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WARMER AND DRIER weather will gradually build in Sunday through Tuesday. A wetter pattern could emerge by mid week. (NWS)
STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A foggy 54F this last full day of summer 2025. If the fog clears back later you can see some passing high clouds. Some mostly sunny days & some patchy fog shares the forecast, aka, more of the same.
MARTIN BRADLEY: The Fall Equinox in 2025 occurs on Monday, September 22, at 11:19 AM PDT. It marks the official start of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere, bringing a balance of daylight and darkness.
ROBERT TORELL
May 31, 1946 – September 12, 2025
Robert Torell, beloved friend and craftsman, passed away on September 12, 2025, at the age of 79.
Born on May 31, 1946, Torell lived a life defined by dedication, hard work, and a deep love for the beauty in both nature and artistry. He began his working years as a bicycle delivery boy, a role that reflected his determination and independence. He later found steady work in a book bindery in San Francisco, where he honed patience and precision—skills that would serve him throughout his life.
Torell discovered his true calling in jewelry. For more than 50 years, he worked as a jeweler, creating pieces that carried both craftsmanship and soul. His passion for the art of jewelry was not just a profession but a reflection of who he was—someone who found joy in detail, beauty, and giving others something meaningful to cherish.
Outside of his craft, Torell’s heart belonged to the mountains of Mendocino County, especially near Comptche. The forests, hills, and quiet wilderness brought him peace and connection, grounding him throughout the seasons of his life.
He is survived by Vicki Kagan and Robert Johnson, who will carry forward his memory with love and gratitude.
Torell will be remembered for his artistry, his love of nature, and the quiet strength with which he lived his life.
FORT BRAGG TO APPOINT INTERIM POLICE CHIEF
Appointee has an extensive background with the Santa Rosa Police Department and Napa County Sheriff’s Office
by Elise Cox
The Fort Bragg City Council is expected to appoint a major with the Clarke County Sheriff’s Office as interim police chief at its meeting Monday.
Eric Swift, a former Marine, has an extensive background in law enforcement. He most recently served as a major with the Clarke County Sheriff’s Office in Georgia and as a regional advisor and performance coach for Performance Protocol, a human capital management firm focused on law enforcement.
The resolution to approve Swift’s contract as interim chief is on the consent calendar.
According to the resolution, City Manager Isaac Whippy is recommending Swift’s appointment to ensure consistent leadership and the smooth operation of the Police Department during the transition.
If approved, Swift’s at-will employment would begin Oct. 1, 2025. His contract is set to terminate after he has performed 960 hours of service, though either party can end the agreement with 14 days’ written notice.
In a public comment, resident Jacob Patterson expressed support for the appointment. “I reviewed the proposed employment agreement for our new interim chief, Eric Swift—he sounds very qualified based on my preliminary internet research into his background—and I see nothing to be concerned about in the agreement,” Patterson wrote. He also praised the city manager’s selection, calling the choice of a police chief “one of the most important duties and significant decisions a city manager can make.”
Swift joined the Santa Rosa Police Department in 2002 after leaving the U.S. Marine Corps. He spent seven years there as a gang detective, including three years working with the FBI Regional North Bay Gang Task Force. He later served more than eight years at the Napa County Sheriff’s Office, rising to the rank of administrative lieutenant. He worked as a major at the Clarke County Sheriff’s Office through the end of July, according to his LinkedIn profile.
As interim chief, Swift’s responsibilities will include:
- Providing daily administrative oversight of the Police Department and dispatch functions.
- Overseeing the department’s response to critical incidents.
- Managing personnel functions, including employee evaluations and hiring recommendations.
- Overseeing the department’s budget.
- Attending City Council meetings and reporting directly to the city manager.
(Mendo Local Public Media)
PREP FOOTBALL
Chico 48, Ukiah 29: The Wildcats fell behind early and couldn’t dig out of the hole as they fell to 2-2 on the year with a loss to the visiting Panthers on Saturday night.
Chico (4-0), one of the top-ranked teams from the Northern Section, leapt out to a 21-0 lead midway through the second quarter and kept Ukiah at arm’s length for the rest of the game. Star running back Zaiveon Patrick had three long rushing touchdowns to lead the Panthers.
Dareon Dorsey caught a 45-yard touchdown pass from Beau David to get Ukiah on the board in the second quarter, but Chico answered by returning the ensuing kickoff 95 yards for a touchdown to make it 27-6, which is where the score stood at halftime.
Chico added another touchdown early in the third and Ukiah responded with a 69-yard touchdown reception for Ryan Todd. But again, the Panthers came back with a quick touchdown, taking their first play of their next drive 45 yards to the house to go back up four scores at 41-14.
Chris Thompson rushed for a pair of touchdowns in the fourth quarter to finish out the scoring for Ukiah.
The Wildcats have another tough test this coming week when they travel to San Marin (4-0) for their nonleague finale.
RENEE LEE (AV Senior Center Director): The AV Senior Center bus trips to CV Star Center Swim Center in Fort Bragg on Mondays are canceled until further notice. Please help spread the word. We will let you know as soon as the trips will resume. Sorry for the inconvenience.
ANDERSON VALLEY VILLAGE: List of Events
UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK
Meet Skippy, a loyal, laid-back gentleman with a heart of gold and a deep appreciation for the quiet life.
Skippy is a medium-sized fellow who’s left his puppy antics behind and has fully embraced the art of relaxation. Indoors, Skippy is mellow and easy to have around. He loves a comfy spot to lounge, a calm presence nearby, and the occasional treat (or two). Whether you’re reading a book, watching TV, or enjoying some peace and quiet, Skippy is happy to be by your side — no drama, no fuss.
Skippy will do best in a home where he is the only pet, as he prefers not to share his space or people with other animals, and that’s okay — he has more than enough love to give all on his own. If you’re looking for a sweet, steady companion, Skippy might be your perfect match. He’s not asking for much — just a little space, a little love, and a chance to finally settle in.
Skippy is a Pittie mix, 4 years old and 59 pounds. He’s neutered, so he’s ready to skip his way out the shelter doors with you ASAP.
To see all of our canine and feline guests, and the occasional goat, horse, guinea pig, tortoise, and for information about our services, programs, and events, visit: mendoanimalshelter.com.
Join us the first Saturday of every month for our Meet The Dogs Adoption Event.
For information about adoptions please call 707-467-6453. Our dog kennels are now open to the public Tuesday-Friday 1:30 to 4 pm, Saturday 10 am to 2:30 pm, closed for lunch Saturday from 1 to 1:30.
Making a difference for homeless pets in Mendocino County, one day at a time!
HOUSING AS A HUMAN RIGHT VS. VOTING TO PUNISH HOMELESSNESS
by Mazie Malone
On September 17, 2025, the Ukiah City Council voted unanimously to amend Ukiah’s anti-camping ordinance. The changes were presented by City Assistant Attorney Darcy Vaughn and Police Chief Tom Corning, who insisted the ordinance was simply “another tool in the toolbox” for addressing homelessness. Framed as a matter of protocol and compliance with state directives, the amendment removed the last safeguard, making it possible to cite individuals for camping even when no shelter is available. In fact, this ordinance targets homeless people as criminals for the simple reality of being without shelter or housing.
Our city officials described the ordinance as another “tool in the toolbox,” language meant to give the impression of progress, as if a shiny new tool could fix the crisis. But it is just words to cover for poor solutions. If the tool you have is a hammer but the crisis is a screw, you need a screwdriver. The hammer will not affix the screw. The same principle applies here: for houseless individuals with nowhere to go, you cannot address homelessness without providing housing, treatment, and support. Those are the tools to begin repair of the community and families, not laws that criminalize poverty, disabilities, mental illness, and addiction.
What the amendment actually does is remove the safeguard that without available shelter, people could not be arrested or cited for existing or “public camping” on the street. With that protocol removed, unhoused street folks are a target for citations and arrest. The city took a list of camping words and defined them to fit neatly into the narrative of the ordinance. A “camp facility” can mean nothing more than a tarp or a tent. “Camp paraphernalia” stretches to include blankets, sleeping bags, even a cooking pot. A “camp site” is any space where those items are found, and to “occupy” simply means to be present. To stand, to sit, to rest, to exist without a home or shelter is now a criminal offense.
What stood out for me was that the members of the City Council seemed to be in la la land, their own little world of make believe. In essence, they took the ordinance revision at face value without digging deeper. There were a few questions asked, but they were very superficial in nature. None of them asked the cost of the citation. Is it $50, $100, $500? Nor did they ask about the homeless individual’s ability to pay. What happens if they cannot pay? Do they get arrested? Does it tack on more fees? What about these so-called collaborations, about getting people to agree to shelter and linking them to services? Let me get this straight: law enforcement, who continually claim they are not mental health workers, are now ensuring that it is 100% their duty to aid people into help? Now isn’t that one hell of a turn of events! No one asked about access and barriers to services for these individuals. Why? Because they simply do not know. How could they, when they are in their own bubble and the only entity with authority that showed up was, you guessed it, the Ukiah Police Department. Where were the service providers? Why do they stay silent?
Our city officials did not just frame this ordinance as a matter of compliance; they revealed the stigma that continues to shape policy. Councilmember Heather Criss admitted that “housing is a human right” but quickly removed any responsibility by stating that “we are not there yet,” while also calling the state of homelessness “atrocious” and “embarrassing.” Councilmember Mari Rodin added that living in encampments is “very dangerous,” reinforcing fear rather than focusing on solutions. And Councilmember Susan Sher, while acknowledging that homelessness is not a one-size-fits-all issue, said she felt sympathy for the “neat and tidy ones,” not for those most in need of intervention. That distinction reveals that stigma is still driving the conversation, with compassion extended only to those who appear acceptable while the ones in most severe distress are written off.
Repeatedly, city staff called citations and jail a “last resort,” pointing to promised collaboration with service providers as proof that this ordinance would not be casually applied. Collaboration sounds effective, looks good on paper, and makes for tidy talking points. But after hours, when people are most vulnerable, there are no providers available to be present, leaving police as the only responders. And they only have so many tools: citation or jail. In reality, this “last resort” is going to be the only resort when half the time there is no service person available to coordinate options. On top of that, they discussed the aspect of finding shelter for the individual. What shelter? Where? How? Ukiah has one very small, limited shelter that is not capable of these accommodations, which makes the claim of navigating people to shelter and services nothing more than lip service.
At the end of the day, this ordinance does not create housing, treatment, or support. It creates citations and criminal records. The City can call that collaboration if it wants, but the truth is simpler: punishing people for poverty will never be a solution.
A NORTHERN CALIFORNIA COASTAL TOWN BETS BIG ON A HISTORIC INN
California coast lore and a hopeful comeback at the Gray Whale Inn
by Matt LaFever
Fort Bragg is the Mendocino Coast’s gritty, salt-sprayed, roll-up-your-sleeves outpost. Tourists tend to flock 10 miles south to Mendocino’s curated Victorian village — strolling postcard streets and bedding down in heritage boutique hotels — while Fort Bragg is too often just a lunch stop: a harbor walk to watch the working fleet, a basket of fresh-caught rock cod and chips, then back in the car instead of staying the night.
But a recent purchase of the town’s neglected, century-old hospital-turned-hotel could finally put Fort Bragg on the historic boutique circuit along the Northern California coast. Local buyer Natalie Dingman — who grew up there and whose grandmother worked at the hospital in the early 1960s — returned with her husband, Joe, after military service to restore one of the town’s true centerpieces.
“We were out there yesterday … just mowing and doing some of the cleanup,” Dingman told SFGATE last week in a phone call, as cars kept “honking going by.” The reaction has been “just crazy” — a sign, she said, that “people want to see this place restored.”
The building at 615 North Main St. has anchored Fort Bragg for more than a century. Built by Union Lumber Company, it opened in 1917 as the town’s first hospital, with 25 beds, a dining room and kitchen, early X-ray equipment and a fully functional operating room once described as “second to none north of San Francisco for its size.” When the Mendocino Coast Hospital opened 2 miles across town in 1971, the decades-old facility transitioned into what became the Gray Whale Inn — known for an upstairs suite outfitted with a gimbaled surgical lamp.
The Gray Whale Inn has 16 guest rooms on a lot that’s just under an acre, Dingman said. Many rooms are spacious; each has its own bathroom and radiator, and some retain their original fireplaces. The building also has three kitchens, though the owners don’t plan to offer food service.
However, the past decade has not been kind to the Gray Whale. Kelley Urbani, a Mendocino Coast real estate agent who represented Dingman in the purchase, told SFGATE that “in the last … 10 years or so, it’s kind of just limped along.” She added that the building has seen “a few little businesses in and out of it,” leaving it “in rough shape … it definitely needs some work.” Though she couldn’t say exactly when guests last stayed at the hotel, Urbani believes it’s been at least a decade.
To many locals, the Gray Whale Inn is more than a hotel. Urbani called it “iconic,” a “beacon of energy.” For an older generation, “their parents were born at the Gray Whale Inn” back when it was the town hospital; “that building is the inception of joy for many people and sadness for others.” She still recalls Christmas trees glowing in the windows as a kid: “It’s got a lot of memories to the town.”
Given a century of hospital history, it’s no surprise the Gray Whale Inn has a haunted reputation. The ghosts of the hospital have an influence here. Urbani said, “This property is commonly known as being haunted, although I have never witnessed any haunted activity.”
The Dingmans’ purchase came after the Gray Whale Inn had been on and off the market since November 2019. One sticking point was the math: The asking price was about $1.9 million, but as Urbani put it, “it needs another 500 to a million dollars in renovation.” The structure needs new flooring and renovated bathrooms since some of the showers are cracked or broken.
These issues didn’t deter the Dingmans: “I walked in and I was in love with the building. I just I fell in love,” Natalie Dingman told SFGATE. Urbani added the couple “had talked about this for almost two years prior to actually pulling the trigger. So it was definitely a dream of hers.” They plan to live on site.
The revitalization of the Gray Whale Inn reflects a sea change for local business in Fort Bragg, City Manager Isaac Whippy told SFGATE in a recent phone interview. He said goals and priorities established in July 2024 by the city’s Economic Development Department prioritized connecting “vacant properties with investments.” The city has committed nearly a million dollars in grants, Whippy explained, to support businesses like the Gray Whale Inn looking to modernize and make a comeback — because, as Whippy says, “Fort Bragg needs some injections or investments” or “we go backwards.” One way the city plans to lower rehab costs at places like the Gray Whale Inn is by replacing the costly sprinkler system with alarm arrays, Whippy explained.
The Dingmans don’t intend to make the historic structure anew so much as bring new life to the past. “We’re not gutting this thing. We’re restoring what’s there,” Natalie Dingman said. They plan to restore the legendary surgical light in the upstairs suite and leave exposed piping that was once used to carry oxygen for medical purposes. The structure is heated by an antique boiler system that, Dingman said, “we are going to restore and get running again.” The building’s doors, all crafted from redwood, still have their original glass knobs. Dingman said, “We are going to strip them and restore them.”
Urbani foresees a “very classy hotel that embraces kind of local history.” From the inn, Glass Beach and the Coastal Trail are about a five-minute walk; the Pudding Creek Trestle is 15 to 20 minutes; historic downtown and North Coast Brewing Company are close by; and the Skunk Train’s railbikes sit about a block away — making the Gray Whale a natural launchpad for families and weekenders.
Dingman said reopening will roll out in phases, with a soft launch while safety work proceeds. As rooms come online, they plan to open first to friends and family, before aiming for a grand opening for the community on March 2026, to coincide with Fort Bragg’s Whale Festival.
As Urbani sees it, the Gray Whale can do more than add rooms; it can pull the town together: “I feel like a lot of people are cheering them on and would love to watch this building do really well.”
She calls it “a really nice centerpiece” that could result in a “major ripple effect … where everybody can win.”
(sfgate.com)
MENDO LOCAL WEEKLY NEWS ROUNDUP
Urgent warnings about child welfare in Mendocino County, new FEMA flood maps in Ukiah, Native storytelling on the Coast, and pirates in Noyo Harbor
by Elise Cox
Here’s what’s happening around the county: https://www.mendolocal.news/p/mendo-local-weekly-news-roundup-f81
CATCH OF THE DAY, Saturday, September 20, 2025
DEREK BARKLEY, 35, Willits. Domestic battery, domestic violence court order, probation revocation.
JOHN BARRY, 33, Covelo. DUI-any drug.
GERALD DEEB, 52, Gilroy/Ukiah. Controlled substance for sale.
JIMMY ELLISON, 37, Hopland. DUI.
BILLY GONZALEZ-CARVAJAL, 36, Covelo. Attempted car theft, tampering with vehicle, vandalism.
GUADALUPE GUTIERREZ, 36, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, failure to appear.
BENJAMIN KIM, 55, Antioch/Ukiah. DUI.
MARIA TORRES-SANDOVAL, 35, Ukiah. Domestic battery.
KATELYN WALKER, 30, Fort Bragg. Taking vehicle without owner’s consent, stolen property, petty theft with two or more priors, controlled substance.
TRUMP CANCELS OMING FOR PEACE
Warmest spiritual greetings,
The D.C. Peace Vigil in Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House, has been dismantled, by order of President Donald J. Trump.
I will be staying on in D.C. and not returning to northern California.
This has been my 16th time to be supportive of the vigil since June of 1991. Previously, I walked completely around the White House, all the way around the south ellipse, chanting the Mahamantram, three times. This took 2 hours! This was done to keep all of the negative energy in the White House from going out and polluting the rest of the world.
I am presently available for more of this type of “spirituality in action”. Contact me.
Craig Louis Stehr, [email protected]
BREAK DEMOCRATS’ STRONGHOLD ON CALIFORNIA GOVERNMENT
Editor:
Kevin Parsons warned against one-party control in government (“Voters have a simple choice on Prop. 50,” Letters, Sept 16). In California, Democrats hold all major positions. Before focusing on federal issues, we should address this local imbalance. Vote no on Proposition 50. Giving politicians more power invites overreach.
Larry Tausch
Penngrove
MEMO OF THE AIR: aaaOOOgah! aaaOOOgah! Dive! Dive! Dive!
Marco here. Here’s the recording of last night’s (9pm PDT, 2025-09-19) 7.4-hour-long Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA) and also, for the first three hours, on 89.3fm KAKX Mendocino, ready for you to re-enjoy in whole or in part: https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0662
Coming shows can feature your own story or dream or poem or essay or kvetch or announcement. Just email it to me. Or send me a link to your writing project and I’ll take it from there and read it on the air.
Besides all that, at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you’ll find a fresh batch of dozens of links to not-necessarily radio-useful but worthwhile items I set aside for you while gathering the show together, such as:
What if an alien found the Voyager golden record? (You might have to click the sound on.) https://www.reddit.com/r/artificial/comments/1n8gf8p/what_if_an_alien_found_the_voyager_golden_record/
“These terrorist trans commies are out of control!” https://boingboing.net/2025/09/17/tom-the-dancing-bug-school-shooter-kills-conservative-child-pundit.html
“The defining experience of fascism is getting yelled at by dumbasses.” https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/getting-yelled-at-by-dumbasses
Fifty thousand names on one page. Each one is hover text for a dot. “Martyr [Name] was [number] years old when he was murdered by the ongoing Israeli genocide on the Palestinian people of Gaza.” Some of them get a little more of a story, but that’s the general idea. Civilians are still being murdered. Children are starving to death. Meager food relief sites are a mousetrap. Where is God? https://fiftythousandnames.org
And I want to say, a Chinese czardas, but only because of the sound of the phrase. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WHlq_jRtgQ
Marco McClean, [email protected], https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com
HANDYMAN
by Paul Modic
People I want to hire don’t seem to realize it’s not about them, it’s about me. For example, I found this handyman/carpenter and for every small project he proposed the most expensive time-consuming solution. No, man, it’s about me, getting the most done for the least amount of time and money, not about you getting more hours. (Granted, the expensive way would probably have been better in the long run.)
I had another experience like that recently: I found another handyman, he came by to look at the jobs, and scheduled a day for the following week. I had only wanted to get a leaky gutter junction fixed or replaced but now I had added caulking another leak, installing some fascia boards on a cabin, and doing some touchup painting on the deck.
The day before he was going to come I got a text from someone saying his buddy couldn’t make it so he could fill in if I wanted. That seemed odd, I gave him a call, and he said his crew usually just do remodels and ADUs, the granny units going up in peoples’ backyards when regulations were loosened because of the housing crisis.
“Well, how much do you charge?” I asked.
“$120 an hour,” he said.
“For the whole crew?” I said.
“No, $120 each,” he said.
“Wait a minute, where are you?”
“I’m in San Jose.”
“Well, I’m up here in Redway and I was going to pay my guy $25 or $30 an hour.”
So it was a big steaming pile of wrong number, or who knows, maybe some kind of a scam?
The night before the new handyman was going to come I had second thoughts, maybe I was just paranoid but something seemed off: Why did he not know if he charged $25 or $30, and when I showed him the small leaky spot at the bottom of the kitchen greenhouse window why had he had talked about ripping all the good caulking out also and replacing it for the whole window? Also, his son was going to come by and help, though I knew nothing about his work. It was starting to feel like a big production and though I wanted to try to be a responsible homeowner, none of the repairs were immediately necessary.
The leaky gutter could keep leaking and after big storms I could wipe out the puddle in the greenhouse window with a towel. The fascia boards have needed replacement for years already and the paint touchup could be put off for another year. I could deal with the developing hole in my bathroom floor, where the linoleum is fraying, by not standing on that weak spot anymore. (Where I had been standing for twenty years and probably causing the damage?)
In other words, everything worked, nothing was crucial, and I just didn’t feel like having people over, being “on,” and dealing with multiple details. I texted him a cancellation a few hours before the scheduled time of arrival and relaxed, relieved to not have half day of work to supervise.
(Update: finally got all that shit done…)
AND THERE I WAS, 225 pounds…
Perpetually lost and confused, short legs, ape-like upper body, all chest, no neck, head too large, blurred eyes, hair uncombed, 6 feet of geek, waiting for her.
— Charles Bukowski
SAVE THE BEES
Editor,
Everyone loves bees. I don’t think I’d be wrong to say that they’re the reason for our delicious honey, succulent fruits, and stunning flowering gardens. But as much as we rely on these fuzzy, sugar-loving friends, they’re in trouble and now it’s us they’re depending on for help.
Here’s the problem: for every three bees you see, one of them is at risk of going extinct. One of the main reasons for this decline is because of a supposedly banned pesticide called neonicotine (or neonics for short) being used in agriculture. Neonics are especially bad because they can be carried back to the hive, which can contaminate thousands of bees with a single exposure. This toxin can be up to 10,000 times more deadly to bees than DDT.
So what can you do to help?
We at CALPIRG are petitioning for Gov. Gavin Newsom to ban the use of seeds coated in this bee-killing pesticide. State decisions regarding this issue are being released in February. This campaign has the real ability to escalate and pass at the state level, so some ways you can assist our efforts in saving the bees are to add your vote to our petition, join our native plant education events, or help host a “No bees, no Thanksgiving” event. Let’s save the bees!
Justine Moon, volunteer, CalPIRG,
UC Berkeley
COWERING MEDIA CONGLOMERATES
Editor:
With one fell swoop of the executioner’s blade, yet another court jester has been swiftly removed from the once upon a time, open forum entertainment stage (“ABC suspends Kimmel’s late-night show over remarks about Kirk’s death,” Sept. 18). As corporate media conglomerates cower to the whims and falsehoods of the now reigning king, America has suddenly and undoubtedly hit the wall of complete intellectual development through mindless degradation.
Ray Van de Star
Sebastopol
JEFFREY ST. CLAIR:
Watched ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ and was once again struck by the marvelous exchange between Ringo and the businessman on the train…
Suit on the train: Don’t take that tone with me, young man. I fought the war for your sort.
Ringo: I bet you’re sorry you won.
SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MAESTRO
by David Yearsley
It’s a tough time to be a star conductor. When the world goes to hell, everyone wants to point the finger at the maestro—at the one whose job it is to point at others.
Last week, the Festival of Flanders in Belgium rescinded its invitation to the Munich Philharmonic because its music director, Lahav Shani, who also leads the Israel Philharmonic, did not “provide sufficient clarity about his attitude to the genocidal regime in Tel Aviv.” (The naming of that city, rather than Jerusalem, as Israel’s capital by the Ghent Festival was itself a statement.) Shani had succeeded Valery Gergiev, who was sacked by the German orchestra back in March of 2022, just a week after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Gergiev had amassed an international network of positions and guest invitations that included Munich, but quickly saw that empire crumble because he refused to sever ties with Vladimir Putin. As the Ukraine war rages on, the flak has not cleared around Gergiev, even if the inevitable haze of geopolitical amnesia might seem to begin to allow the Russian to slip through the European Union’s moral defense shield. Earlier this summer, an Italian festival partially funded by the EU revoked its invitation to Gergiev. No one in the so-called West rallied round the repelled conductor.
By contrast, the Germans have closed ranks resolutely around Shani, hired in Munich a year after Gergiev’s ouster. The German foreign minister quickly fired back flaming salvos at the Belgians, calling the cancellation “naked antisemitism and an attack on the basics of our culture.” Shani was called to the German President’s Berlin residence, the Schloss Bellevue, as a confirming gesture of the state’s unbending support. Such responses are to be expected in a country that last year introduced the requirement that those becoming naturalized German citizens must recognize Israel’s right to exist.
A one-time wunderkind now thirty-six years old, Shani has publicly declared his desire for resolution of the conflict in Gaza while continuing to lead the Israel Philharmonic. The orchestra’s appearance at the BBC Proms in late August was interrupted by protests.
Since being disinvited in Belgium, Shani has issued some generic comments about peace and reconciliation while expressing his dismay at being “unwillingly swept into an unexpected public storm that quickly escalated into a diplomatic incident.” The word “genocidal” used by the Belgium festival does not appear in Shani’s statement on the Munich Philharmonic website.
In counterpoint to these fortissimo ethical clashes resounding on a global scale are personal moral weaknesses heard in the courts of public opinion. A war can fell a conductor, as one did Gergiev, while charges of sexual harassment are more palatable to the cultural world’s moral appetites, and more easily digested by the media. Over the last decade, that has included Charles Dutoit getting turfed out at 81 by the Royal Philharmonic in London for allegedly assaulting several women over the course of his career; the long-time Metropolitan Opera chief James Levine forced to lay down his baton for propositioning boys; Daniele Gatti’s sacking from the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra for allegedly making abundant use of the conducting couch. Gatti promised to focus on his “behavior” as he made his way out the door in Amsterdam to take up gigs elsewhere.
Latest to cause distaste is François-Xavier Roth, who founded Les Siècles in Paris in 2003 and under his leadership the orchestra quickly became a bracing disruptor in the world of historically informed performance by extending, just as its name advertised, a single ensemble’s temporal purview—and the specificity and breadth of the instruments played—across some five centuries.
But last year, Roth resigned from his orchestra amidst reports of sexting and charges of sexual harassment. When the story broke on May 22nd in the French magazine Le Canard enchaîné, Roth didn’t take the podium for his orchestra’s scheduled performance that same evening at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. He also left his post across the Rhine River in Cologne as director of the Gürzenich Orchestra and the city’s opera. Ss is so often the case, Roth offered his placatory statement in the subjunctive mode: “I apologize to all of those I could have hurt.” He then took a few months away from conducting. The criminal investigation into the harassment charges was suspended in December 2024. This month, Roth assumes his new position as music director of the SWR Orchestra in Stuttgart.
This past Friday, Roth conducted the famed Berlin Philharmonic in their home auditorium. The program began with Rituel in memorium Bruno Maderna by Pierre Boulez, whose works are being performed frequently during this bicentennial year of his birth. A dirge for the dedicatee, a close colleague who died suddenly in 1973 at the age of 53, the piece assembles eight varied groups of instruments ranging in size and sound, from a lone oboe to fourteen brass instruments and a fascinating palette of Asian percussion: tabla, temple bells, gongs. These clusters of timbral variety are meant by the composer to be spatially separated from one another. In the Berlin concert hall, the Philharmonie, with its many balconies and architectural planes encircling the stage, these colors, unmoored from tonality, conversed and sometimes clashed, met and mixed, mourned and recalled. This modernist reflection on and of mortality seems uncannily complex and simple at the same time. Berlioz’s professed indifference to emotion leads nonetheless to catharsis, not to escape from grief but a confrontation with it. The final sustained woodwind sonority receded to inaudibility against the faint knock of a bongo and the tolling of distant bells. The Philharmonie held its breath far into the void of silence that followed.
Next came world a premiere of an orchestral piece commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic. Between Five Columns by Ondrej Adamek, who studied with and worked under the towering modernist, Boulez, sought to evoke architectural space, the malleability of impressions of buildings—their elements and interiors. The structure he created yielded moments of force and corners intimacy, but the elements often seemed unattached and isolated, yet also indistinct, like weathered post-modernist ruins.
A scandal-turned-classic closed the program: Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Roth is best known for the award-winning recording of this convulsive, revolutionary piece that he made in its centennial year using the original edition from the 1913 performance led by the composer at the Thêatre des Champs-Élysées, home to Roth’s former orchestra.
When not respectfully honoring Boulez’s score and its departed dedicatee, Roth was a lively presence on the podium. He signaled, flexed, expressed time and emotion with his virtuosic fingers, surprisingly clever elbows and supple shoulders. During the Stravinsky, he even danced and occasionally leapt.
Roth had shaved his head and wore tight black trousers cut well above his pointy patent leather shoes. His closely fitting tailcoat was minimalist, without vents or buttons, no carnation in the non-existent lapel, and nary a pocket that might hide a cellphone.
The effect of this funky take on the classic conductor’s rig was of a large elf or wizard—spritely, perhaps mischievous, but neither harassing nor malevolent. Under this magician, the Rite proceeded at a brisk, sometimes boiling pace, and one occasionally wondered whether the miraculous machine of the Berlin Philharmonic was too modern, too efficient, too perfect for Stravinsky’s outpouring of ersatz paganism.
As if to quell such doubts, concertmaster Dashin Kashimoto broke a string midway through, clear evidence that primal force had been applied. The violinist handed his instrument to a nearby colleague and charged back into the fray, barely missing a beat when he soon got his own axe back.
Some of the faithful gathered to revel in this marvelous liturgy of the concert hall might have asked themselves whether ballet music depicting the sacrifice of a maiden at the behest of elder pagan priests is the best calling card for a conductor back on the scene after unsavory revelations. If Roth keeps at Stravinsky’s Rite rather than Berlioz’s Rituel, he will need Time the Great Healer do some deep massage on his battered reputation after each performance.
Mr. Time did not respond to CounterPunch’s inquiries as to whether Lahav Shani had yet booked an appointment with Him.
(David Yearsley is a long-time contributor to CounterPunch and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. His latest albums, “In the Cabinet of Wonders” and “Handel’s Organ Banquet” are now available from False Azure Records.)
BRYCE ELDRIDGE GOT HIS FIRST HIT, but the S.F. Giants fell to L.A.
by Shayna Rubin
LOS ANGELES — Bryce Eldridge wanted the stakes to be high for his first big league hit. He got his wish.
The backdrop for Saturday’s game was dramatic enough. The San Francisco Giants are on the brink of elimination from the playoff race, a New York Mets loss earlier giving them one more day to breathe. The Giants had an opportunity to inch forward with a win against the Los Angeles Dodgers, and in the first inning they pounced.
With the bases loaded and one out, Eldridge sent Los Angeles Dodgers starter Tyler Glasnow’s 97 mph sinker to the opposite field wall, clearing the bases for a double. Cameras caught his mom, Beth Kenney, and her twin sister and Eldridge’s brother — who followed Eldridge from his debut in Arizona to Los Angeles waiting for this moment — jumping ecstatically from their Dodger Stadium seats.
Not only was Eldridge’s big hit the catalyst to an early four-run lead, it happened on his mom and her twin sister’s birthday. Oh, and his mom fended off a nearby fan to nab a Matt Chapman foul ball in the fifth inning.
“I told her I was going to do something special for her and I had a feeling,” Eldridge said. “I’ve been hitting the ball hard, doing the right things. I kind of wanted it to be like that. I really wanted to earn it and I wouldn’t want it any other way than in a big spot like that, here, against a guy with a lot of success in the league. On my mom and aunt’s birthday. It’s pretty cool.”
Overshadowing a bit the top prospect’s big hit was the series of events that followed. A pitching staff that has struggled over this losing stretch to hold leads or keep games close surrendered four home runs and a four-run lead in a 7-5 loss on Saturday night, the Giants’ third straight loss this series.
Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy first cut into the lead with a two-run home run off starter Kai-Wei Teng in the bottom of the first. Then Michael Conforto took Jose Butto deep as part of a two-run fourth, Conforto’s third home run against his former team this year. Los Angeles took the lead in the fifth with a Tommy Edman homer and Shohei Ohtani’s opposite-field blast in the sixth off Joel Peguero extended the L.A. lead to 6-4. Freddie Freeman tacked on with an RBI single off Matt Gage.
“It’s a little different complement of pitchers we have right now,” manager Bob Melvin said. “Teng was really good at times and then ineffective at times with walks and hit batters. And then obviously in the fourth inning Butto didn’t have his best stuff, Gage came in and gave up a hit — even though it’s a groundball — that’s when the game went the other way.”
The bullpen and back end of the rotation is the glaring weak point of this Giants team, though it has been a patchwork group since the staff was dismantled at the trade deadline and suffered injuries to high-leverage arms thereafter. Slim hopes of postseason contention have mostly fallen apart because the bullpen isn’t necessarily built to win now. Landen Roupp’s injury and Hayden Birdsong’s struggles put the last two rotation spots in flux, too, and the inconsistences out of those spots have had a ripple effect through the entire staff.
The Giants are working to stave off elimination, but these final weeks are also about taking a look at the players who could fit in next year. Eldridge’s anticipated call-up happened because of first baseman Dom Smith’s hamstring injury, but Eldridge has already shown glimpses of his standout power.
Hints that Eldridge, the Giants’ top prospect, would get his first hit soon showed themselves throughout his first 10 plate appearances. He nearly hit a home run in his third career at-bat against the Diamondbacks, smoking a fastball 408 feet with a 106 mph exit velocity and, days later, hit another hard flyball 404 feet.
With great power often comes strikeouts — and he has six — but all six times Eldridge has put the ball in play have resulted in an exit velocity of at least 99 mph.
“The job is to hit the ball hard and I’m going to keep doing that, keep doing my job,” Eldridge said. “In the long run, good things will happen.”
With the Giants trailing 7-4 in the seventh, Rafael Devers golfed a breaking ball into the right-field seats for his first home run since Sept. 5, but otherwise the Giants had no counter.
(sfchronicle.com)
CALIFORNIA BANS MOST LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS FROM WEARING MASKS DURING OPERATIONS
by Trân Nguyễn And Martha Bellisle,
California became the first state to ban most law enforcement officers, including federal immigration agents, from covering their faces while conducting official business under a bill that was signed Saturday by Gov. Gavin Newsom and swiftly denounced by Trump administration officials.
The ban is a direct response to recent immigration raids in Los Angeles, where federal agents wore masks while making mass arrests. The raids prompted days of protest and led President Donald Trump to deploy National Guard troops and Marines to the area.
Newsom said at a news conference in Los Angeles, where he signed the bill flanked by state lawmakers, education leaders and immigrant community members, that California is unique in that 27% of its residents are foreign born.
“We celebrate that diversity. It’s what makes California great. It’s what makes America great. It is under assault,” he said.
The Democratic governor said the state is pushing back against the practice of masked agents without identification or badge numbers detaining people on the streets.
“The impact of these policies all across this city, our state and nation are terrifying,” Newsom said. “It’s like a dystopian sci-fi movie. Unmarked cars, people in masks, people quite literally disappearing. No due process, no rights, no right in a democracy where we have rights. Immigrants have rights, and we have the right to stand up and push back, and that’s what we’re doing here today.”
But it’s unclear how — or whether — the state can enforce the ban on federal agents.
Trump administration officials have defended use of masks, saying immigration agents face strident and increasing harassment in public and online as they carry out enforcement in service of Trump’s drive toward mass deportation. Obscuring their identities is necessary for the safety of the agents and their families, officials contend.
Bill Essayli, acting U.S. attorney for Southern California, said on the social platform X that the state does not have jurisdiction over the federal government and he has told agencies the mask ban has no effect on their operations. “Our agents will continue to protect their identities,” he said.
Essayli also criticized Newsom’s comment on X saying Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was “going to have a bad day today,” adding that there is zero tolerance for “direct or implicit threats against government officials.” He referred the matter to the Secret Service, which said in a statement, also on X, that it could not comment on the specific case but must investigate any potential threat.
DHS official criticizes California law
Tricia McLaughlin, Homeland Security assistant secretary for public affairs, called it “despicable and a flagrant attempt to endanger our officers.”
“While our federal law enforcement officers are being assaulted by rioters and having rocks and Molotov cocktails thrown at them, a sanctuary politician is trying to outlaw officers wearing masks to protect themselves from being doxxed and targeted by known and suspected terrorist sympathizers,” she said via email.
The men and women of federal immigration agencies put their lives on the line to arrest violent criminal illegal aliens, she said, and rhetoric like Newsom’s has contributed to a surge in assaults.
Newsom countered that concerns about doxing agents, or publishing their personal information online, are unfounded and unproven.
“There’s an assertion that somehow there is an exponential increase in assaults on officers, but they will not provide the data,” he said. “All they have provided is misinformation and misdirection.”
Ban applies to various face coverings, includes some exceptions
The new law prohibits neck gaiters, ski masks and other facial coverings for local and federal officers, including immigration enforcement agents, while they conduct official business. It makes exceptions for undercover agents, medical masks such as N95 respirators or tactical gear, and it does not apply to state police.
Democrats in Congress and lawmakers in several states, including Tennessee, Michigan, Illinois, New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, have introduced similar proposals calling for mask bans.
Proponents of the California law said it is especially needed after the Supreme Court ruled this month that the Trump administration can resume its sweeping immigration operations in Los Angeles. The law aims to boost public trust in law enforcement and stop people from impersonating officers to commit crimes, supporters said.
Constitutional law expert Erwin Chemerinsky at the University of California, Berkeley, also defended the legislation. Federal employees still have to follow general state rules “unless doing so would significantly interfere with the performance of their duties. For example, while on the job, federal employees must stop at red lights,” he wrote in an opinion piece for the Sacramento Bee.
Another new law covers schools and health care facilities
Newsom also signed legislation Saturday preventing immigration agents from entering schools and health care facilities without a valid warrant or judicial order and requiring schools to notify parents and teachers when agents are on campus.
Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, said “students cannot learn if they live in fear of being deported. The California Safe Haven Schools Act is a clear message to Donald Trump: ‘keep ICE out of our schools.’”
Earlier this year the Legislature also authorized giving $50 million to California’s Department of Justice and other legal groups, which has resulted in more than 40 lawsuits against the Trump administration.
(SF Chronicle)
WEED USE IN PREGNANCY - NOT GOOD
by Roni Caryn Rabin
Women who are pregnant, planning a pregnancy or breastfeeding should be screened for cannabis use and strongly discouraged from it, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said in new clinical guidelines published on Friday.
Cannabis use during pregnancy has been rising for years. Many women rely on the drug to cope with nausea and other pregnancy symptoms.
But the college warned that mounting evidence linked cannabis to preterm births, low birth weights and a greater need for neonatal intensive care, as well as neurocognitive and behavioral problems in children.
“Patients are often using cannabis to help with some kind of medical ailment, not recreationally — in their mind, they think it’s a more natural way to deal with a medical problem,” said Dr. Melissa Russo, an author of the new guidance.
“But there are lots of natural things that are not safe,” Dr. Russo said. There are no studies demonstrating that cannabis is effective for pregnant or lactating women, she added, “and research now shows there are potential adverse effects.”
The college warned against blood or urine tests for cannabis screening. Instead, it urged physicians to talk with women about their habits, and to encourage them to stop using marijuana as soon as possible while offering alternative therapies for medical ailments.…
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/19/health/pregnancy-cannabis-marijuana-guidelines.html
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY
I’m armed as many of my neighbors are. That’s the case in most neighborhoods. There’s a reason that (with a few exceptions, like the dude with the pink shirt and AR), most of this stuff remained in commercial districts in 2020.
It’s also worth remembering that ~80% of the people mouthing off about Charlie Kirk on social media are middle and upper middle class women with big fee fees and a few estrogen and SSRI soaked brain cells.
ARs aside, do you really think many of the people running around howling “speech is violence” have ever been hit by a 2x4? Or even punched in the nose?
THE WAY THEY WERE
by Maureen Dowd
In 1986, my most prized possession was a little pink phone message slip written by a hotel clerk.
“Miss Dowd,” it read, “Robert Redford called. He’s at the same number as last night.”
I’d never met Redford, but that piece of paper was a magic portal to all kinds of pink-cloud fantasies. I stuck it up on my cubicle in the Washington bureau of The Times and gazed at it whenever I needed a lift.
Then, one night, the bureau chief went on a crazed cleaning campaign and sent a crew in to throw out every stray piece of paper around our desks.
I came in the next morning and my beloved message was gone.
I had called Redford to interview him for a Times Magazine profile on Paul Newman. Often, movie stars won’t talk about other movie stars (it’s not about them!); Joanne Woodward wouldn’t even talk to me about her husband for that piece.
But Redford was happy to talk about his pal. When I heard that famous voice on the phone, I said: “Wait a minute, let me get a pen and pencil. I mean, a pen and pen. No, a pen and paper.”
He just laughed, accustomed to women getting flustered.
I heard from someone on his team about seven years later. Redford wanted to offer me a role in a movie he was directing called “Quiz Show.” It was just one line — “Excuse me, are you the son?” — uttered by a woman who’s at a book party trying to chat up Ralph Fiennes’s Charles Van Doren, the fraudulent quiz whiz and son of the renowned Shakespearean scholar Mark Van Doren.
I wrote Redford a note, explaining that I was too shy to act in a glossy movie. I couldn’t even muster the nerve to do TV as myself.
He sent a handwritten letter back, telling me that being shy was not a good excuse and that he was shy and you had to push past that and take risks. It was a charming letter — and I vowed to take his advice in the future.
Years later, I got to know Redford over friendly lunches and dinners and interviews for The Times and at Harvard’s Kennedy School. And that rarest of things happened: He was everything you hoped he would be. I had the same experience when I spent that week interviewing Newman.
Both men were elusive, private, funny, generous and self-deprecating. They both liked painting and writing poetry. (Newman’s poetry — and humor — was goofier.) And they both struggled with the sex symbol role.
“To work as hard as I’ve worked to accomplish anything and then have some yo-yo come up and say, ‘Take off those dark glasses and let’s have a look at those blue eyes’ is really discouraging,” Newman told me, adding: “Usually, I just say, ‘I would take off my sunglasses, madam, but my pants would fall down.’” What if his eyes turned brown, he wondered ruefully, and he died a failure?
Redford chafed at the chatter about his blond locks. At first, he told me, it felt great when he became a top Hollywood hunk with “Butch Cassidy” and “The Way We Were.” But then the constant references to his looks and some “out of whack” fan run-ins made it “exhausting.” He felt like he was being put in a cage and wanted to protest, “No, I’m an actor.”
When I talked to him for his solitary and horrific sailboat yarn, “All Is Lost,” in 2013, about aging onscreen and whether it became harder to do close-ups, he replied: “Well, let’s get something straight. I don’t see myself as beautiful. I was a kid who was freckle-faced, and they used to call me ‘hay head.’”
When Redford got kicked out of college in Colorado and lost his baseball scholarship for carousing too much, he went to be an underfed bohemian in Europe, trying his hand at painting. He wore a beret and stripy T-shirt but failed to impress French girls, who thought he was too ignorant about politics.
While being gorgeous can propel your career — can we agree that Newman and Redford were the most charismatic screen couple ever? — there is also a penalty. It’s as though you can’t have too much. Many in Hollywood were slow to realize what wonderful actors the two men were. Despite a string of indelible performances, Newman did not win a best actor Oscar until 1987, for “The Color of Money.” And Redford, an iconic American star of the sort that no longer exists, never won an Oscar for acting.
They both kept Hollywood at arm’s length, disdaining the superficiality, which didn’t endear them to Tinseltown. Newman lived on the East Coast and Redford conjured Sundance, creating a film lab and festival that transformed the movie industry and produced many great talents. (He was appalled when it got so popular that Paris Hilton showed up.)
The two friends with the raffish all-American smiles and sporting lives radiated cool and glamour, as though — to paraphrase “The Way We Were” — things came too easily to them.
But their self-images were different. Newman, the son of a Cleveland sporting goods store owner, said he thought of himself as a terrier with a bone, always working to make his acting more distilled. Redford, who grew up feeling economically insecure and suffered a bout of polio when he was 11, told me he thought of himself as climbing the hill, Sisyphus-style, never “standing at the top.” He quoted a favorite T.S. Eliot line: “There is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”
Both men could be uncomfortable in their skins, filled with self-doubt, haunted by family traumas. Newman lost a son and Redford lost two.
And yet, over several decades, they helped define American culture with their riveting portrayals of morally ambiguous characters.
“I was not interested in the red, white and blue part of America,” Redford told NPR’s Terry Gross. “I was interested in the gray part where complexity lies.”
Off the screen, both stars set an example — rare in our selfish, vulgar, grasping era — for how to help others and how to be politically involved in meaningful ways.
Newman founded a camp for kids with serious illnesses, and sold salad dressing and popcorn to fund that effort. Redford, an L.A. County native, worked at Yosemite National Park as a teenager and became besotted by nature; he had a lifelong passion for saving the planet.
Redford made “Three Days of the Condor” and “All the President’s Men” to show the importance of rooting out truth and exposing corruption, and he made “The Candidate” to show the perils of image over substance in politics. It was intended to be a warning but became a blueprint.
Mort Sahl memorably observed that, despite Redford’s reputation as a ladies’ man onscreen, his true romantic obsession was his country: “America is the Girl.”
In a lecture in Washington in 2003, Redford presciently warned against the encroachment on freedom of expression: “Current political trends are toward power being in the hands of a very few people for the benefit of a very few people, and I see the threat of restrictions on all sorts of things, of the unraveling of constitutional rights, being able to be slid through under a lot of patriotic slogans.”
The last time I interviewed him, over coffee in the deserted Owl Bar at Sundance one morning in 2013, I asked about mortality. He had, after all, played Death on “The Twilight Zone” at the start of his career.
“It’s all part of the deal,” he said with that Redford grin.
(NY Times)
AUTUMN BEGINS IN MARTINS FERRY, OHIO
by James Wright (1990)
In the Shreve High football stadium,
I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,
And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,
And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,
Dreaming of heroes.
All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home,
Their women cluck like starved pullets,
Dying for love.
Therefore,
Their sons grow suicidally beautiful
At the beginning of October,
And gallop terribly against each other’s bodies.
WHAT DO “REGULAR GUYS” DO? I don’t know.
I’ve never been to a football game. I’ve never gone to a sports bar with a bunch of dudes. The idea of a strip club fills me with horror. (Is it a regular-guy thing to sit in front of a naked woman who—no doubt—holds you and everyone else in the room in secret contempt, while the men all around you struggle to conceal secret boners?)
Overnight hunting trips? Poker nights? Road trips? Don’t know them.
I’ve never been to a bachelor party in my life. I see people high-fiving and I generally start backing slowly toward the exit.
— Anthony Bourdain
TAIBBI AND KIRN ON JIMMY KIMMEL
Walter Kirn: Colbert is the ironist, the sort of pseudo-intellectual pointing out hypocrisy and contradiction. Kimmel is just a guy who, I don’t know, I hate to be this way, but he’s one of those dogs when you go to Central America that comes up to you at the outdoor cafe and just goes … and you’re just not sure that it’s healthy.
Matt Taibbi: Yeah, he’s definitely going for the … It’s the mean girls act from high school. He’s the guy who picked on you in the cafeteria if he could get away with it. Look, there was always a place for these guys in media. He’s not the safe date comic that they would sometimes have in these slots. It’s a little nasty.
But he went in such an abject political direction in the Trump years that it became a thing. I mean, it was like a game of one-up-smanship between all of them, and he went way beyond everybody else. So let’s just start with that. We put together this little montage. This is sort of the greatest un-hits of Jimmy Kimmel in the Trump era:
“Jimmy Kimmel: Dr. Fauci said that if hospitals get any more overcrowded, they’re going to have to make some very tough choices about who gets an ICU bed. I know that choice doesn’t seem so tough to me. Vaccinated person having a heart attack. Yes, come right on in. We’ll take care of you. Unvaccinated guy who gobbled horse goo, rest in peace wheezy.
But the big story is whether and when the White House released the so-called Nunes memo. To call Devin Nunes, Donald Trump’s lap dog would be an insult to dogs and laps. He’s not a lap dog. He’s more of a retriever. “Here boy, go write me a memo to smear the FBI.”
Speaker 2: There’s a new doll in town, and the fun is contagious. It’s Auntie Vax Barbie. She’s strong. She’s independent. She doesn’t trust science.
Speaker 3: Bill Gates is the Antichrist.
Speaker 4: Vaccines have Satan’s blood.
Jimmy Kimmel: But the only thing he didn’t do was pull off his wig and reveal that he’s been Vlad Putin all along. It was a litany of lies, threats, just a despicable and incoherent attack on democracy in the United States. At the end of that speech, he should have been arrested. If they could have found handcuffs small enough to take him away, they would have.
And this is crazy, 38% of Republicans said they want Trump to stay in politics. And his former chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney today said he expects Trump to run again in 2024. Can you imagine if in 18 months he comes down that friggin’ escalator again?
I’m proud to say I voted for him dozens of times. He is the reason we all got a cavity search tonight. Please welcome the 46th President of the United States, Joe Biden.
Democrats are frustrated because we got out and voted. We won the House, the Senate, the White House, obviously, and still we have had made very little progress as far as I’m concerned when it comes to guns, obviously, reproductive rights, voting rights, climate change, all these things. And in some ways, we’ve moved backwards.
And since we’re here, we might as well go through some of them. Here are a few other things you accomplished that Nostra-dumbass wasn’t able to. You expanded the Affordable Care Act, you passed bipartisan gun legislation, you capped prescription drug prices and insulin for …
And we’re going to do something different from what we usually do. Tonight’s monologue is for Republicans. So if you have someone in your life who is either planning to vote for Trump or thinking about it, I would like you to send this to a Republican you love and respect with a request. Ask them to watch this whole thing as a personal favor to you.
Am I biased against Donald Trump? Yes. Do I think I have good reasons for being biased against him? Yes, and I’m probably wrong, but I think when you hear some of those reasons, you might agree with me, even just a little.
Tesla stock is way down, almost disastrously so. People have been vandalizing Tesla vehicles, new Tesla vehicles. Please don’t vandalize, don’t ever vandalize Tesla vehicles. And so …
The next guest is fighting the good fight under difficult conditions in Washington. He is a US Senator from the great state of California. Please welcome Adam Schiff.
Adam Schiff: I’m a good Democrat. So my view, of course, is when they go low, we go high. He can go (censored) himself.”
Matt Taibbi: Okay. So that … So that’s the-
Walter Kirn: I just wrote some things down. In that short clip he called for people to be arrested. He called for people to go untreated at hospitals so that they die, and he wink, wink, gave approval to people to vandalize cars.
Matt Taibbi: Yeah. So that one was, I thought was kind of amazing, that little pause.
Walter Kirn: All in the name of the American way or something. I don’t freaking know.
Matt Taibbi: Yeah. I mean, look, when you listen to that and listen to the gloating and the go fuck yourself and all that, it eliminates the whole sympathy aspect of the story, which it’s just not going to happen with Jimmy Kimmel. When you hear that he gets fired, the first thing you think is couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. In the free market he was going to go anyway, as you mentioned. This was already a tipping tree.
Walter Kirn: Dude, the great mystery and the great tribute to American respect for the First Amendment is that that guy stayed on the air for as long as he did. I mean, come on. If he wasn’t making money and he wasn’t speaking to the broad audience, and if he was calling for basically crimes and death, why the heck-
Matt Taibbi: He stayed too long, by the way, but yeah.
Walter Kirn: But what the heck was keeping him aloft?
Matt Taibbi: Look, influence, corporate inertia, lots of different things, I mean.
Walter Kirn: Or the fact that 70% of his network is paid for by pharmaceutical companies, and they had a use for him when he said things like, if you take horse pace, because frankly, even though the regulatory agencies have now recanted their belief that Ivermectin is terrible, at that time, it provided the greatest competition to the products of Pfizer and Moderna, Pfizer being their advertiser. I mean …
Matt Taibbi: Oh, I know. And then his Anti-Vax Barbie thing with the little, “Moderna makes your teeth Jewish.”
Walter Kirn: Oh, he did not just want people who were unvaxxed not to be treated for COVID. He wanted them not to be treated for heart attacks. That’s freaking scary.
Matt Taibbi: Yeah. So a significant contributor to the dehumanization of other Americans, to errors, to the atmosphere of intolerance, even censorship, I mean, look, he’s got Adam Schiff on there who was one of the chief de-platformers in his time who dragged all these companies to the Hill and demanded that they do more to prevent “Russian influence” and complain when Facebook reinstated Trump and all this other stuff. So he’s not going to get any sympathy points, but something happened. Something happened that made this a very significant speech story and we’re going to get into it. I don’t think we completely agree on this one, so it’s going to be interesting.
Okay, so that’s his background. Then, is it Monday? Monday he does something that in the scheme of things, is relatively like a misdemeanor for Jimmy Kimmel, but it was obnoxious and deliberate and it was something-
Walter Kirn: And deceptive.
Matt Taibbi: And deceptive. It was bound to get a lot of attention….
EMMANUEL GOLDSTEIN:
Re Taibbi and Kirn: Great conversation and debate. But I think there’s a pretty obvious way out of the immediate problem of moderating broadcast television without govrnment truth squads. And I’m kind of amazed that this wasn’t even brought up in the conversation, because it was in fact the law of the land until the mid 1980’s.
Very early on (I think it was in the 40’s), the FCC codified the political aspect of the “public interest” requirement in something called the Fairness Doctrine. And this was very straightforward: it just said that broadcasters had to give equal time to all mainstream sides of major issues. It didn’t assess truth, or say that you couldn’t say this or that. It just said that you had to also let the other guy speak. I think this is very much in keeping with our tradition of countering speech with speech rather than censorship, and a perfectly reasonable way of divvying up the very scarce resource.
That changed in the 80’s because Reagan didn’t like the govt oversight of speech, and felt that a free market would provide space for all positions, and that the network oligarchy was becoming less powerful given the spread of cable. Reagan was wrong on this one.
Regarding censorship, the big elephant that no-one sees here is that the conservative voices have already all been censored for so long that we just take it for granted that that is just how things are. Of course the only ones allowed to speak are the left. How else would it be? The only voice that the red team has in broadcast TV is to scream loud enough that advertisers or affiliates go ask the networks to tone down the leftism just a little bit. And when that happens, the left screams censorship, ignoring the fact that the right has been 100% censored off of broadcast TV for decades. Removing that censorship of the conservative voices should fix the problem. At least on broadcast.
And I think that Matt overstates the death spiral of legacy media. Yes, it has lost much of its power, but it’s still very influential. And there are huge numbers of normies who have lives to live and can’t spend their days scrolling through alternative media outlets. I agree that things would have been better had Carr remained quiet on this issue, but simply reminding ABC that there were regulatory obligations was not really out of line. If anything, it was a healthy warning. Don’t push this so far that we’ll have to get into a fight.
And I really do appreciate Matt’s almost fanatical devotion to free speech, even when I think he’s wrong. We need the watchdogs.
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY
Kimmel drives an Audi, I don't know what to make of that. I write this in jest because that is how thin the line becomes for many people to claim someone is a Nazi or Fascist.
LEAD STORIES, SUNDAY'S NYT
For Erika Kirk, a Husband’s Life Cut Short by Violence He Seemed to Foresee
Political Violence Isn’t New. But Something About This Moment Is.
Thousands Flock to Phoenix for Charlie Kirk’s Memorial Service
Where Kirk Stood on Political Issues
Charlie Kirk Memorial to Draw an Outpouring From the Right
What to Know About Charlie Kirk’s Memorial Service in Arizona
WHERE CHARLIE KIRK STOOD ON KEY POLITICAL ISSUES
Here are some of the activist’s stances on climate change, immigration, gun control and other issues.
by Ashley Ahn and Maxine Joselow
As one of the most influential right-wing activists in the United States, Charlie Kirk shaped much of the hard-right youth movement on key political issues.
Mr. Kirk founded Turning Point USA, a political organization designed to rally young conservatives. He was answering questions about transgender politics and mass shootings from students at Utah Valley University this month when he was shot and killed.
Here are some of the issues Mr. Kirk focused on and where he stood:
Gender Identity
Mr. Kirk appealed to conservative Christians who feared the growing acceptance of the L.G.B.T.Q. community in the United States. He was critical of gay and transgender rights and the separation of church and state.
He encouraged students and parents to report professors whom they suspected of embracing what some on the right refer to as gender ideology.
In 2021, he founded TPUSA Faith, which “exists to unite the church around primary doctrine and to eliminate wokeism from the American pulpit,” according to its website.
Gun Control
Mr. Kirk was a strong supporter of gun rights.
At a 2023 event by TPUSA Faith, a division of Turning Point USA, he defended the Second Amendment as a critical means to “defend yourself against a tyrannical government.” He said it would be impossible to avoid gun deaths in a society with an armed citizenry, but he believed the benefits of gun rights outweighed the costs.
“I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights,” he said.
Mr. Kirk said the way to reduce gun violence was simple: Put guns into the hands of more Americans.
“If our money and our sporting events and our airplanes have armed guards, why don’t our children?” he asked.
Race
Mr. Kirk believed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a destructive force in American politics, calling its passage a “mistake” that he said has been turned into “an anti-white weapon.”
He also blamed the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for the law and was highly critical of the slain civil rights leader, calling him an “awful” person. Mr. Kirk said he desired a colorblind society but blamed the veneration of Dr. King for what he saw as America’s fixation on race.
Mr. Kirk was also a staunch opponent of affirmative action and was highly critical of the Supreme Court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, calling her a “diversity hire” who wasn’t qualified to serve on the highest court.
His repudiation of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, known as D.E.I., stretched to comments many denounced as racist. In 2024, he said, “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.’”
In 2021, while delivering a speech in Mankato, Minn., Mr. Kirk called George Floyd — the Black man whose murder by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020 provoked a broad racial justice movement — a “scumbag” who wasn’t worthy of the attention.
Antisemitism
Mr. Kirk was repeatedly accused of antisemitism, including by fellow conservatives.
He was a proponent of “replacement theory,” a once-fringe conspiracy theory positing that Jews are trying to replace white Americans with nonwhite immigrants. That ideology motivated the gunman who killed 11 worshipers at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018.
Mr. Kirk also accused Jewish philanthropists of fomenting anti-whiteness by supporting liberal antiracism causes like the Black Lives Matter movement.
“The philosophical foundation of anti-whiteness has been largely financed by Jewish donors in the country,” he said on his show in 2023.
Not long after, he accused Jews of controlling “not just the colleges — it’s the nonprofits, it’s the movies, it’s Hollywood, it’s all of it.”
Allies of Mr. Kirk often sought to defend him against accusations of antisemitism by citing his support for Israel. Mr. Kirk defended Israel’s actions in Gaza. After his death, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel mourned him as “a lionhearted friend of Israel” who “stood tall for Judeo-Christian civilization.”
Islam
Mr. Kirk called Islam a danger to the United States, railing against what he saw as the religion’s “conquest values" that “seek to take over land and territory.”
“America has freedom of religion, of course, but we should be frank,” he said in April. “Large dedicated Islamic areas are a threat to America."
Leading up to the mayoral primary in New York City, he paired a mention of Zohran Mamdani, who is Muslim and won the Democratic nomination, with references to Al Qaeda and 9/11, seeking to connect him with that terrorist attack. The social post drew accusations of Islamophobia.
“America’s largest city was attacked by radical Islam 24 years ago, and now a similar form of that pernicious force is poised to capture city hall,” Mr. Kirk said of Mr. Mamdani on X in June.
The Sept. 11 attacks were a formative experience for Mr. Mamdani, who was a child at the time and, along with many New Yorkers, was profiled as an “other” because of his religion, he said in an interview with The New York Times. At the same time, he said it was important to honor the memories of those that were killed and added that he would be thinking of the victims and their families on Thursday, the 24th anniversary of 9/11.
Free Speech
Mr. Kirk was a self-declared supporter of free speech and Turning Point USA was known for its free speech advocacy.
The group was known for placing giant rubber beach balls on campuses and invited students to write comments on the balls in a symbolic way of exercising their free speech rights. Mr. Kirk also invited students to debate him, supporting “reasonable disagreements.”
In several instances, Mr. Kirk has used the First Amendment to sue universities that tried to block his presence. Critics have argued that Mr. Kirk’s promotion of free speech was tinged with hypocrisy, pointing to Turning Point USA’s “Professor Watchlist,” in which students were asked to list professors with leftist positions.
Climate Change
Mr. Kirk frequently dismissed concerns about climate change, even as polling showed that young conservative voters prioritize the issue. He said incorrectly that there was no scientific consensus on global warming.
He also rejected the idea that climate change posed an existential threat to humanity, describing it as “complete gibberish, nonsense and balderdash” in December 2024 to members of Turning Point UK, the British offshoot of Turning Point USA.
Last month, Mr. Kirk’s podcast featured Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who has called global warming “not incredibly important.”
Stephanie Saul, Clyde McGrady, Audra D. S. Burch and Dana Goldstein contributed reporting.
(nytimes.com)
OHIO LISTENING
by Calvin C. Hernton (1999)
It’s autumn in Ohio
Things to be done
Visit the doctor
Before leaves fall.
Autumn in Ohio
Black birds southward bound
Darkening the sky
North winds congregate
In fields of dry stalks
A loose shingle rattling
On the roof.
Autumn in Ohio
Repairs to be made
Firewood to gather
Loved ones to hold
Before the leaves turn gold
And the hawk descends
Formidable cold.
BREAK DEMOCRATS’ STRONGHOLD ON CALIFORNIA GOVERNMENT
Talk about fascist nonsense… Truth is, neither party is worth a dime these days. Democraps sold out to wealthy interests long ago. Rethuglicans have for decades been the party of the wealthy.
“The Way They Were”
Maureen Dowd writes a fine piece about the old America and two of its citizens. Good men they were, decent, helping others, not hogs at the trough and jerks on top of that. Those days are gone.
CALIFORNIA BANS MOST LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS FROM WEARING MASKS DURING OPERATIONS
Guess who they didn’t ban? State employees….. find that a little odd? That’s our governor.
State employees generally don’t stop people in the streets or enter people’s homes. Most state employees don’t have the authority to sweep people up off the street and take them to a detention center. So there’s that distinction. Not to mention, I don’t know of any non-law enforcement state employees that are masking up to go to work unless they have covid concerns.
“State employees generally don’t stop people in the streets or enter people’s homes”. That certainly doesn’t check out.
Not certain what you mean by this. The California Highway Patrol, California Dept of fish and wildlife, Ca Dept of Justice Agents, just to name a few. California has around 12 agencies that employ police officers. They serve search warrants, entering people’s homes, stop cars and pedestrians on a daily basis.
California employs literally thousands of cops and they stop people and serve search warrants every single day.
I’ve worked with many of these agencies over the years.
State employees generally don’t stop people in the streets (?)…
Not certain what you mean by this… I’m an equal opportunity hater.
RE: (CALIFORNIA BANS MOST LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS FROM WEARING MASKS DURING OPERATIONS.)
Guess who they didn’t ban? State employees….. find that a little odd? Sheriff Matt Kendall, September 21, 2025
RE: And by the way Paul, don’t hazard a guess at whom I chose to vote for, I’m an equal opportunity hater of foolishness and self service no matter which party it is in. Sheriff Matt Kendall, September 20, 2025 Comments Section below this link: https://theava.com/archives/273380#55
—>. Sheriff Kendall would appear to have been ‘trumpet style’ pranked by Governor Newsom with push back political publicity rhetoric to regulate mask wearing federal government agents for which California has no apparent legal jurisdiction. Why would that be odd with current politics?
And why would the Sheriff publish years of misinformation press releases on inaccurate chemical properties dangers of Fentanyl, from stale discredited DEA training documents, with accompanying high levels of per capita mortality, and be a continuing ‘hater’ to discuss it, when at last look by this correspondent, his department had two employees handling press documents in Corrections, and one in the Sheriff office,
What may be more understandable is that the Sheriff and the First District Supervisor, compliment each other to shore up the Republican administration, complimenting each other in written comments, that is to parlay the extensive past political campaign contributions from the geographic conservative sector locality.
This is to translate and transform into federal funding, perhaps to cancel the intended removal of Lake Pillsbury water containment source for the Russian River water distribution system and instead rebuild the lake dam with outsized level of funding, no matter the potential adverse ecological economic impacts, before the current opportunity in time passes.
Perhaps another Trump Hotel is in the offing to quench the Lake Pillsbury Potter Valley deal, before present viable available alternative is cast in concrete. What is Modoc county comparison with Marin to oppose California temporary redistricting, except as a distraction for political commentator Matt Kendall.
Sunswheat strikes again! and by the way your spelling is improving!
Take a look at my “extensive past political campaign contributions from the geographic conservative sector locality”. (spoiler alert) You will find there are none.
When you’re finished with that assignment, you may want to look over what Christopher Hitchens had to say about things which are asserted without evidence.
None of those agents of the state wear masks to do their jobs. They wear name tags and numbered badges, and generally don’t hurl elders to the ground injuring them or break peoples’ car windows with sledge hammers. They are respected by most of us because they act within the law, and if not are identifiable and prosecutable.
Thank you, Gary, for stating the obvious in response to Sheriff Kendall’s remarks. And it’s a sorry thing that you have to do so. The ICE presence under Trump’s guidance in our country is way too often marked by clear thuggery and violence toward non-violent persons. We have all seen the photos and videos of their unlawful, brutal acts. It’s shameful stuff.
re: INTERIM POLICE CHIEF, et al
The City of Fort Bragg is now a cesspool of corruption. For those with a short memory, Jacob Patterson sued the city in 2018 for its democracy based, at-large voting system. The lawsuit ended in a stalemate, with the City agreeing to pay only attorney fees. Since the attorney was Jacob Patterson, this shyster handily pocketed $22,000, all to himself. Don’t tell anyone, but Patterson has now been hired by the City Manager to simply leave them alone – and oh yeah, to give a big shout-out when necessary to cover up their mistakes and corruption.
City Manager Isaac Whippy now illegally holds three important offices for the City of Fort Bragg: the City Manager, the Finance Director and the Community Development Director. He has held these conflicting offices for well over a year and a half. This grossly corrupt situation is in violation of Gov. Code 1099 – “Incompatible Offices.”
It’s good the City has so quickly filled the position of Chief of Police. Now they need to quickly fill the long overdue vacancies of Finance Director and Community Development Director, and in the process fire the current totally corrupt City Manager, and get Jacob Patterson off the payroll.
. . .
I am not sure where Gurney gets his information or when he became a legal scholar but this post is riddled with falsehoods. It is not illegal for the City Manager (Isaac or otherwise) to also serve as Acting Community Development Director or Acting Finance Director, he is doing so (without any additional pay beyond what he already receives for serving as City Manager) because he hasn’t been able to hire competent people to fill those positions, particularly CDD Director, which has had two recruitments. The issue of “incompatible offices” doesn’t apply to what Gurney is talking about but he apparently likes to take a real term and redefine it to something else altogether to suit his current obsession and pretend he is some sort of legal expert. Concerning his statements about me, I have also never sued the City either as a plaintiff or on behalf of anyone. “Suing” involves filing a lawsuit but I guess Gurney doesn’t know that. Nor am I on the City of Fort Bragg’s payroll. He literally asked me this at a recent meeting and I told him that I am not. I have never been an employee of the City of Fort Bragg, although I did perform several contract projects through my personal law firm, including working on the small cell wireless design guidelines about cell phone installations in the public right of way. That was several years ago when Tabatha Miller was City Manager. I encourage everyone to participate in local government processes, including Gurney, but he seems off his rocker with all this nonsense. He doesn’t even get the Police Chief thing right, which he says is good development. Eric Swift is going to serve as Interim Police Chief while the City proceeds with a recruitment for a permanent Chief of Police but no permanent chief has been selected. This information is readily available for anyone to read in the agenda materials for tomorrow’s FB City Council meeting.
So it wasn’t a lawsuit. But you did receive $22,000 to drop your complaint about Fort Bragg’s citywide election of Councilmembers.
It is absolutely, totally and completely unethical and illegal for Isaac Whippy to be both City Manager and Finance Director at the same time. It doesn’t take an Einstein or a legal scholar to figure that one out. Whippy also now signs Mr. Patterson’s checks. And now throw in Community Development Director to the cess-pit. Who writes this stuff anyway?
Jacob Patterson lied when he told me he didn’t work for the City. Sorry, bub, “contract projects through my personal law firm” counts as working for the city. I never asked if you were an employee.
Isaac Whippy needs to fully relinquish the two positions he now illegally holds, and find replacements IMMEDIATELY – as in a year and nine months ago.
. . .
Isaac Whippy doesn’t sign any checks to me because I do not work for the City of Fort Bragg. Being “on the payroll” means you are an employee of whomever is employing you. Independent contractors are not “on the payroll” of their clients. For example, although Marie Jones used to be an employee and therefore was “on the payroll” of the City of Fort Bragg, she is now an independent contractor and receives payment for her contract planning services under a 1099 process when she submits invoices and those invoices are paid. Those are not the same thing, although I tend to be hyper-precise about how I describe things because not doing so can be misleading. You tend to play fast and loose with how you describe things to try to spin things to whatever narrative you are pushing. The last time I received any contract income from the City of Fort Bragg was in 2019 and I am not receiving any sort of income from them at the moment. Regarding Isaac Whippy serving as both the City Manager and Finance Director at the same time, you are free to think that is unethical but I don’t and no one else I have asked thinks so either. You have yet to explain why you think it is a conflict or unethical, only asserting your opinion that it is after first claiming it is illegal, when it is not illegal. Do you know that falsely accusing people of crimes can amount to illegal defamation? Tabatha Miller also held down both roles after Victor Damiani moved to another town to be their Finance Director. I didn’t hear you up in arms about that then, although perhaps you weren’t aware of it. You might not like some things that are happening at the City of Fort Bragg–I also object to some of what goes on there–but that doesn’t mean Isaac is up to anything nefarious or illegal. If you cared so much about the stuff at Bainbridge Park, which was your recent focus until you turned to attacking staff and other members of the public, why aren’t you pursuing legal action in court challenging the lack of a CEQA review (EIR or MND) for the project? You could if you wanted to actually do anything about your concerns besides complaining about them.
J.P. writes:
—> “Do you know that falsely accusing people of crimes can amount to illegal defamation?”
So sue me. That seems to be what you are best known for.
As for the rest of your passive-aggresive nonsense about “payroll or non-payroll.” That was a recent off-hand comment on this list. Do you seriously belive anyone’s going to walk up to your sorry ass at a City Council meeting and ask,
“So, are you are you on the payroll as an employee for the City Fort Bragg” ? LOL.
I asked you if you worked for the city, and you said no.
What a lyin’ Shyster, esq. LOL !
. . .
Re – The amazing ‘Incompatible Offices’ of Isaac Whippy:
“Gov. Code Section 1099 codifies the common law prohibition against the holding of “incompatible offices.” This doctrine restricts the ability of public officials to hold two different public offices simultaneously if the offices have overlapping and conflicting public duties. For this section to apply, each position must be a “public office.” (Gov. Code Section 1099(c).)
Pursuant to Section 1099, a person may not simultaneously hold two public offices if: either of the offices exercises a supervisory, auditing, or removal power over the other office or body, there is a significant clash of duties or loyalties between the offices, or there are public policy considerations that make it improper. The consequence of holding an incompatible office is that the person is “deemed to have forfeited the first office upon acceding to the second.” (Gov. Code Section 1099(b).)
California Government Code Section 1099 prohibits a public officer from holding two incompatible public offices simultaneously, which can occur if one office can audit, overrule, or dismiss employees of the other; if there’s a clash of duties or loyalties; or if public policy makes it improper to hold both. Upon acceding to a second incompatible office, the individual is deemed to have forfeited the first. This rule applies to public offices, not positions of employment, and is enforceable through actions such as quo warranto.”
In a Feb. 1, 2024 article by Mary Benjamin in the Fort Bragg Advocate News Isaac Whippy said:
“He stressed that he has no desire to hold both the Finance and City Manager titles for the long term. There are obvious disadvantages to double responsibilities.”
“Whippy is sensitive to the necessity for checks and balances to maintain internal controls over government power. “Separating the two is needed to carry out an effective and transparent government,” he said. “I’m committed to that.””
Mr. Whippy made these assertions about his intention not to illegally hold two conflicting government offices for the long-term well over a year and a half ago.
https://tinyurl.com/mppux4v9
. . .
I think you are misapplying this concept but I can see why you are doing so. Unfortunately, it may mislead others to believing you. An actual example of an incompatible office would be both serving on the City Council and also trying to serve as the City Manager or City Attorney or serving in two elected offices that may have interests in conflict with each other. Holding dual roles within the staff side of the organization is different when there is no conflict of duties or conflicting loyalties (both his roles owe the same loyalties to the City of FB). I am sure the City Attorney reviewed this situation and approved but if you believe Isaac is violating this rule, there are means available to you to try to enforce it. Perhaps you should hire a lawyer to help you with that. Or you can just keep posting grievances online without doing anything useful…
This moron has no idea what he’s talking about.
Simultaneously holding the offices of City Manager AND Finance Director AND NOW Community Development Director is the very definition of Incompatible Offices.
The boy needs to get out in the world, and find out what life is really about! Those stuffy City Hall chambers and planter boxes can smother the life and truth right out of ya.
You can call me a moron, although most people don’t use that term any longer. I certainly have similar opinions about you. If you did more research or consulted with someone qualified to give you advice in this matter, you may find that department heads, other than the Chief of Police, are not normally considered “offices” in this context. A “public office” usually have specific statutorily defined duties, like the elected office of a City Councilmember or the appointed offices of Chief of Police, City Manager, and City Attorney. An subordinate employee inside the City’s organization is not automatically a public “office” and are merely employment positions, although some arise to the level of being a public office like the City Clerk because a City Clerk exercises specific duties outlined in state law rather than simply following what the local job description for the position entails. IMO, the issue you have is that you are assuming that all the City’s department director positions also count as public offices when they do not. The California Attorney General’s Office has numerous published opinions that deal with the doctrine of incompatible offices if you want to research the issue further. Many things are much more nuanced and fact-specific than they first seem if you just read a code and assume a term has the same basic meaning you think it might.
Baloney, as in all of Patterson’s false and stilted legal opinions.
Keep lyin’ buddy. It suits you.
Again, I don’t work for the City in any capacity right now unless you count unpaid volunteer work helping with the downtown planters as work. I haven’t done any paid contract work since 2019. How is lying to tell you the truth that I don’t work for them? A past client isn’t a current employer. You appear to not grasp basic reading comprehension.
As admirable as it is, the Clayton Kershaw quote is a fabrication which has been attributed to multiple celebrities. Snopes has an article on it.
Good catch. Yup, a phony.
If it is a fabrication, which it probably is, one must ask themselves, who or what particular political persuasion would do something such as this and why?
Who else dares blaspheme but the libruls?
Re: SFGate report on the Grey Whale Inn.
It was not the first hospital in Fort Bragg. The first hospital in Fort Bragg was at 418 North Main Street, built in 1895. There was a pharmacy, doctors’ offices and equipment on the ground floor. Upstairs were patient rooms and surgery. It survived the 1906 earthquake with minimal damage. From 1973 to 2017 the building was the location of The Restaurant and home of the Larsen family.
The SF Gate writer needs to spend a little more time in Fort Bragg. This description must be plagiarized copy from decades ago: “Fort Bragg is the Mendocino Coast’s gritty, salt-sprayed, roll-up-your-sleeves outpost. Tourists tend to flock 10 miles south to Mendocino’s curated Victorian village — strolling postcard streets and bedding down in heritage boutique hotels — while Fort Bragg is too often just a lunch stop: a harbor walk to watch the working fleet, a basket of fresh-caught rock cod and chips, then back in the car instead of staying the night.” Nonsense.
Good to know the Grey Whale Inn has new owners.
“Don’t Make Fun of Me!” — Putin and Trump
David Remnick writes in The New Yorker this week:
“Donald J. Trump has always been obsessed with television, particularly when the subject matter is Donald J. Trump. The President reportedly watches hours of cable news every day, and frequently complains about coverage in real time. Investigative reporting is bad enough; often what really infuriates him is jokes. Jokes aimed at him.
Historically, autocrats are a mirthless bunch. Augustus, Napoleon Bonaparte, Tsar Nicholas I, Francisco Franco, and countless others––they all cracked down on satirists. A generation ago, Vladimir Putin, a former K.G.B. officer well practiced in the most punitive forms of cancel culture, launched his assault on the Russia media by going after “Kukly,” a weekly satirical puppet show on the network NTV that fearlessly mocked public officials, including him. “Kukly” was eliminated, and Putin went about dismantling the editorial staff of the network. By the time Putin invaded Ukraine, he had set about destroying the remaining vestiges of an independent press; these days TV Rain, Meduza, and other once-popular outlets operate in exile…”
I keep seeing in my head the scene in /V For Vendetta/ where Steven Fry, a popular late-night teevee comic, runs frenetically around the stage, to music and audience laughter, mimicking and mocking the man in power, then the scene later when that power’s thugs have invaded his apartment. They have him kneeling on the floor. The main thug says grimly, gloatingly, “Not so funny now, are you, funnyman,” and bashes him down with a club. While Evey (Natalie Portman) hides under the bed and sees all, horrified, biting her lip to keep from screaming, they slowly, methodically finish murdering him and stroll away.
Wait. I was about to send that and I had a doubt. I looked it up. In the movie, Evey is away for the murder and learns about it later. It’s in the original graphic novel where she hides behind a couch. But the action above is the way I remember it.
“HOUSING AS A HUMAN RIGHT”
Mazie, your letter is just about perfect, a letter of advocacy and an appeal to reason and justice. Keep at it.
Chuck, Thank you!! 💕💕
mm💕
Mazie +1
Not a single Soul, especially from the Ukiah watch groups offers any answers. I always find that interesting. It is easy to complain. Much harder to use one’s mind to find solutions. The internet today is full of commentators, seems to be the way of things. I am also still stunned by the amount of money spent on behavioral health instead of housing. And, yes, I know they are two separate pools of organization. It’s just a funny reality that money is poured into behavioral health which is really an end result of being unhoused. Being unhoused is traumatic, now we have-whole groups of people spending their entire day driving around acting like cops taking pictures of random citizens and posting them as if they were all doing something wrong. Sure, they look broke but many he posts are doing absolutely nothing wrong. The really hard ones it seems he never sees, focused on the suffering ones rather than real criminals, escalating their misery, I am sure he was there pushing these as Mazie, says, out of touch people who are ungrateful for the Life they have been given so they take their grumpy little ass selves and do stupid shit like create FB hate groups and roam the streets in their nice cars creating and supporting every effort to bring their pain and suffering to others and down into our little county. They are small but persistent bunch of turds that need to be put back into their little boxes and tend to their roses like the DA should do,,,
Thank you Mark, 🕊️
So yes, there are two different Facebook hate groups for the homelessness issue. One being Ukiah vagrant watch, and the other being Ukiah caught on tape. It is interesting to note that both of those pages have people running the page under a fake account. I know the true identity of both. Neither of those people showed up for the city council meeting, which I was actually surprised about. The person behind the Ukiah caught on camera page is a felon and harassing and traumatizing homeless people.
mm💕
oops…
dammit that was supposed to say Ukiah caught on camera not Ukiah caught on tape ha ha ha!
mm💕
Who took that picture of the sunset at Little River? It is spectacular.
Martin Bradley
WHAT DO REGULAR GUYS DO, you ask?
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DO0grJDjhQU/?igsh=MTlhdHh4Zm91YnlvaQ==