a crisis and we will be complaining and blaming. Other countries have survived, so will we.
    
    - Harvey Reading May 20, 2025
      
      Dream on, about your dream world. You just repeat what some damned nooze analyst peddled to you the night before.
      
      Raise income taxes to 90 percent on any and all amounts above $200,000 annually. It’ll be good for the wealthy. Let’em suffer like the rest of us for a change. It’ll do the pompous, ignorant bums a world of good.
      
- Bruce McEwen May 20, 2025
  
  Our international friends, if we still have any, ought to have learned from Afghanistan and Ukraine not to depend on US. As for the economy being in jeopardy, I’ve felt like a crash-test dummy most my life, roaring with increasing velocity toward the wall of 2029– which should (by many on-going indications) make the crash of 1929 look like a picnic with skittles and beer on Fiddlers Green…!
  
  The tyranny of small differences is all that separates tweedle-dee from tweedle-dum in our ersatz democracy.
  
  - George Hollister May 20, 2025
    
    Essentially true, though not the way I would say it.
    
    - Bruce McEwen May 20, 2025
      
      We should all endeavor to emulate your gentlemanly manners, George.
      
Kimberlin May 20, 2025

Robert “Buzz” Patterson

“…debunked claim about Clinton dating back to 1993. And his version of how he learned of Clinton’s purported plan to ban military uniforms in the White House varies with each telling.”
Hardball

Eric Sunswheat May 20, 2025

RE: Lead Stories.
—>. May 19, 2025
Exclusive: S.F. DA launches criminal probe into nonprofit that misspent millions.
City prosecutors have launched a criminal investigation into the nonprofit San Francisco Parks Alliance, a prominent fundraiser for the city’s open spaces that admitted last week to misspending at least $3.8 million, the Chronicle has learned.

One of those contacted by the office was Nicola Miner, a philanthropist whose family’s charity, the Baker Street Foundation, gave $3 million to the Parks Alliance to help develop Crane Cove Park in the Dogpatch neighborhood… Miner said she expected to be interviewed by the DA’s office on Tuesday.

Ginsburg wrote April 30. “It appears SFPA has taken private donations that were designated for specific projects or programmatic purposes … and used them to cover SFPA’s own operating expenses.”
Supervisor Shamann Walton has called for a hearing at the Board of Supervisors on the crisis, which is expected to be held June 5.
— San Francisco Chronicle via Apple News

Craig Stehr May 20, 2025

Sitting here on a public computer at the MLK library in Washington, D.C. perusing the Boontling Greeley Sheet (online edition). I once asked Niko Thomas (his grandma Gay wrote the check which paid for Ukiah’s town square) what it was like growing up in Haiku spelled backwards. He said: “Ukiah is a cultural death zone!” Here in the District of Columbia, the President of the United States of America leaves every weekend for golfing in Florida. Nobody knows just what he does during the week, after returning to the White House. At the Peace Vigil across the street, we maintain a presence because we are against nuclear war. Getting ready for summer: https://apple.news/AbUfrS51aTnKOkZKd3FmGlA

Craig Louis Stehr
Adam’s Place Homeless Shelter
2210 Adams Place NE #1
Washington, D.C. 20018
Telephone Messages: (202) 832-8317
Email: [email protected]
May 20, 2025 Anno Domini @ 2:49 p.m. EDT

Chuck Artigues May 20, 2025

It is the military industrial complex that depends on deficit spending the most. Plus think about how many profitable corporations that pay zero taxes. Like it or not the last time we were paying down the debt Clinton was president.

Lilian Rose May 20, 2025

“Pope Leo XIV Made Surprise Visit to Miraculous Icon Our Lady of Good Counsel”

https://youtube.com/shorts/3U0-L8qZvVY?si=QNvbdSQljiNsf8PA

Pray for US

(Our Lady of Good Counsel Parish is in Fort Bragg)

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