Marine Layer | Thick Fog | Gerald Holcomb | Slicing Pears | Farm Harvesting | Ukiah Online | Rooftop Keyboard | Oak Borer | Westport Couple | Jigsaw Puzzles | Adult School | PA Agenda | Fish Fest | GRTA PR | Weed Biz | Catching Rainwater | Yesterday's Catch | Beatnik Theory | Marco Radio | Pickett Fire | Cougars & Alpacas | Giants Lose | Family Baseball | Sites Money | Royalty | Boiled Cabbage | Gerrymandering California | Celebrating Whiteness | Old Age | Fascism Appeal | 25 Years | Stoned No. 1 | Cheer Up | Watercolor | Entertainment | Lead Stories | Stage 4 | Take Charge | Fine Country
YESTERDAY'S HIGHS: Covelo 103°, Ukiah 103°, Laytonville 101°, Yorkville 100°, Boonville 98°, Fort Bragg 64°, Point Arena 59°
HOT and very dry weather will continue to peak today with a strengthening, shallow marine layer near shore. There is slight potential for thunderstorms over the interior late this weekend into early next week. (NWS)
STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A foggy 52F on the coast this Saturday morning, also some high clouds passing thru from the south. "Patchy fog" rules the forecast until further notice.
GERALD WESLEY HOLCOMB
It is with great sorrow that we announce the passing of Gerald Wesley Holcomb on Tuesday, August 19, 2025 at the age of 85 after a courageous fight with Alzheimer's, Vascular Dementia. Gerald was born in Odessa, Texas in 1940 to Eddie and Susie Holcomb. He had a sister, Annie Wheeler, and 3 brothers, Eddie, Bill and James Holcomb. His family settled in Boonville California, where he met his high school sweetheart & true love Betty.
He will be greatly missed by all of us, he has left behind his wife of 67 years Betty, and three daughters, Annette Wilson, Diana Keith, Lisa Venturino and her husband Ken Venturino. Along with his grandchildren, Lester Wilson II, Jesse Wilson, Hannah Venturino, Samuel Keith, Rylee Venturino, and Hayden Venturino and his great grandchildren Lester Wilson III, & Devin Wilson
In the Famous Last Words of our Dad, "I'm off to watch the moon rise over the elephant’s butt."
AMONG the top Redwood Empire linemen this season, Jordan Schwarm, Sr., Ukiah: Reigning REC-Bay Lineman of the Year. Entering fourth year on varsity.
BOONVILLE FFA: Many of the Bartlett pears donated last week have gone into our dehydrator. The Farm to Table class learned some knife skills while the slicing the delicious pears. The pears were so juicy! Can’t wait to taste them tomorrow.
REPORT FROM A SMALL FARM IN BOONVILLE
We finally have a good crop of hazelnuts (filberts) this year, thanks to Steve putting out 3 live traps each evening all year long, to trap on average 2-3 of the nut loving rats of varying sizes each week, then driving them a mile or so down the road to an uninhabited creek area and letting them go. We’ve considered putting up RAT CROSSING signs on the highway but figure the hawks are appreciating our efforts. The jays are also nut lovers but they’re often more help than hindrance since they snip the nut stem and it falls to the ground where I can collect the nut when they forget to. Collecting them is my job. It’s a game and a meditation since the nuts hide. As with anything, it’s also an art; I now know which are viable and which are blanks, when they’re ready for harvest, and which will ripen and which won’t. The trees are shrubby and can be 25’ tall. They are deciduous but the flowers hang like pearl earrings all through winter. They are lovely trees.
All our crops are coming in now…at once. Juan brings in over 100lbs of tomatoes each week which I go through selecting which go into the cook pot first and which can spend more time ripening. So far Trudy has canned 60 jars of basil tomato sauce. (The basil is also thriving.) Juan harvests near 20lbs of cucumbers and gherkins every other day which are transformed into dill pickles, spicy dills, and cornichons two times a week. Cutting, packing and canning is often a day long process.
The Jalapeños and Espelettes in the aquaponic greenhouse, which I harvest bi-weekly, are turning red and there are three hot sauces fermenting now. The super hots, habaneros, ghosts, 7 pots, etc., are ripening in volume this year so more flaming hot sauce is coming. We’ve been out for awhile.
The jar on the lower right next to the cucumbers, is full of Bangkok peppers. On the left is a jar of blackberry applesauce made with the first apples to ripen. A few times a week Juan brings in a lug of apples from various trees…Gravenstein, Pink Ladies, Elstar, King David. Two Asian pears, Shinseki and Cal Airaing, are starting to be harvested, and several more are ripening fast.
I could go on…it’s endless…and right now it’s super hot outside.
The big picture is heating up as well…our country, the world…so here are some pretty pictures including a begonia plant in bloom to clear the palate.
Take care of yourselves and keep fighting the good fight.
Nikki Auschnitt and Steve Krieg
Petit Teton Farm, Boonville
PS. As an aside, we really appreciate the news that the Meidas Touch Substack brings us. The three brothers are cuties as well as being very smart…one in law, one in marketing, and the last in videography. Check them out if you haven’t already done so.
UKIAH MOVES FORWARD WITH $3.3 MILLION FIBER OPTIC PROJECT
by Elise Cox
The Ukiah City Council voted unanimously this week to move forward with a $3.3 million public-private partnership to build a city-owned fiber optic network, despite the risk that construction delays could force Ukiah to cover the entire cost.
The 23-mile project includes 17 miles of aerial installation of fiber optic cable on utility poles and six miles in underground conduit. It is expected to deliver upload and download speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second.
Ukiah received a $5 million grant from the California Public Utilities Commission last September through the agency’s last-mile grant program. Of that amount, $3 million will fund the broadband project, $1.7 million will replace aging utility poles, and the remainder will support construction management and grant administration, according to Andrea Trincado, the city’s project and grants administrator.
Vero Fiber Networks LLC, the city’s private partner, has committed $1 million in matching funds for the project, designated for installing customer drops and equipment.
Jim Robbins, the city’s housing and grants manager, warned the council Tuesday night that the rules for this program allow the CPUC to refuse to disburse funds or to seek to recover funds if the project is not completed by Oct. 28, 2026.
“It’s important for the council to understand that,” Robbins said.
“There was an effort to get the PUC to acknowledge that if it’s a true force majeure event — if it’s something that the parties can’t control and it’s not their fault — that they should allow for an extension of that deadline. And they’re saying no. They expressly said no, they weren’t doing that,” Robbins explained.
Robbins added that if the contractor failed to perform, they would bear some responsibility.
Councilmember Susan Sher asked Evan Biaghi, chief revenue officer of Vero Fiber Networks, which will design, build, operate and maintain the project for 35 years, whether he was comfortable with the timeline.
“Normally I would say I’d have a pretty good deal of hesitation,” Biaghi said. In this case, however, he noted that the timeline will be jointly controlled by the city and Vero. “We’re going to have to work together to accomplish this in that time,” he said.
Biaghi added that the company did not foresee issues obtaining materials and was committed to bringing construction teams to Ukiah. “It’s more often the permitting and licensing and things like that, that could delay a project like this,” he said.
City staff estimates Ukiah will save $55,000 a year on internet services. Vero will also pay the city an annual fee, starting at $12,000 once it has signed up 800 subscribers. After that, Vero will pay $1,500 for each additional block of 100 subscribers — or $15 per subscriber. If 5,000 of Ukiah’s 6,067 households subscribe, the city would collect an additional $84,000 a year.
The hub of the network will be at the Civic Center/Central Fire Station, with distribution to 13 other city facilities, including the airport, Civic Center Annex, Ukiah Valley Conference Center, Corporation Yard, Electric Service Center, Fire Stations North and South, Grace Hudson Museum, Low Gap Electrical Switch Yard, Customer Service Center Building (formerly the Bank of America Building), Orchard Electrical Substation, Wastewater Treatment Plant, and Water Treatment Plant.
The fiber network will consist of 288 strands. The city will lease out 240 strands and retain 48 for its own use.
While the explicit goal of the last-mile program is to close the digital divide, Biaghi said this will be accomplished by ensuring the network passes 375 households currently receiving service at speeds between 25 megabits per second download/3 Mbps upload and 100 Mbps download/25 Mbps upload.
“What does that look like?” he asked rhetorically. “It’s going down the street on those poles where those homes are. That is considered passing.”
Service plans for residential customers will start at $39.99 a month for qualifying low-income households. Tiered plans will begin at $49.99 a month for 100 Mbps, increasing to $129.95 a month for 2.3 Gbps.
“This project will expand access to remote work, online education and telehealth, and help close the digital divide,” Trincado said. “It also strengthens our economic development opportunities and positions Ukiah for Smart City initiatives.”
([email protected]. Mendo Local is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell Mendo Local that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won’t be charged unless they enable payments.)
MENDOCINO COUNTY’S VALLEY OAKS ARE UNDER THREAT FROM A BEETLE
by Lin Due
Although half the nation would probably identify redwoods as the iconic California tree, many Californians might instead think of native deciduous and live oaks. The image of singular twisted oaks on golden rolling hills is as emblematic as they come. But oak trees are increasingly under threat by a quartet of bad actors, with contributing stressors of drought and climate change.
The newest culprit is the Mediterranean oak borer, or MOB, recently confirmed in Hopland and Potter Valley. The beetle has been around since at least 2019, said University of California Cooperative Extension forest advisor Michael Jones, speaking from his Ukiah office.
“It’s new in the sense that we’re now trying to understand it,” he explained. He suspects that the insect had been around for possibly a decade before arborists began taking note of it and its population started to increase.
“I wouldn’t put it at the top of the list of tree pests, but urban forests are where it will have the greatest impact,” Jones said. The MOB likes the white wood of oaks, so its favorite targets are large older valley oaks. Those oaks are often the beloved trees of downtown squares, urban parks, and leafy neighborhoods.
“When those oaks die,” he said, “the loss will be significant. It won’t happen overnight,” though he noted that heavily infested trees die quickly.
Jones said that he hoped that management practices can be developed to save the oaks or at least allow a new cohort of younger, more resistant trees to take root. The MOB is also attacking Oregon white oak and blue oak. They are not attracted to live oaks.
But other pests are. The quartet of MOB, goldspotted oak borer, invasive shothole borers, and sudden oak death yields a killer for every kind of native oak. The goldspotted oak borer is native to Arizona, and is now primarily around Los Angeles but spreading north. Likewise, the invasive shothole borer is found in the Santa Cruz mountains and in Santa Clara County but again is heading north. And MOB is in Mendocino, Lake, Sonoma, Napa, Marin, and other Northern California counties as well as Oregon.
“Pretty much every significant native oak we have has a serious pest,” concluded Jones.
The beetles attack trees that are stressed. Jones pointed out that while drought is a known stressor, the conditions of this past winter likely exacerbated MOB’s impact.
“Drought is not great,” he said, “but this year we had average precipitation across California. But that’s not a good metric. When rain comes in big atmospheric rivers, there’s a lot of runoff.”
Which means that water does not percolate into the soil, where oaks need it.
“We had that January dry spell and then a really early season heat wave in May. Trees were confused, and now they’re really struggling. That’s why we’re noticing so much mortality,” Jones said.
Jones said that scientists believe the Mediterranean oak borer came in wine barrel shipments from Europe. “Likely not in the barrels themselves but in packing materials,” he said. “We’re noticing it first in wine-growing areas.”
The hope is that in urban areas, with fewer deer, young valley oaks have a chance to grow past the browsing stage, and that they manage to survive climate- and human-caused stressors. And that our other native oaks are able to adapt to changing conditions and pests from other regions.
“The question is how do we establish a future for our native oaks?” Jones said.
(Mendocino Voice)
JIGSAW PUZZLES and A GREAT DAY IN ELK
If you're headed for a Great Day in Elk, stop at the Little River Museum, 8185 Highway One, just north of Van Damme Beach. Not only do we still have about 30 JIGSAW PUZZLES for $5 each but a lot of interesting exhibits to view too and we're FREE. We have 300, 500, 750 and 1000 piece puzzles, name brands, gently used. And we welcome donations of jigsaw puzzles looking to get out of your closet and onto someone else's table. We're partnered with the Mendocino Library and this is a fundraiser for both the Museum and the Library. Open 11-4 Saturday and Sunday.
(Ronnie James)
ANDERSON VALLEY ADULT SCHOOL FALL CLASSES
Dear Anderson Valley Community,
We are preparing for the Fall 2025 semester at the Adult School. Most classes will start right after Labor Day. This semester we continue to offer English as a Second Language, Citizenship, Child Development in Spanish, and Basic Computers. We will also continue hosting Mendocino College’s Community classes, such as Creative Writing, Aikido, Chorale, Drawing, and Conversational Spanish.
If you are interested in taking a class for the first time, we encourage you to attend our registration night on August 27th from 5:30-8 at the Adult School, 12300 Anderson Valley Way. Returning students can email [email protected], call us at 895-2953, or register online at avadultschool.org.
To see the full class schedule, please check out avadultschool.org or the flyer in English and Spanish.
Thank you! We hope to see you soon!
MAKE THAT TWO PINTS
Point Arena City Council Meeting Agenda, Tuesday, August 26, 2025: https://pointarena.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/2025-08-26-City-Council-Agenda-w-Links.pdf
FISH FEST RETURNS!
Annual Harbor & Seafood Festival
Sunday, Labor Day Weekend, August 31, 2025
Noon to 6pm ~ Arena Cove & Point Arena Pier
This is an event that you don’t want to miss! A stunning coastal setting with local seafood, local bands and local brews, all for a great cause – raising money to keep our local pier operating for the public all year long!
This year’s menu features Baja Fish Tacos, Blackened Rockfish Po-Boys, Island Albacore Kebabs, BBQ Oysters. plenty of side fixings and a variety of soft drinks and locally-made desserts.
Libations include local craft beer courtesy of North Coast Brewery and The New Museum Brewers & Blenders, local assorted wines, and non-alcoholic beverages including homemade lemonade and mineral water.
This year’s Harborfest hosts live performances by local and regional acts.
Burnt
Buckridge Racket Club
Funkasaurus
Bryn and Blue Souls
A kid’s area will host a bouncy house and plenty of other fun activities.
There is no entrance fee for the event. Purchase $1 tickets at the entrance gate for food, drink and activities. This is a cash-only event.
Parking is available in the adjacent Rock Wall area and along the north side of Port Road only.
Bring your friends and family, but please leave your furry family at home.
For more information or to get involved please call Point Arena City Hall at 707-882-2122.
SCAM PROMOTERS SOUGHT
Media, Public Relations, and Communications Services
Closing Date: Friday, September 5th at 8pm
The Great Redwood Trail Agency is requesting qualifications from communications firms or consultants to provide media, public relations, and communications services on an on-call, task driven, time-and-materials basis. The selected firm will support GRTA’s efforts to engage the public in its operations and trail development projects by providing timely, accurate information on agency activities and milestones.…
GROWING, AN ON-LINE COMMENT:
There are a lot of people who have been growing ‘weed’ around here for decades, who actually care about the environment. (Most of the original ‘back-to-the-landers’ qualify in that way). True that some have had to struggle with the pull between those values and greed. Yet most the growers I have known have likely learned a lot in these ensuing, post-’legalization’ days, about the need to generally let waters flow, for the larger good. And I believe they would likely condemn people who cause permanent or long term environmental pollution and trashing our communities.
The problem is many of other groups involved in this industry, be they ‘green-rushers’, cartels, cops, countie$ or CDFW, are extremist zealots, looking out for their narrow goals, without consideration that there IS middle ground in which this industry should, or was able to maintain families and their communities as part of their relatively healthy growing techniques.
CATCH OF THE DAY, Friday, August 22, 2025
BRIANNA BELL, 22, Ukiah. Robbery, assault with deadly weapon not a gun, hit&run with property damage, taking vehicle without owner’s consent, under influence, annoying calls to 911, resisting.
JONATHAN CAMARGO, 37, Ukiah. Probation revocation.
ANTHONY DAHL, 33, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-loitering, trespassing, controlled substance, paraphernalia.
JUAN GONZALEZ, 31, Ukiah. Battery.
KENDALL JENSEN, 39, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.
DONALD MOORE, 68, San Rafael/Ukiah. Failure to appear.
WILLIAM MOORE, 34, Medford, Oregon/Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs, more than an ounce of pot, nitrous oxide.
GABRIEL ROJAS, 28, Redwood Valley. DUI.
REALIA SPECIALE, 42, Willits. Under influence, probation revocation.
It is not my fault that certain so-called bohemian elements have found in my writings something to hang their peculiar beatnik theories on.
— Jack Kerouac
MEMO OF THE AIR: Good Night Radio all night Friday night on KNYO and KAKX!
Soft deadline to email your writing for tonight’s (Friday night’s) MOTA show is 5:30 or so. If that’s too soon, send it any time after that and I’ll read it next Friday. That’s fine. There’s no pressure.
Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio is every Friday, 9pm to 5am PST on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg and KNYO.org. The first three hours of the show, meaning till midnight, are simulcast on KAKX 89.3fm Mendocino.
Plus you can always go to https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com and hear last week’s MOTA show. By Saturday night I’ll put up the recording of tonight’s show. You’ll find plenty of other educational amusements there to educate and amuse yourself with until showtime, or any time, such as:
Archimedean spirals. East, south, west and north, spin the wheels and perambulate forth. https://twitter.com/i/status/1958166047313256748
“But, Steven- this baby and the queer machine that brought it here, where did they come from?” “Oh, outta the sky, I reckon.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3meFcks597g
And “Consequently, as the foot is alternately raised and lowered, during walking, a squawking noise is produced to the delight and humor of the wearer.” https://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/novelty_squawk_type_shoe
Marco McClean, [email protected], https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com
PICKETT FIRE EXPANDS in Napa County mountains east of Calistoga as firefighters make gains
The 4,000-acre wildfire has primarily moved east through sparsely populated territory last burned in 2020. No structures have been lost and containment stood at 7% late Friday.
by Marisa Endicott
Crews made gains Friday in their battle against the Pickett Fire in Napa County, even as the blaze grew to nearly 4,000 acres, making it the largest wildfire in the region this year.
The fire erupted Thursday afternoon on the northern outskirts of Calistoga and spread quickly through the steep and rugged terrain, prompting evacuation orders for dozens of rural residents and threatening several wineries and vineyards in the area.
Still, as temperatures and winds eased Friday, fire officials telegraphed confidence.
“Although the fire was very aggressive yesterday,” Cal Fire Operations Chief Jeremy Pierce said during a Friday operational update, “today the fire is a much different fire. We do have aircraft and crews in place, and we’re hoping to keep it in check during the heat of the day.”
Evacuation orders, however, remained in place, and new orders were added on the fire’s eastern front Friday evening.
The fire was later mapped at 3,993 acres and was 7% contained.
That snapshot reflected more than 1,100 acres of growth since the blaze was last mapped Thursday night, Cal Fire said, and made it many times the size of the next largest incident this year within the six counties covered by Cal Fire’s Sonoma-Lake-Napa unit. That fire, the Lake Fire, burned 401 acres near Clearlake in early August.
“This is the biggest fire that we’ve had since 2020,” Napa County Deputy Fire Marshal Erick Hernandez said.
That year saw the Hennessey Fire and then the Glass Fire burn in much the same area. The Glass Fire, which burned for almost a month from late September through much of October, swept through 67,000 acres in Napa and Sonoma counties, destroying more than 1,500 structures.
The Pickett Fire made its way along the burn scars of those fires Thursday into Friday, moving east toward the unincorporated community of Pope Valley, in eastern Napa County.
Pope Valley resident Deanna Reister was packed and ready to evacuate Friday morning to her daughter’s house in Colusa County if necessary. She’s evacuated about 10 times in the past decade, she told The Press Democrat.
Cal Fire’s Pierce acknowledged that history during his Friday update and tried to reassure residents.
“I know that for these communities of Angwin, Deer Park and everybody around this area, that Glass Fire is an everlasting memory,” he said. “That being said these are not anywhere close to the same conditions as the Glass Fire.”
He called the Pickett Fire a “slope- and fuels-driven fire” without the same extreme weather and wind and spotting that propelled the Glass Fire. “We’re able to keep up with this fire,” he said. “We expect that to continue.”
The Glass Fire’s burn scar has broken up what would have been continuous fuel beds in some areas, according to Cal Fire Sonoma-Lake-Napa Unit spokesperson Jason Clay.
Fire crews have been able to use some of the same access roads and fire lines that were already established as they build out more control lines. Lines recently reestablished by Napa Firewise have also been helpful, according to Cal Fire.
“We have the right people here who were here five years ago that are familiar with that road system,” said Hernandez, the deputy fire marshal. “We’re using that to our advantage.”
The fire initially broke out just before 3 p.m. Thursday just as a heat wave descended on the North Bay after an unusually cool summer. Temperatures hit triple digits in some places.
Sparked in the 2300 block of Pickett Road, just outside Calistoga city limits, according to Cal Fire, a large plume of smoke was quickly visible from miles away, including Santa Rosa. The cause of the fire is under investigation, with investigators on scene Thursday and again Friday.
That area is home to several wineries, including Poggi Wines, Eisele Vineyard, Venge Vineyards and Kenefick Ranch, and a scattering of rural properties.
Within the hour, the Napa County Sheriff’s Office issued evacuation orders for the areas closest to the fire, north of Silverado Trail, affecting about 70 people, Sheriff Oscar Ortiz said Thursday, and warnings went out to areas just to their east.
By Friday, Napa County officials expanded evacuation orders, including areas north and south of Aetna Springs on the northern edge of Pope Valley, east of Victoria Drive and Oat Hill Mine Trail and west of Summit Lake Drive. Evacuation warnings were extended past the Calistoga Ranch resort and then zones south of James Creek Road.
The wildfire has primarily moved east through sparsely populated territory. No structures have been lost and only three were threatened with no new threats as of Friday afternoon, according to fire officials.
(The Press Democrat)
15 ALPACAS DEAD, 3 COUGARS ON THE LOOSE: NORCAL RANCH UNDER SIEGE
Attacks occurred over three nights on a Lake County ranch in Northern California…
by Matt LaFever
A two-hour drive north of San Francisco, on a 340-acre ranch tucked into the hills outside Middletown in Lake County, Julie Barr has spent nearly a decade raising alpacas. A retired Navy nurse, she moved her herd from Texas in 2015, filling the pastures with animals she describes as “so adorable.”
She told SFGATE she had “never lost an animal to attack.” But that peace ended last weekend, when a spree of mountain lion attacks over three consecutive nights left 15 of her alpacas dead.
She remembered stepping onto her porch the evening of Sunday, Aug. 17, when she heard a crash. Barr and her husband rushed out to inspect the alpaca enclosure and found a section of fence smashed from the inside out. Only later did she realize it was made by her alpacas, stampeding in the dim light and slamming against the boards in a blind panic as the lions struck.
What stunned her most wasn’t just the scale of the killing, but the nature of it. “It’s not like they just killed one and ate it,” she said. “They just killed” and ate nothing. She has Great Pyrenees guard dogs on the property, but, as she put it, “there’s no way my dogs could take care of all that.”
Her neighbor, Jesse Cude, was called to Barr’s ranch the following morning and told SFGATE he found “eight dead and four still breathing.” He said he was forced to “put down like four or five of them.”
Cude returned that night to stand guard, shotgun in hand. As dusk settled, he sat quietly, waiting.
“I’m just sitting there being quiet,” he said, “and I see out of the corner of my eye two cats run right by me like 20 feet away. It’s straight towards the alpacas.”
They were “big cats, probably 100 pounds, running at full speed right by me,” he added. “Didn’t notice me, smell me, nothing.”
The alpacas screamed as the lions struck again. Two more animals would die that night, and another pair the following evening, bringing the toll to 15.
California Department of Fish and Wildlife spokesperson Peter Tiara confirmed the scope of the attacks. “We showed up after the first incident, 11 alpacas killed, three more injured as well as injuries to one of their livestock guardian dogs,” he said. “It was a mountain lion attack and we issued a non-lethal permit.”
After the lions returned, CDFW escalated its response. “At that point, we issued a lethal depredation permit to take one adult lion.”
Tiara told SFGATE that the mountain lions were not likely killing for sport, but due to their prey drive. “If they get into a pen and there’s multiple animals, they’re in kill mode, right? As long as there’s movement, they’re taking out every animal they can get,” he explained. “It’s just a predatory response.”
On Barr’s ranch, the aftermath lingers — empty pens beside scattered survivors, the remaining alpacas uneasy in pastures once filled with calm routine. She said animal experts have told her mountain lions don’t kill for sport. But her eyes told her something else.
“They killed 15 animals,” Barr said. “They’re not going to eat 15 animals. They came back two nights and killed.”
She grew up in West Virginia, where her family hunted. “We eat what we kill,” she said. “But this just seemed a shame.”
(sfgate.com)
GIANTS LOSE ON WALKOFF despite 2 HRs from Adames in Milwaukee return
by Shayna Rubin
MILWAUKEE — The home crowd at American Family Field rose to their feet when Willy Adames took the batter’s box in the first inning. Adames is beloved in Milwaukee, a town that cherishes the four years he spent leading the Brewers with a understanding of why he left this small market for a big contract in San Francisco.
Adames stepped out of the box and tipped his helmet to the crowd. He’d swapped his usual purple sleeve and socks for yellow this weekend already as a nod back. But the lovefest would stop almost immediately after he stepped back to hit.
Brewers starter Jose Quintana offered him a welcome back gift first-pitch fastball down the middle that Adames smashed 419 feet into left field for a home run. The crowd cheers quickly turned to loud boos that carried over into every Adames at-bat, he grinned each time.
“The pitch was right down the middle and I just put on a good swing. I didn’t try to hit a homer, it just kind of felt like a movie. Like somebody wrote it in a book,” Adames said. “My second at-bat when they started booing me I was just laughing because it’s how it is. I enjoyed the standing ovation. For me it was the same. I know it’s all love.”
The Brewers, though, would get the last laugh when William Contreras hit a walk-off home run off closer Randy Rodriguez with two outs in the ninth to hand the Giants a 5-4 loss on Friday night, their fourth straight.
The loss moves the Giants seven games below. 500 for the first time since April 2023.
After a sluggish, often sloppy series loss in San Diego, the Giants at least played clean and even mounted a comeback against a best-in-baseball Milwaukee team that looks unstoppable.
Down two runs in the eighth, Adames’ second home run of the game cut San Francisco’s deficit to one run and helped set up a rare late comeback. Luis Matos was the fuel behind the game-tying run in the ninth when he legged out a double that got by a diving Sal Frelick. He advanced to third on pinch-hitter Dom Smith’s sharp grounder that deflected off closer Trevor McGill and then scored on a wild pitch.
“There was some battle,” manager Bob Melvin said. “We came out with some energy today and it’s hard to swallow a one-run loss when we felt like once Randy is in the game we’re getting through the ninth.”
Matos has been a frequent rider on the shuttle between Triple-A Sacramento and San Francisco this year, but the expectation this time is to get him more regular playing time. Originally planned to start against left-handed pitching when the season began, his splits showed better production against right-handers, which means he won’t be on the bench based only on matchups. The Giants are looking to identify more players who can put the ball in play and Matos’ low strikeout rate tags him as someone to watch.
He got the start against a lefty in Quintana on Friday and delivered his sixth home run off him. He has four extra-base hits in his past two games.
Adames’ home runs and Matos’ solo blast in the second off Quintana were the only hits the Giants would get through the first eight innings. Much can be made of how much offense the Brewers generate through weak contact and strong baserunning, but an athletic defense that routinely makes game-altering plays has been just as pivotal. For most of Friday’s game, they made sure anything not over the fence hit grass.
Heliot Ramos was a primary victim. In the third inning, he scorched a line drive 103 mph toward left field that shortstop Andruw Monasterio leapt into the air to snag. Later, Ramos flipped a breaking ball into shallow right field that looked cleared to drop — it had a .790 expected batting average — but second baseman Brice Turang ran back to snag it cleanly on the move.
Frelick made a tricky catch at the wall in right to take away Rafael Devers’ poked line drive. In the fifth, first baseman Andrew Vaughn made a leaping catch Patrick Bailey’s two-out line drive that appeared headed into extra-base land.
“Their defense has always been the best,” Adames said. “They put emphasis on that because they know they aren’t hitting a lot of homers and have to play good defense and base running to win games the way they’re doing it this year. I know for a fact they put an emphasis on clean baseball and good defense.”
Milwaukee’s base running came into effect against Carson Whisenhunt in his fourth start of the year.
Christian Yelich got the game-tying rally started with an infield single that Casey Schmitt couldn’t get to in time. Frelick made Whisenhunt pay on a sinker middle-middle, doubling home Yelich. Infield playing in, Schmitt held the runner at third on Caleb Durbin’s ground ball, but the tying run eventually scored on a Whisenhunt wild pitch.
A bunt was the key hit in the Brewers’ go-ahead seventh inning. Joey Lucchesi hit No. 9 hitter Monasterio and Turang moved the line with a bunt single to set up Contreras for a go-ahead double to right. Vaughn’s groundout scored another.
Briefly: The Giants were fearing the worst given how awkwardly Landen Roupp fell off the mound on Tuesday, but an MRI revealed a bone bruise, which is relatively good news. He will get a second opinion, but the team believes he’s avoided the worst and didn’t sustain an injury that will require surgery. Surgery this late in the season would have thrown a wrench into the Giants’ pitching plans for next year, where Roupp is expected to be a key part of the rotation. … Pitching prospect Blade Tidwell also underwent an MRI to evaluate a barking shoulder and that came back with a bit of promising news: no damage. Tidwell will be shut down for about a week.
(sfchronicle.com)
CA WATER COMMISSION ALLOCATES ANOTHER $219 MILLION FOR EMBATTLED SITES RESERVOIR PROJECT
by Dan Bacher
Sacramento, CA – Governor Gavin Newsom yesterday announced that the California Water Commission has allocated another $219 million for the proposed Sites Reservoir, drawing praise from agribusiness and water agencies and outrage from salmon, tribal and environmental groups.
Newsom claimed that Sites Reservoir will prepare the state for a “hotter, drier future,” but salmon and tribal advocates said the $6.8 billion project will siphon water from the already overallocated Sacramento River, threatening endangered salmon runs, Tribal cultural sites, and the health of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and San Francisco Bay ecosystem, now in its worst-ever crisis.…
ROYALTY
by Arthur Rimbaud, translated by John Ashbery
One fine morning, in the country of a very gentle people, a magnificent man and woman were shouting in the public square. “My friends, I want her to be queen!” “I want to be queen!” She was laughing and trembling. He spoke to their friends of revelation, of trials completed. They swooned against each other.
In fact they were regents for a whole morning as crimson hangings were raised against the houses, and for the whole afternoon, as they moved toward groves of palm trees.
HOW WILL NEWSOM’S GERRYMANDER PLAY OUT?
by Dan Walters
Gov. Gavin Newsom and his fellow Democrats in the Legislature are steering California onto a unique political course with an unpredictable outcome.
By gerrymandering the state’s 52 congressional districts to produce at least five more Democratic members, they claim to be protecting democracy from President Donald Trump’s power grab. Trump is pressing Texas and other red states to rearrange their congressional districts to protect the paper-thin Republican congressional majority in next year’s elections.
“Wake up, America,” Newsom said Thursday at a Los Angeles rally launching the campaign for the redistricting effort. “Wake up to what Donald Trump is doing. Wake up to his assault. Wake up to the assault on institutions and knowledge and history. Wake up to his war on science, public health, his war against the American people.”.
Newsom’s hurry-up three-bill package passed this week, placing the gerrymander on a Nov. 4 special election ballot. If approved by voters, the new maps would be in place for three election cycles but the state’s independent redistricting commission would redraw them again after the 2030 census — or at least Newsom promises it would.
Since no one can predict how all of this will turn out, the situation invites exploring potential scenarios.
For example, Newsom says California’s gerrymander would occur only if Texas does it first, but that’s not what Assembly Constitutional Amendment 8 actually says. The proposal would become operative, ACA 8 says, “only if Texas, Florida, or another state adopts a new congressional district map that takes effect after August 1, 2025, and before January 1, 2031, and such redistricting is not required by a federal court order.”
In other words, if the Texas or another red-state gerrymander does not occur for whatever reason, California’s could still be activated if any other state, including another blue state such as Illinois, also rearranges its districts. It’s a loophole big enough to drive a semi-truck through.
Let’s assume that the gerrymander is activated for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 election cycles, and gives Democrats at least 48 of the state’s 52 congressional seats. Would Democrats actually be willing to shift redistricting back to the independent commission after the 2030 census?
Due to relatively stagnant population growth, California is destined to lose as many as four seats after the 2030 census. Democrats who win gerrymandered districts in 2026 would be reluctant to give them up. There could be immense pressure to protect them by returning to redistricting via the Legislature, the system in place for many decades prior to creation of the commission process in 2008.
Were the House as closely divided in 2030 as it is now, Democrats also would have every reason to offset the shrinkage of California’s congressional delegation by once again minimizing Republican seats.
The precedent for such a bait-and-switch maneuver is what happened after voters agreed to raise state taxes 2012. Although the ballot measure said the new taxes would be temporary, another union-sponsored ballot measure four years later kept the higher income taxes in effect for an additional 12 years until 2030 and the same interests are planning to seek another extension.
Finally, voter endorsement is decidedly uncertain. Polling shows lukewarm support at best and Republicans will mount a well-financed drive for rejection, given that House control may be at stake.
Rejection would be a black eye for Newsom, who obviously sees the maneuver as improving his national political standing and probably his chances of becoming the Democratic candidate for president in 2028.
(CalMatters.org)
“THE WORST PART is wondering how you’ll find the strength tomorrow to go on doing what you did today and have been doing for much too long, where you’ll find the strength for all that stupid running around, those projects that come to nothing, those attempts to escape from crushing necessity, which always founder and serve only to convince you one more time that destiny is implacable, that every night will find you down and out, crushed by the dread of more and more sordid and insecure tomorrows. And maybe it’s treacherous old age coming on, threatening the worst. Not much music left inside us for life to dance to. Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn’t enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I’ve never been able to kill myself.”
— Louis-Ferdinand Celine
“I REALLY AM A PESSIMIST. I’ve always felt that fascism is a more natural governmental condition than democracy. Democracy is a grace. It’s something essentially splendid because it’s not at all routine or automatic. Fascism goes back to our infancy and childhood, where we were always told how to live. We were told, Yes, you may do this; no, you may not do that. So the secret of fascism is that it has this appeal to people whose later lives are not satisfactory.”
— Norman Mailer
THE WORLD WILL END IN 25 YEARS, humanity will die and towns will become slaughterhouses
Oxford scientists’ nightmare prediction, their proof it’s inevitable and why billionaires in their bunkers should tremble
by Christopher Stevens
In a game of Russian roulette with a standard Colt revolver, the chances of instant death are one-in-six.
Terrifyingly, that’s the same as the odds of humanity being wiped out within 75 years – everyone dead in a cataclysmic and total breakdown of civilisation, according to Oxford University futurologist Toby Ord, an expert on the threat of artificial intelligence.
Does it sound impossibly bleak? His colleague Nick Bostrom is more pessimistic still. He rates the possibility of human extinction by the next century as one in four.
Pulitzer prize-winning writer Jared Diamond is even less hopeful, predicting our species’ chances of survival beyond 2050 – just 25 years away – are no better than evens, or 50/50.
Not so long ago, only oddballs in sandwich boards and evangelical cult leaders seriously believed ‘the end of the world is nigh’. The phrase itself was a comic cliche, so gloomy it was funny.
But the voices now warning of our impending extinction come from highly respected scientists, not kooky doom-sayers. They point to multiple existential threats faced by the human race: not only nuclear weapons, but rampant climate change, artificially engineered viruses and even malevolent AI capable of manufacturing its own super-weapons.
In a chilling new book, Cambridge academic Luke Kemp draws a ghastly conclusion. Human societies and empires always collapse, he warns, because they are fuelled by unsustainable greed.
Dr Kemp dubs them ‘Goliaths’, after the giant warrior in the Old Testament who appeared invincible until a single stone from a slingshot felled him.
Every civilisation in human history has been ‘self-terminating’, he says. The pattern is always the same, beginning with an inequality in wealth between the powerful few and the mass of ordinary people. This leads to an imbalance in decision-making, as those in power – whether emperors, presidents or chief executives – rewrite the rules to suit the elite few.
Goliath societies are rapacious. They suck up all the available wealth and funnel it to the ruling class. When the rest of society starts to starve, a violent reaction sets in. Weak Goliaths are overthrown easily. Stronger ones fight back, using military dominance to cling to power.
And the harder they fight, the harder they fall.
Their civilisations are gradually hollowed out, by corruption, infighting among the rulers, over-expansion, degradation of the environment and what Kemp calls ‘immiseration of the masses’.
The collapse of infrastructure, political systems and the rule of law put these societies at the mercy of drought, wildfires, an earthquake or tsunami, floods, war and disease – events that could normally be weathered but here become the final death blow to civilisation.
It’s a nightmarish vision. What makes it so compelling and frightening is the proof Kemp supplies, in a thick volume, that this pattern is an ancient one far older than the Bible itself.
He traces it back to the earliest farmers, where the boom-and-bust cycle of primitive agriculture led to the rapid growth of towns that would be abandoned when famine struck.
Kemp, a senior research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, argues that throughout much of history, the collapse of a society brought benefits for many as well as localised death and disaster.
Empires that grew fat on slavery – for instance, the Greek and Roman civilisations – helped new technology to spread. When one society fell apart, another grew up in its place, after a period of readjustment, and took advantage of the lessons from the past.
But when the globalised Goliath of the 21st century is destroyed, there might be nothing and no one left to take its place.
And that destruction, Kemp warns, seems imminent.
In the 1950s, nuclear weapons were our sole existential threat. That has not gone away: an estimated 10,000 such warheads are stockpiled, controlled not only by the superpowers China, Russia and America, but by India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea, as well as France and the UK.
Iran was also close to building a nuclear bomb and detonator, until its underground facilities were targeted in US strikes in June.
But weapons of mass destruction are no longer the only nightmare – nor even the worst.
In the past, diseases such as the Black Death, which killed between a third and half of the British population in the 1300s, were limited by the speed of spread, no faster than people could travel.
Now, a novel virus such as Covid, engineered in a biowarfare laboratory using gain-of-function technology, can move around the world as fast (and in as many directions) as passenger airliners.
Climate change is taking place at an unprecedented rate – ten times faster than the global warming that triggered the greatest mass extinction in the planet’s history: the Great Permian Dying, which wiped out between 80 and 90 per cent of all life 252 million years ago.
And in 2023, hundreds of AI scientists, including the bosses of leading developers such as Google DeepMind, issued a statement highlighting real fears that the software they were trialling could become virulently hostile… capable of enslaving or obliterating us.
Fear of death by tech is nothing new. In 1924, Winston Churchill published a pamphlet entitled Shall We All Commit Suicide?
Writing 21 years before the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, and a century before drones were used in warfare, his vision seems extraordinarily prophetic: ‘Might not a bomb no bigger than an orange be found to possess a secret power to destroy a whole block of buildings – nay, to concentrate the force of a thousand tons of cordite and blast a township at a stroke?
‘Could not explosives even of the existing type be guided automatically in flying machines by wireless or other rays, without a human pilot, in ceaseless procession on a hostile city, arsenal, camp or dockyard?’
The fact that humanity has not so far been consumed in a conflagration is not proof, Kemp points out, that it will not happen.
The only question is how bad it will be.
He defines ‘societal collapse’ as the failure of a state combined with economic breakdown and mass deaths. Anything less than global decimation – that is, the death of 10 per cent of the planet’s population – does not qualify as total societal collapse on a worldwide scale. It has happened before, and humanity recovered.
But beyond that, there is a spectrum of catastrophic risk, all the way to 100 per cent annihilation – human extinction.
A worldwide disaster that wrecks the delicate network of telecommunications and food distribution, for instance, could quickly turn civilisation into chaos. Kemp cites the Carrington Event of 1859, a massive ejection of electromagnetic solar flares from the sun which, if it happened today, would fry much of our electrical infrastructure.
Without satellites, computers and the internet, our banking system, health service, phone networks and many vehicles, from cars to warplanes, would cease to function, quite literally in a flash. The best estimates put the probability of this at 20.3 per cent per decade – or 50/50 by the midpoint of the century.
How quickly this would turn Britain’s towns into slaughterhouses is anybody’s guess.
The panic that gripped millions of people at the onset of the pandemic in 2020, with supermarket shelves emptied within hours, is not cause for hope.
Little optimism exists among the billionaires who have benefited most from computers and the internet. Many are active super-preppers, getting ready for the end of the world as fervently as religious extremists awaiting the End Of Days.
Peter Thiel, the brains behind online purchasing system PayPal, has a private jet on standby to take him to his bunker in New Zealand. In 2011, he purchased a 477-acre former sheep station on the South Island as a safe haven against Doomsday.
He also arranged New Zealand citizenship for himself, despite having spent just a dozen days in the country (the usual requirement is 1,350 days).
The island’s location, deep in the southern hemisphere, makes it well placed – in theory, at least – to weather the worst of global radiation fallout if a nuclear war escalates to ‘mutually assured destruction’. It would also be relatively isolated in the event of another pandemic.
Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has revealed that he and Thiel have a deal whereby, if societal collapse looms, they will board a private jet and fly to the bunker together.
Indeed, that day will see a wholesale exodus of the super-rich. Kemp points to ‘an entire industry of reinforced, luxury bunker-manors with pools, wine vaults, artificial gardens for sunbathing in simulated sunlight, and underground hydroponic farms, from Texas to the Czech Republic… in one case, with a dozen ex-Navy special forces SEALs’.
The former cryptocurrency tycoon Sam Bankman-Fried, once reckoned to be the richest man in the world aged under 30 before he was jailed for fraud last year, wanted to go one further and buy the Pacific island of Nauru, in Micronesia, as a refuge for himself and his fabulously wealthy family and friends.
But a heavily defended bunker comes with its own problems. One frequent worry for super-preppers is: ‘How do I maintain authority over my security force after civilisation collapses?’
After all, the people guarding the billionaires will be the ones with the guns and the military training. An armed coup might not be far behind. Proposed solutions included electric ‘zapper’ collars for staff, and AI robots instead of human bodyguards.
Such a dictatorial mindset is at the core of why societies break down, Kemp argues. Rule by coercion never survives for long. Since the Stone Age, human networks have prospered only when they are built on trust and mutual respect for an agreed set of laws. Once that disintegrates, everything else falls with it.
But even a bunker-world founded on the most altruistic principles is unlikely to survive the apocalypse.
Isolated pockets of humanity never do last long. Because they are geographically confined and unable to trade with other groups, they are inevitably reliant on localised food supplies – and when these fail, starvation follows.
The mega-rich might be able to prepare for a global collapse, but it is the very poor who stand the best chance of living through it.
If the world’s industries shut down, highly developed countries that depend on food imports will be hit first.
Then, as the supply of fertilisers and pesticides runs out, the major producers of North America and Europe, China and India will see their output crash. Wheat, rice, corn and soybean yields will all drop by at least 75 per cent.
In Africa, where subsistence farmers use far less chemicals, rice production might fall by as little as 25 per cent and soybean by just 5 per cent. There will be hunger, but not on the scale suffered in richer countries.
Developing countries, on the other hand, are most at risk from climate change. About 30 million people currently live in places on the planet where average yearly temperatures exceed 29C.
But if greenhouse gas emissions carry on at medium to high levels, it is expected that by 2070 around 2 billion people will be living in those sweltering conditions. This will drive mass migration to cooler climes, but it will also devastate agriculture. The amount of land viable for corn and wheat crops would be halved.
Even the solutions Kemp proposes come with their own apocalyptic risks.
One is stratospheric aerosol injection, which involves pumping the upper atmosphere with chemicals such as sulphur dioxide to reflect sunlight.
This mimics volcanic eruptions and could be done at a cost of about £7.5billion a year.
Kemp and a colleague, Dr Aaron Tang, carried out a study in 2021 and found this massive chemical release could have unpredictable effects on rainfall patterns.
But a bigger problem is one of ‘termination shock’. These chemicals wash out of the atmosphere within six months. They have to be constantly replaced – and that might be impossible if, for instance, solar flares or another pandemic grounded all the world’s planes.
The planet would start to heat up again, this time even faster than before. The warming we have experienced over 250 years, since the start of the Industrial Revolution, could be repeated in just a couple of decades.
Every option comes with near-suicidal implications. Think back to that imaginary game of Russian roulette, and now imagine that every threat to human existence is another bullet in the chamber of the revolver.
Nuclear war… climate catastrophe… misanthropic AI… geo-magnetic storms… man-made viruses.
How many bullets before we no longer have any chance at all?
(‘Goliath’s Curse: The History And Future Of Societal Collapse,’ by Luke Kemp, is published by Penguin/Viking, DailyMailUK.com)
BY THE BATCH
by James Kunstler
“The problem with the future is that it is both unpredictable and inescapable.” — Tarik Cyril Amar
Please everybody, extricate yourselves from the mud-wallow of cynicism. Naysayers arise and open your eyes! Sleepwalkers and black-pillers, smell the coffee and wake up! Sob-sisters dry your tears! We are marching into a promised land of accountability after all.
Our country, you well know, has been sore beset under a long-running seditious coup orchestrated by an ever more insane Bolshevik-Jacobin syndicate of political reprobates seeking to erase every boundary between the real and the unreal since 2016, a year that now lives in infamy. All their malice and roguery has been focused on the odd figure who somehow rose to lead the opposition to their burgeoning color revolution, Mr. Trump, who, through some alchemy of fortitude, managed to evade their many-footed depredations — to get re-elected.
Of course, you’ve also noticed that psychological projection is the heart of the seditionists’ game. Whatever ploy or subterfuge they accuse you of, is exactly what they are doing. Their mainstay is the phrase conspiracy theory. Whenever one of their many turpitudes is carried out — such as a rigged election — your notice of it is labeled a conspiracy theory. In fact, their long train of activities to turn the country upside-down and inside-out has been one drawn-out seditious conspiracy. And that is liable to be precisely one of the charges lodged against — but surely not the only charge.
You have seen news (anywhere but in The New York Times) that grand juries are being convened here and there to scrutinize a whole lot of bad behavior by a whole lot of officials who recklessly wielded their power, who betrayed the nation, who broke institutions, destroyed lives, careers, and households, and, as an added insult, attempted to make you swallow one patent absurdity after another — a Potemkin president, drag queens in the schools, a massive invasion of alien mutts across an open border, Saint George Floyd and “mostly peaceful protests,” math is racist, boys in girls’ sports and locker rooms — all in their campaign to destroy American cultural coherence while they seized totalistic political control and sniped their adversaries off the game board. (Just look how they destroyed Rudolf Giuliani, a heroic figure who saved New York City in the 1990s.)
Grand juries are a sign that something serious is up. Evidence is being gathered by a new FBI, no longer dedicated to just covering-up its past crimes. A sign of how serious this effort is: the hiring last week of Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey as Co-Deputy FBI Director. Mr. Bailey, you may recall, presided over the Missouri v Biden lawsuit (2022) about the “Joe Biden” White House’s efforts to coerce social media into censorship. The SCOTUS killed the case on spurious grounds for “lack of standing to sue.” But the government censorship crusade was a hallmark affront to the Constitution in the years’ long seditious conspiracy against the American people. It could even return as a criminal— not a civil — case this time, since censorship was so central to the overall coup.
The convening of several grand juries tells you that cases are being made now and that they will be tried in batches or tranches according to the various episodes of the coup. I’ll venture to describe what some of these batches might comprise.
The origin and execution of RussiaGate, involving former President Obama, then-Veep Joe Biden, CIA Director Brennan, FBI chief Comey, DNI Clapper, Susan Rice, Mary McCord, Sally Yates, Adam Schiff (then-Chair of the House Intel Committee), and Senator Mark Warner (then-Chair of the Senate Intel Committee), plus Andrew McCabe, Rod Rosenstein, Peter Strzrok, Bruce Ohr, John Carlin, Joe Pientka, Steven Somma, and a number of other DOJ / FBI foot-soldiers, and CIA London Station chief Gina Haspel.
Another batch might be the judges in the FISA Courts, who made themselves tools of a corrupt FBI, starting with then-Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer, and including James Boasberg, who notoriously let FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith skate after his forging a crucial document that would have revealed Carter Page to be a CIA asset. Federal judges are not granted immunity from criminal prosecution under the Constitution.
Another batch might be the gang who put together spurious Trump Impeachment No. 1 over the Ukraine Phone Call matter: Adam Schiff, CIA / NSC mole Eric Ciaramella (the “whistleblower”), Intel IG Michael Atkinson, Col. Alexander Vindman of the NSC; plus lawfare ninjas Mary McCord and Norm Eisen who helped plan the scheme, the two Ukraine Ambassadors officers they schemed with, Marie Yavonovitch and Jeffrey Pyatt; plus “Russia expert” Fiona Hill of the NSC. In the Senate trial phase of the impeachment, consider that then-Attorney General William Barr withheld exculpatory evidence from Mr. Trump’s defense attorneys contained in the Hunter Biden laptop, the existence of which he was concealing, wand which was stuffed with emails and memoranda detailing the Biden Family’s grifting operation in Ukraine.
Another batch would have to include the FBI / CIA / DOJ / Congressional characters who helped stage various aspects of the Jan. 6, 2021 US Capitol riot (the so-called “insurrection”) including (again) Christopher Wray, General Mark Milley, Speaker Nancy Pelosi; plus Steven M. D’Antuono, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, who arranged and then covered-up the pipe-bomb caper at the DNC headquarters that day.
Another batch might be the lawyers in the DOJ / FBI who cooked-up the Mar-a-Lago raid without an authentic legal predicate: Deputy AG Lisa Monaco and FBI Director Christopher Wray appear to have been responsible for that ploy — and especially the degrading manner of its execution with a SWAT team, staged evidence photo ops, and the rifling of Melania Trump’s lingerie drawers.
Then there’s a big batch of the fifty-one former intel officers (including several CIA ex-chiefs), who signed the infamous letter labeling Hunter Biden’s laptop “Russian disinformation,” a potential incident of criminal election interference.
Let’s not leave out the absurd campaign of serial fake prosecutions for civil and criminal charges launched in Atlanta, Washington, and New York City, coordinated (again) by lawfare artists Norm Eisen, Mary McCord, plus Ben Wittes, Marc Elias and others, through the good offices of Attorney General Merrick Garland and whomever in the White House was coaching the likes of Fani Willis, Nathan Wade, Letitia James, and Alvin Bragg.
You see how this goes? This ongoing coup against the people of this land is spectacularly wide-ranging and multilayered, with a cast of hundreds. The cases entailed are complex, and it is axiomatic that conspiracy cases are especially difficult to win. Of course, there are many other charges that range, say, from possibly treason to conspiracy against rights under color of law, defrauding the government, lying to the FBI and to Congress, election interference, malicious prosecution. . . .
The cases are huge and complex. Are Pam Bondi and Kash Patel up to it? I guess we’ll find out. I’m inclined to believe that quite a few of these rogues are going to court and some of them will land in prison. So, quit taking those black pills and cheer up.
(kunstler.com)
THE WAY IT IS. The freaking real estate market? Who can buy a house right now? No one! Houses cost a million dollars. They’re not seventy thousand dollars anymore. Your kids literally can’t keep their eyes off their screens. You’re expecting them to go off into the workforce and actually work? When’s the last time anything was made in America? Everyone’s like, ‘We’re gonna bring factories back. It takes twenty years to bring back industry. Right now, there’s only one factory thriving in America. It’s called the Cheesecake Factory. Do you realize that hundreds of Latinos, at every construction site, are getting shipped outtahere, arrested? What are all these contractors — who are Republicans, by the way, who voted for Trump, gonna do? Where are all the white people lining up to pick lettuce and rutabagas and shit? We can go back to the Roman times. Do you think their senators gave a shit who won in the Colosseum? No! They built the Colosseum to keep the people at bay, so they wouldn’t revolt. They were trying to keep poor people entertained while they take all their freaking money. It’s as old as the freaking hills — give them entertainment.
(New Yorker)
LEAD STORIES, SATURDAY'S NYT
Corporate America’s Newest Activist Investor: Donald Trump
Intel Agrees to Sell U.S. a 10% Stake in Its Business
Lisa Cook, Who Broke Ground at the Fed, Faces Attack by Trump
In Trump’s Second Term, Far-Right Agenda Enters the Mainstream
As Trump Targets the Smithsonian, Museums Across the U.S. Feel a Chill
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY
Unfortunately, the USA has Stage 4 cancer: the evil and corruption and destruction has gone too far. No cure available. It has already sealed its fate. You are living in history… the fall of the USA empire (the UK was the last, and there were hundreds before that). The flaw is in the individual: the human mind, the human spirit. When the day comes that man actually understands himself, the atrocities and failings of humanity will finally be able to be prevented.
IX., SABBATHS 2006
by Wendell Berry
“That’s been an oak tree a long time,”
said Arthur Rowanberry. How long a time
we did not know. The oak meant,
as Art meant, that we were lost
in time, in which the oak and we had come
and would go. Nobody knows what
to make of this. It was as if,
there in the Sabbath morning light,
we both were buried or unborn while
the oak lived, or it would fall
while we stood. But Art, who had
the benefit of not too much education,
not too many days pressed between pages
or framed in a schoolhouse window,
is long fallen now, though he stands
in my memory still as he stood
in time, or stands in Heaven,
and a few of his memories remain
a while as memories of mine. To be
on horseback with him and free,
lost in time, found in place, early
Sunday morning, was plain delight.
We had ridden over all his farm,
along field edges, through the woods,
in search of ripe wild fruit, and found
none, for all our pains, and yet
“We didn’t find what we were looking for,”
said Arthur Rowanberry, pleased,
“but haven’t we seen some fine country!”
BY THE BATCH
Let’s hope he is right!!!!
Slightly confused I am about his reference to “Bolshevick-Jacobin”. I think he used the reference for rhyme.
Kunstler states: “Whenever one of their many turpitudes is carried out — such as a rigged election — your notice of it is labeled a conspiracy theory.” Which rigged election is he talking about? Trump’s first election where he beat Hillary Clinton was not contested by the democrats. Trump’s second election, which he lost to Biden was not rigged according to multiple lawsuits filed in multiple states and rejected by both Democratic and Republican judges. His third election against Harris was not contested by the democrats. What is Kunstler talking about, and what do you hope he’s right about?
Kunstler believes the Biden election was stolen from Trump. He’s guilty of moral trumptitude, a legal term referring to an especially depraved credulity, the delusions of a psychopath, and the ego of a god.
“(Just look how they destroyed Rudolf Giuliani, a heroic figure who saved New York City in the 1990s.)”
Too funny. Rudolph Giuliani destroyed himself starting with the drinking and not ending with his disastrous appearance in the Borat movie and including the hair dye running down his face while at the lectern and his association with Donald Trump to begin with.
Dog and Man at Westport–A sweet photo that is.
15 ALPACAS DEAD, 3 COUGARS ON THE LOOSE: NORCAL RANCH UNDER SIEGE
Jesse Cude had a shotgun, and was waiting, then the lions showed up within range, but he failed to shoot. What?
LUST FOR POWER: UKRAINE STILL SUFFERS
“Did Churchill ever break into applause at the sight of Stalin, or JFK give a little ovation for Khrushchev? I suspect not. So it was striking to see Donald Trump’s thrilled reaction as Vladimir Putin approached him in Alaska last week. Some online cynics joked that it was natural that the American leader clapped: it’s not every day you get to meet your hero. Too strong? Perhaps. But Mr Trump has shown an abiding affection for the Russian autocrat.”
Adam Roberts
THE ECONOMIST, 8.23.25
Kudos for the excerpt of Luke Kemp’s “Goliath’s Curse”. Spot-on prognostication!
NB: When I was born in 1950, the human population of Earth was 2.5 Billion people. Today, 75 years later, it is pushing 9 Billion People.
Do the math.
Don’t worry Lee, Prime Minister Netanyahu, who President Trump has knighted as a hero, like King David and his slingshot, will save us from Goliath’s Curse, and all the rest of the Philistines into the bargain. Better than a slingshot he now has a battery of those wicked Jericho rocket launchers you used to serve on. Maybe I have the name wrong.?
My elderly uncle had dozed off in his camp chair one afternoon while fishing along a gliding stream when he started flinching like sleeping dogs sometimes do, muttering incoherently…suddenly, he sat bolt upright wide-eyed and screamed., “We’re going over the falls,” his voice pinched shrill with fright. Then he looked very embarrassed and nobody said anything more than a dismissive chuckle. I thought of that long-forgotten incident when I read that book review this am.
This is an excerpt from an excellent piece on Ukraine:
“UKRAINE DIPLOMACY REVEALS HOW UN-AMERICAN TRUMP IS”
Thomas Fiedman
“…Every bone in my body tells me that Trump does not get what this Ukraine war is truly about. Trump is unlike any American president in the past 80 years. He feels no gut solidarity with the trans-Atlantic alliance and its shared commitment to democracy, free markets, human rights and the rule of law — an alliance that has produced the greatest period of prosperity and stability for the most people in the history of the world.
I am convinced that Trump looks at NATO as if it’s a U.S.-owned shopping center whose tenants are never paying enough rent. And he looks at the European Union as a shopping center competing with the United States that he’d like to shut down by hammering it with tariffs.
The notion that NATO is the spear that protects Western values and that the European Union is possibly the West’s best modern political creation — a vast center of free people and free markets, stabilizing a continent that was known for tribal and religious wars for millenniums — is alien to Trump…
Trump and Witkoff are not wrong to want to stop the war and all the killing. And it is not wrong to be in regular communication with Putin to do that. I am all for both. But to stop this war in a sustainable way, you have to understand who Putin is and what he is up to. Putin is a bad guy, a coldblooded murderer. He is not the friend of the president. That is a fantasy that Trump chooses to believe is real.
Once you understand those things, they lead you to only one conclusion: The only sustainable way to stop this war and prevent it from coming back is a massive, consistent, Western commitment to give Ukraine the military resources that will persuade Putin that his army will be chewed apart. The United States also must provide the security guarantees that would deter Russia from ever trying this again and encourage our European allies to promise that Ukraine will one day be in the E.U. — forever anchored in the West.
Putin’s punishment for this war should be that he and his people have to forever look to the West and see a Ukraine, even if it is a smaller Ukraine, that is a thriving Slavic, free-market democracy, compared with Putin’s declining Slavic, authoritarian kleptocracy.
But how will Trump ever learn that truth when he basically gutted the National Security Council staff and shrank and neutered the State Department, when he fired the head of the National Security Agency and his deputy on the advice of a conspiracy buffoon, Laura Loomer, and when he appointed a Putin fan girl, Tulsi Gabbard, to be his director of national intelligence?
Who will tell him the truth? No one.
No one but the wild earth of Ukraine. In the trenches in the Donbas, there is truth. In the 20,000 Ukrainian children that Kyiv says Putin has abducted, there is truth. In the roughly 1.4 million Russian and Ukrainian soldiers killed and wounded as a result of Putin’s fevered dreams of restoring Ukraine to Mother Russia, there is truth. In the Ukrainian civilians killed by Russian drones at the same time that Trump was laying out the red carpet for Putin in Alaska, there is truth.
And the longer Trump ignores those truths, the more he builds his peace strategy — not on expertise but on his hugely inflated self-regard and his un-American anti-Westernism — the more this will become his war. And if Putin wins it and Ukraine loses it, Trump and his reputation will suffer irreparable damage — now and forever.”
NEW YORK TIMES, Aug. 21, 2025
Just goes to show how slow the New York Times is to wake up, compromised under the thumb of the authoritarian orange Trojan horse.
Critters big, and small
Orange County
wait for it…
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DNDt01FRPRX/?igsh=MWQ0eTk1OHd2NGJoYQ==
I would like Dan Waters to explain why he is okay with Trump directing Texas republicans to re-do their political-racial gerrymandering, to squeeze out even more MAGA seats, while criticizing Newsom for trying to negate their atrocious actions.