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DRIER AND WARMER weather is forecast for the next several days as a ridge of high pressure builds over the West Coast. The next chance for rain may be late next week as another trough approaches the region. (NWS)
STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A much cooler 47F under clear skies this Octoberfest Saturday on the coast. Our forecast is for mostly sunny well into next week with a chance of rain on Friday, we'll see.
$65,000, JEWELRY RECOVERED AFTER STRING OF THEFTS ACROSS MENDOCINO, SONOMA COUNTIES
by Alana Minkler
Six people were arrested Tuesday in connection to several recent burglaries across Sonoma and Mendocino counties, officials said. Law enforcement officials allege the group is tied to a criminal organization operating across the United States.
On Sept. 30, at 9:45 a.m., two Cloverdale Public Works employees reported seeing two people, one whom was wearing a face mask, running from a residential neighborhood before entering an idling black SUV, Cloverdale Police said in a news release. Officers discovered the SUV matched the description of a similar vehicle reported in a “Be on the Lookout” bulletin issued by the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office the day before.
Sonoma County Sheriff’s deputies initiated a traffic stop on the suspected vehicles, leading to three arrests, the sheriff’s office said in a news release. One person attempted to flee on foot, but was apprehended.
After further investigation, detectives served a search warrant at a vacation rental the suspects were in near northwest Santa Rosa.
During the house search, a fourth suspect and two additional people who arrived while police were conducting the search, tried to flee, but were eventually apprehended.
Detectives found evidence and stolen property from at least four burglaries that occurred in Sonoma and Mendocino counties within the least week, according to the release.
Victims have been contacted, and more than $65,000 in cash and tens of thousands of dollars worth of jewelry have been returned to their owners, according to the release.
All of the suspects are from the Los Angeles area, said the sheriff’s office, who believes they are tied to a criminal organization operating across the U.S. They were identified as Jeimar Pedroza Jimenez, Juan Pablo Diaz Gomez, Sebastian Cuervo Lozado, Erik Nicolas Urrego-Cubillos, Yadir Jimenez Orihuela and Irvin Ramirez Perez.
(pressdemocrat.com)
ROBERT VINCENT (BOB) RANOCHAK
Robert Vincent (Bob) Ranochak passed away at the age of 97 on September 27, 2025. Bob was born on February 15, 1928 in Portage Pennsylvania to Michael and Mary Ranochak, the sixth of their eight children. He graduated from Portage High School in 1946. He was drafted into the Army in 1950 and was based in Okinawa during the Korean War. Once discharged he took advantage of the GI Bill and attended Penn State University, graduating in January of 1958 with a B.S. in Business Administration.
He began his accounting career in Ambridge PA at National Electric where he met the love of his life, Joan Hrinko. They were married on August 16, 1959 and together had two daughters. His career eventually led him to Ukiah CA in 1975 where he has lived for over 50 years. He also served as Treasurer of the city of Ukiah for 15 years. Bob became an Enrolled Agent for the IRS in 1983. Bob and Joan operated a tax and bookkeeping business in Ukiah for over 35 years. When he retired at the age of 85 he enjoyed traveling with his wife, golfing with his buddies, fishing with his daughters and grandchildren and doing jigsaw puzzles with anyone he could talk into helping him, even though he didn’t need any help.
Bob is survived by his wife of 66 years Joan, daughter Susan Ranochak of Ukiah, Mary Ellen Wilkosz and husband John of Novato CA. His grandchildren Gabriel Wilkosz of Petaluma and Annemarie Bonilla and husband Erick of North Hills CA. Sisters Margaret Klein of Addison TX, Barbara Hillman of Fort Wayne Ind. and brother Ronald Ranochak of Atlantic Beach Fla. He was proceeded in death by his parents, brothers Michael, and Edward and sisters Mary and Ellen.
The family would like to thank Jon with United Medical Resources, Inc and Oakmont of Novato and Suncrest Hospice Marin County for the wonderful care Bob received over the past year.
In lieu of flowers donations can be made to Hospice of Ukiah, Suncrest Hospice Marin County and Ukiah Senior Center.
Services are pending.
JUDGE ALLOWS MURDER CASE AGAINST ALLEGED FENTANYL DEALER TO PROCEED
Says Kailand Ignacio Garcia should "be held to answer" to a charge of second-degree murder
by Elise Cox
Mendocino County Superior Court (Ten Mile Branch) Judge Clayton Brennan ruled Wednesday that Kailand Ignacio Garcia should be held to answer to charges of second-degree murder and unlawful possession for sale of a controlled substance.
Garcia is charged in the Jan. 17, 2024, death of Fort Bragg teenager Alyson Sanchez-Llanes, who died of a fentanyl overdose. Prosecutors allege Garcia sold drugs to her dealer, Elohi Triplet.
The ruling followed a drawn-out preliminary hearing that began March 10, 2025, according to court records.
During the hearing, defense attorney Justin Petersen questioned whether the pills that killed Sanchez-Llanes came from the same batch as pills later seized from Garcia’s girlfriend’s home. He also pointed to the teen’s social media posts, where she expressed sadness and remorse about the end of a romantic relationship, as evidence she may have been suicidal.
Deputy District Attorney Eloise Kelsey said claims that Sanchez-Llanes was suicidal should be viewed with skepticism. David Rowan, the investigator who reviewed Sanchez-Llanes’ social media posts, noted that she was making plans for the future the night that she died, including participation in the Upward Bound college-prep program. Indeed, just before she overdosed she contacted a colleague who worked with her at Harvest Market about the schedule, and she asked her colleague to text her in the morning.
Brennan appeared to agree with the prosecution, noting that the teen’s expressions of depression did not prove she was suicidal, adding that “she didn’t leave a note.”
On the question of whether Sanchez-Llanes may have obtained fentanyl from another source, Brennan cited a toxicology report showing a tablet from Sanchez-Llanes’ room was “very, very similar” to tablets seized from Garcia’s girlfriend’s house.
The judge said the defense would have the opportunity to present its case to a jury.
Meanwhile, he said, “it was abundantly clear Kailand Garcia supplied fentanyl” knowing how dangerous the drug was, and that Garcia was in a position to know it would be passed along.
“It’s clear to the court that the element of implied malice is sufficiently demonstrated for the purposes of the preliminary hearing,” Brennan said.
Implied malice is significant because murder is defined as the unlawful killing of a human being “with malice aforethought,” under federal law.
(Mendo Local Public Media)
CONTROVERSIAL FORT BRAGG GROCERY OUTLET SLATED FOR SPRING GROUNDBREAKING
by Devon Dean
The last hurdles are in sight for groundbreaking on the controversial Fort Bragg Grocery Outlet.
City Manager Isaac Whippy says he spoke to the developers recently for an update.
“There’s one permit related to stormwater drainage they are going back and forth on,” he says, referencing the Fort Bragg City Planning Commission. “We hope to address that in the next couple of months. They have penciled in April 2026 to begin construction.”
Construction comes after close to six years of litigation brought by the Fort Bragg Local Business Matters group, which advocates for locally owned businesses as opposed to chains or outside ownership, alleging misconduct on the part of the California Coastal Commission.
A San Francisco judge dismissed the last legal challenge back in February, clearing the way for the project to move forward.
City officials say the new store will be a “much-needed local affordable grocery option for Fort Bragg’s residents, especially low-income and poverty-level individuals and families who currently drive to Willits to shop at the Grocery Outlet there.”
The 16,157-square-foot Grocery Outlet will be constructed on the corner of South Franklin Street between South Street and North Harbor Drive on the site of the old Mendocino County Social Services building. Once open, it will operate seven days a week and employ up to 25 full-time and 10 part-time employees.
(Mendocino Voice)
GOFUNDME LAUNCHED FOR FAMILY OF WILLITS MAN WHO DIED DURING ARREST
by Sarah Stierch
Friends of a Willits man who died while being arrested have launched a GoFundMe campaign to support his family.
The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office said that on June 5, Nicholas Bakewell allegedly assaulted a driver who had picked him up while he was hitchhiking northeast of Willits.
Body camera footage shows Bakewell resisted arrest and appeared to throw a punch at a deputy. The deputy responded by deploying a Taser. Officers from the Willits Police Department arrived and helped restrain and handcuff Bakewell.
Moments later, Bakewell lost consciousness. Despite efforts to revive him with Narcan, an opioid overdose medication, and CPR, he was declared dead at the scene.
In September, the Sheriff-Coroner’s Office said an autopsy found Bakewell died of asphyxiation from being restrained and a cardiac event. Contributing factors included intoxication from methamphetamine, psilocin and other drugs, and pre-existing medical conditions.
The case remains under investigation, the Sheriff’s Office said.
Bakewell is survived by his wife, Adrienne, and three young children.
A GoFundMe was launched shortly after his death with a goal of raising $25,000 to cover funeral expenses and support his family.
“A thorough investigation is underway as the press release and articles being shared are not accurate according to many witnesses,” organizer Taylor Jones, a family friend, wrote on the campaign page. “We are humbly asking for any financial support the community can offer the family as they navigate funeral expenses and providing for his three children as they now have to grow up without a father.”
The fundraiser had collected $7,375 as of Thursday, which Jones said covered the cost of a funeral held in August.
“We are deeply grateful for the overwhelming generosity shown by our loved ones, peers and strangers,” she wrote. “It meant the world to his family to see the community come together in such a powerful way to remember our guy.”
Information about the GoFundMe, which remains active, is available at https://www.gofundme.com/f/justice-for-the-bakewell-family.
(MendocinoVoice)
JAYMA SHIELDS: My dad's memorial is today, Saturday, 10/4 @ 3 p.m. at the Laytonville Rodeo Grounds- we're gonna give Jim Shields a good celebration.
MAIL BALLOT AVAILABILITY
All Active registered voters in Mendocino County will receive a ballot in the mail. For our voter’s convenience, our traditional polling locations will be open on Election Day, November 4, 2025, from 7am to 8pm. A list of all “Polling Locations” and all “Ballot Drop Box Locations” are included with your ballot and are on our website.
Mail Ballots (aka Vote By Mail / Absentee Ballots) will be mailed by Monday, October 6, 2025. Ballots are available in the Elections / County Clerk's Office, for the STATEWIDE SPECIAL Election, to be held on NOVEMBER 4, 2025, according to Katrina Bartolomie, Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder. The Elections / County Clerk's Office is in Room 1020 in the County Administration Building at 501 Low Gap Road, Ukiah.
The USPS normal delivery is five (5) to seven (7) days, if you have not received your ballot by Thursday, October 16, please call our office at (707) 234-6819 for a replacement ballot.
If you have moved since the last election, please re-register at https://registertovote.ca.gov/.
The Local Voter Information booklets can be found inside the envelope your ballot arrives in, it can also be viewed on our website at: https://www.mendocinocounty.gov/government/assessor-county-clerk-recorder-elections/elections/election-candidate-information
Voters in Mendocino County have begun receiving their State Voter Information Guides (VIG), this has information about the proposition on your ballot. If you would like to view the VIG online, please visit: https://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/
Dates to remember: OCTOBER 20, 2025 - the last day to Register to Vote; OCTOBER 28, 2025 – the last day to request a ballot be mailed; and NOVEMBER 4, 2025 is Election Day, your ballot must be postmarked by this date.
For additional information or questions, please call the Election / County Clerk’s Office at 707 234-6819.
THIS WEEK AT BLUE MEADOW FARM
Heirloom and Early Girl Tomatoes
Corno di Toro, Bell, Gypsy & Pimiento Peppers
Jalapeno, Padron & Anaheim Chilis
Eggplant, Zucchini, Filet Beans, Basil
Lisbon Lemons, Asian and Bosc Pears
We are now closed Monday, Tuesday & rainy days
Blue Meadow Farm
3301 Holmes Ranch Rd, Philo
707 895-2071
NEW SHOP IN FORT BRAGG
There is a shop on Franklin St next to the Tip Top. A lovely couple opened it recently. Please drop in. The foot traffic stopped at KNYO and didn't make it to their shop.
She is an amazing artist and paints all of the items they sell. (Think Russian box style). They have some other tasty items for gifts. I don't know them, just want them to be a success as they add a lot to the town.
— Lisa van Thillo [MCN listserve]
CIRCLE UP!
The October Full Moon Drum Circle will be on Sunday, October 5th at 5 PM at Pudding Creek Beach in north Fort Bragg.
We have been Drumming at Pudding Creek Beach on most of the Full Moons for about 3 years. Come drum with us on the evening of October 5th. We'll gather in the sand just to the east of the Trestle. Everyone is welcome, and the event is Free. We'll start about 5:00 PM and continue till about 7:00 PM. The sun will set and the moon will rise at about 6:55 PM.
Bring drums, shakers, tambourines, bells, washboards, pots and pans.
We will have a few extra drums. It is FREE. No experience is necessary.
Bring a friend and you may want to bring a chair.
For more information, contact Sandy at 707 235-9080 or at [email protected]
We are also looking to buy or have donated a few extra drums, especially Bongos, Djembes, or Doumbeks. If you have one or two you'd like to sell or donate, contact us.
SHERIFF’S REPORTS
The following were compiled from reports prepared by the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office:
ASSAULT WITH A DEADLY WEAPON: Matias OrdenesCastro, 35, of Covelo, was booked at county jail Sept. 29 on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and of making threats to commit a crime resulting in death or great bodily injury. He was arrested by the MCSO.
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE: Asher W. K. Silva, 34, of Redwood Valley, was booked at county jail Sept. 29 on suspicion of domestic violence, vandalism and violating a court order. He was arrested by the MCSO.
COMMITTING OFFENSES WHILE OUT ON BAIL: Vue Vang, 51, of Sacramento, was booked at county jail Sept. 29 on suspicion of committing offenses while out on bail and multiple failures to appear. He was arrested by the MCSO.
ID THEFT: Abel Aguado, 41, of Ukiah, was booked at county jail Sept. 30 on suspicion of conspiracy, identity theft and possession of drug paraphernalia. He was arrested by the Ukiah Police Department.
RESISTING: Annelise K. Beck, 29, of Willits, was booked at county jail Sept. 30 on suspicion of resisting/threatening an officer, giving a false ID, violating her probation and failure to appear. She was arrested by the Willits Police Department.
DUI: Laura G. ColbyDubose, 63, of Butte County, was booked at county jail Sept. 30 on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol and vandalism. She was arrested by the Fort Bragg Police Department.
ID THEFT: Gene D. Kowalsky, 55, of Ukiah, was booked at county jail Sept. 30 on suspicion of identity theft. He was arrested by the UPD.
DUI: Jeffrey E. Lowery, 54, of Willits, was booked at county jail Sept. 30 on suspicion of driving under the influence and of resisting/threatening an officer. He was arrested by the UPD.
ILLEGAL FIREARM TRANSFER: Alfredo MendezSaldana, 24, of Covelo, was booked at county jail Sept. 30 on suspicion of an unlicensed sale/transfer/loan of a firearm, receiving stolen property and resisting arrest. He was arrested by the Mendocino Major Crimes Task Force.
ILLEGAL WEAPON: Joel S. Cowan, 36, of Willits, was booked at county jail Oct. 1 on suspicion of carrying a concealed dirk or dagger and receiving stolen property. He was arrested by the MCSO.
POSSESSION WITH PRIORS: Lorenzo D. Martinez, 42, of Ukiah, was booked at county jail Oct. 1 on suspicion of possession of a controlled substance with priors, possession of drug paraphernalia, violating his county parole and smuggling a controlled substance into jail. He was arrested by the UPD.
DUI: Eloy Lopez Jr., 25, of Ukiah, was booked at county jail Oct. 2 on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol, driving on a license suspended/revoked for DUI, leaving the scene of a crash and violating his probation. He was arrested by the MCSO.
GRAND THEFT: Edgardo MendezVanegas, 23, of Daly City, was booked at county jail Oct. 2 on suspicion of grand theft and conspiracy. He was arrested by the UPD.
GRAND THEFT: Barkley MoraPacheco, 27, of Daly City, was booked at county jail Oct. 2 on suspicion of grand theft and conspiracy. He was arrested by the UPD.
CONSPIRACY: Julia E. RodriguezRamos, 27, of Daly City, was booked at county jail Oct. 2 on suspicion of conspiracy. She was arrested by the UPD.
ROBBERY: Nash A. Whiteman, 19, of Redwood Valley, was booked at county jail Oct. 2 on suspicion of robbery and abuse of an elder or dependent adult and arrested by the MCSO. He was also booked on suspicion of vehicle theft, driving under the influence of alcohol, resisting or threatening an officer, giving a false ID and leaving the scene of a crash and arrested by the California Highway Patrol.
CATCH OF THE DAY, Friday, October 3, 2025
CHARLES ANDERSON, 58, Ukiah. Suspended license.
CODY BATES, 39, Ukiah. Failure to appear.
DOUGLAS FOOTE, 66, Ukiah. DUI.
ERNEST GATES JR., 63, Ukiah. Petty theft, failure to obey lawful order of peace officer, resisting.
MICHAEL GIAQUINTO, 30, Ukiah. Domestic battery, Probation revocation.
JOSEPH GOMEZ-ANGULO, 25, Ukiah. DUI, controlled substance.
ROSENDO HERNANDEZ-VALDOVINO, 44, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. Failure to appear.
GREG HOLMES, 67, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-drugs&alcohol.
BREANN JONES, 29, Willits. Suspended license for DUI, resisting.
DUSTIN MARKS, 40, Willits. Burglary with prior.
NATHAN MARRUFO, 51, Stewart’s Point/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, resisting.
JAYCEE MCLEAN, 27, Dos Rios. Toluene or similar substance, disobeying court order.
ADRIENNE PARDUE, 45, Ukiah. Domestic battery.
“EVERY DAY is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
FROM ‘HANDKERCHIEF’
Handkerchiefs, ties, an old man
on the street selling loose
freshly roasted nuts
from a bright blue cart.
Is there anything
lovelier?
I know — now —
it is only a matter
of days (if I am lucky)
until I, too, stand somewhere hoping
another human will stop
and find what I'm offering interesting.
— Robin Coste Lewis
I CANNOT ENDURE to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne
DAVE’S MEDICAL HORROR STORY
by Paul Modic
I ran into “Dave” in the park yesterday, he told me details of his and his friends’ health issues, all in their eighties or almost there, and after an hour I said, “I don’t know if I should be depressed about what’s coming or be happy it hasn’t happened to me yet? (His wife helped him through all the procedures but who’s going to help me?)
He had a perforated colon, needed a colostomy bag for a couple months, and then the doctors decided it was time to see if he had healed from the surgery and could start shitting out of his ass again instead of having the bag of shit at his side. In order to see if he was ready for that they told him they needed to do another colonoscopy to check.
It was going to be the colonoscopy first, then come back another time to do the operation to take away the bag, if called for. Dave suggested that they do the colonoscopy, then immediately do the surgery instead of coming back another day.
“Gee, I never thought of that,” said the doctor, and that’s what they did.
To prepare for the colonoscopy you have to fast and then drink some really bad-tasting laxatives and the shit comes streaming out multiple times. In Dave’s case it came gushing out into the colostomy bag, which needed to be dumped out and cleaned repeatedly, and that was the most harrowing part of the story.
“Just to shit out of my asshole again, I’ve never appreciated that so much,” Dave said.
He took oxycontin after the surgery but was afraid of becoming addicted, stopped after one day and was feeling intense withdrawal symptoms. The doctor said he should taper off instead of quitting “cold turkey.”
“After just one day!” Dave said.
(He told me about a mutual friend who has brain cancer and was told he had four to five years to live. “That seems cruel to tell him that,” he said.
“Well, some people would want to know,” I said.)
He and his friends still get together for weekly ping pong, gauging their ailments by their performance playing the game.
MEMO OF THE AIR: Good Night Radio all night Friday night on KNYO and KAKX!
Soft deadline to email your writing for tonight's (Friday night's) MOTA show is five or six. If that's too soon, send it any time after that and I'll read it next Friday. Also, if you send it by six or so, you have time to walk to KNYO (325 N. Franklin) and see Acoustic Serenade: Bob Dease on guitar and bouzouki; Robert van Buren on guitar, bass and mandolin; Johnny Heubel on percussion, winds and strings; and David Onstad on guitar, bass and magic wand. There'll be four other bands also playing places on Franklin Street, and it's all free.
Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio is every Friday, 9pm to 5am PST on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg and KNYO.org. The first three hours of the show, meaning till midnight, are simulcast on KAKX 89.3fm Mendocino. I'm live from Albion tonight again. I got my eyes de-cataracted but I still haven't got my car lights fixed exactly right, so I'm still not driving to Fort Bragg at night. Eh.
Plus you can always go to https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com and hear last week's MOTA show. By Saturday night I'll put up the recording of tonight's show. You'll find plenty of other educational amusements there to educate and amuse yourself with until showtime, or any time, such as:
Sabine Hossenfelder explains why, in her view, quantum computing will not pay off. She's been right about everything else so far. Every once in awhile she teaches in a tight little leather teddy, not this time, but after this you might want to check out her other classes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MukMOZ0J-Ww
"My cat let an owl get in my bed, provided it would sit in the right place." https://www.youtube.com/shorts/6tjbBnpZZ_0
And "I hate that we can't describe people using the obvious thing," this woman says. I agree. What I would start with here is, I like the sound of her voice. Next: it just looks like she fell off her bike. There was a man who worked in the local Radio Shack in the early 1980s who, the whole end of his nose was marked like that, and I tried to not say anything but of course failed and asked him about it. He fell off his bike. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4kIAg67IBFE
Marco McClean, [email protected], https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com
FARMWORKERS AND DEPORTEES - SURVIVAL IS RESISTANCE
by David Bacon
These photographs document the work and unique culture of indigenous farmworkers from southern Mexico who are now employed in farms up and down the West Coast. The images also document a new environment in the context of the current wave of ICE raids and anti-immigrant hysteria. People arriving to work in U.S. fields come from communities that speak languages that long predate European colonization, and their dances, food, music and culture have deep historic roots. As those farmworker communities today resist the immigration raids and anti-immigrant hysteria spread by the Trump administration, this culture has become a means for survival. …
https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2025/10/photos-from-edge-20-farmworkers-and.html
SIMPLE TRUTHS
At least while unarmed
Rage can be reasonably
Kept under control.
But give it a gun
And Rage trips over itself,
Ready for Carnage.
The calm thought you’d bring
Deciding if to act? Gone
Made irrelevant
By a safety-off
Trigger too easy to squeeze
BAM! Without thinking.
Sure, crime and violence
Will still happen without guns.
But rage-shootings won’t.
— Jim Luther
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY
My first political activism was canvassing for McGovern. I started to sour on the Democrats with the Patriot Act and Iraq. I cried the night Obama won, but none of the change he promised and I'd hoped for actually happened. Then I watched the DNC kneecap Sanders twice.
Then they gleefully shut the country down and took ownership of covid as an election issue: Trump's killing Americans, but we will save you. That was it. I'm so done. I've never felt so intellectually and emotionally healthy as I no longer identify with a group of self-serving politicians while looking down on those with differing views. I also learned my only loyalty ever again will be to the truth.
HAS ANOTHER MAC JONES WIN FIRED UP A FAMILIAR 49ERS STORY, THE QB CONTROVERSY?
by Ann Killion
The San Francisco 49ers, thanks to an early season sweep of divisional opponents, find themselves alone in first place in the NFC West, a place they’ve been many times before.
They also find themselves in possession of another thing they’re extremely familiar with: a potential quarterback controversy.
There were a lot of impressive things about the 49ers’ 26-23 overtime victory over the Los Angeles Rams on Thursday night. But nothing was more impressive than the performance of quarterback Mac Jones. And we’re not only talking about his sharp fashion statement: a two-toned red-and-black suit that got lots of notice as he entered and left SoFi Stadium.
“What a warrior he is,” said 49ers fullback Kyle Juszczyk. “He is the epitome of gritty. An incredible leader. A guy we can count on in any situation.”
Does it feel like the 49ers have two starting quarterbacks?
“Absolutely,” Juszczyk said. “I think we’ve proved that. Mac has won three games as a starter. I think that’s pretty good.”
Pretty, pretty good. By any objective measurement, Jones has been the more impressive of the 49ers’ two starting quarterbacks. He’s 3-0, with two turnovers and a quarterback rating of 99.1. Brock Purdy is 1-1, with five turnovers and a quarterback rating of 85.8.
On Thursday night, against a Rams defense considered one of the league’s best, Jones was spectacular. The 49ers started the game on offense and Jones marched them down the field for an immediate touchdown. The next time they got the ball, he did it again, giving the 49ers an early 14-0 lead and putting the Rams on their heels early.
He finished the game completing 33 of 49 passes for 342 yards and two touchdowns, with no turnovers. He was sacked once, late in the game.
“He played his ass off,” 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan said. “He was unbelievable in the first half. He got banged up a little bit in the second half and battled through it and protected the ball. Going against that defense, throwing the ball that many times and not having a turnover, I can’t say enough good things.”
Jones was less healthy than Purdy on Sunday heading into the Jacksonville game, and got banged up even more in the Rams game. After one hit, he grabbed the back of his knee. Later in the game his throwing arm was cramping up, and he was eating bananas and guzzling Gatorade on the sideline.
“Yeah, definitely a lot of things happened,” Jones said about his physical state. “Just working through some stuff. I was able to play, so that’s all that matters.”
Before the game there was a report that Purdy may be out multiple weeks with his turf toe injury. Shanahan said he didn’t know about the report, but reiterated that Purdy is week-to-week.
“We don’t know how it’s going to heal,” Shanahan said. “Hopefully it’ll be better tomorrow.”
But the 49ers are clearly in good hands with Jones. And we know, from decades of experience, where that path of competency can lead the franchise and their fans. Straight into territory once held by Joe Montana and Steve Young, Alex Smith and Colin Kaepernick, Jimmy Garoppolo and Trey Lance. The land of quarterback controversies.
If Jones keeps winning, it would not only be an unpopular move to return the team to Purdy’s stewardship, it could very well be the wrong football decision.
“They brought me here to play as a backup and that’s my job,” Jones said. “Brock’s the starter of this team and right now he’s dealing with something. … I’m just trying to get some wins for him so it helps us down the line. That’s what it’s all about.
“I’ve been in his position. I’ve been a starter. And you want your backup to go in there and win because at the end of the season that could be the hit or miss between a playoff spot or not.”
Jones isn’t the only backup stepping in to do the job of a starter. The 49ers have been decimated by injuries and few gave them much chance against a talented Rams team playing at home. (Though as usual, SoFi, the 49ers’ “home away from home,” was packed with 49ers fans.) The 49ers used that to their advantage. Players said Shanahan was livid that the team was an underdog on the betting line.
“I don’t really pay too much attention to it, but Kyle came up to me and he was pissed about it,” Jones said. “He was like ‘I can’t believe they moved us to underdogs again.’ I was like, ‘I don’t know what that means but yeah, let’s go kill them … yeah, I’m pissed too!’”
One of the other backups forced into a starting role Thursday was wide receiver Kendrick Bourne, who played with Jones in New England. After having key drops against the Jaguars, Bourne had quite the bounce-back game, with 10 receptions for 142 yards against the Rams. He and Jones clearly have chemistry.
Bourne said that Jones is a different player than he was in New England, when he was a young man with all the pressure of being a first-round pick.
“Mac’s just built the right way, his mental is the right way, he prepares the right way,” Bourne said. “I’m proud of him. I can tell in practice, he’s zipping the ball, you can tell he’s confident.
“It’s awesome to see him in this space. How I had seen him in New England, that was a different world for him. So to see him now, the peace he has, he’s playing free and having fun.”
Jones is a backup quarterback who is playing well and leading the team to wins. Which means he’s currently everybody’s favorite player.
We’ve seen this scenario before. It’s a part of 49ers lore.
(SF Chronicle)
THE 49ERS HAVE TO LET IT RIDE WITH MAC JONES RIGHT NOW
by Jake Hutchinson
Mac Jones has won another game for the 49ers. Let me rephrase that. Mac Jones just beat the division-rival Los Angeles Rams on a bad knee, while cramping and maybe vomiting, with Kendrick Bourne, Jake Tonges and every receiver the receiverless Kansas City Chiefs deemed surplus to requirements as his options.
To call it a Herculean performance from him and Kyle Shanahan would be understating the reality of the win. Jones threw 49 times for 342 yards (second most in his career) and two touchdowns to lead a win the 49ers had no business sniffing around for — after all, the Rams closed as 8.5-point favorites and no one seemed to bat an eye at the line except Shanahan.
After a win like that, over THAT team, what comes now is talk. Talk, talk, talk
Should the 49ers stick with Mac Jones? Is he better than Brock Purdy? Was Purdy’s contract a mistake?
You will likely hear (or have already heard) full-volume yelling about a quarterback controversy if you turn on your radios. Talking heads on TV will let fly rigid invectives at Purdy and claim the 49ers should never have re-signed him. Many will demand that Jones start over Purdy for the rest of the season. Context will be ignored.
I don’t begrudge anyone for asking these questions right now, but let’s do it in good faith.
Here’s the reality: Jones has been incisive. He’s delivering the ball quickly with an offensive line that he can’t trust to hold up (and didn’t, despite the one sack). His average time to throw is 2.69 seconds. Purdy’s average is 3.04 seconds. He’s throwing a lot of one-read, short-range balls, but it’s working. The offense is clearly better with Jones at the helm … right now.
There’s a chicken-or-the-egg question there. Is Shanahan keeping the offense quicker and simpler because Jones is at the helm, and it’s that offense that’s working better for the 49ers? Or is Jones just leading the offense in a simpler way, partially because of his limitations?
Maybe it’s a bit of both.
Shanahan might be falling ill to the paradox of choice when he has Purdy, or at least trying to realize the ideal of what his offense should be. With Jones and the cast of castoffs he had on Thursday, the limitations are glaring, so he’s reverted to simplicity, a la Jimmy Garoppolo (who offered a postgame congratulations to Jones on Thursday). The lack of options force Shanahan to be a pragmatist, which is ironically when he does his best work.
The results are clearly better right now with Jones, and the reality is that Purdy — with Shanahan saying Thursday night that he reaggravated his turf toe injury and is “week to week” — could miss next week’s game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
There are a lot of questions to be asked about the process that led Purdy to play when he wasn’t fully healthy. But Jones couldn’t go, the 49ers have no idea what third-stringer Adrian Martinez would look like in an NFL game, and Kyle Shanahan is explicitly obsessed with quarterbacks proving their toughness to him. It’s a major reason why we saw so much of C.J. Beathard early in his tenure. From 2017, in a quote on Beathard that’s indicative of Shanahan’s quarterbacking philosophy:
“The main reason you like him is, I’ve never seen a guy hang in the pocket and play as tough as he does,” Shanahan said. “Whether the protection’s good or not, whether people are getting open or not, he hangs in there all day, takes hits to the face, and just keeps his eyes downfield.”
The decision on who will start might be made for them next week. Then the questions will return the following week, against the Atlanta Falcons.
But if you’re forced to play an injured quarterback, stick with the one who’s winning until it stops working, or until your starter is at full health.
That’s not a judgment on Purdy and his rushed return. The 49ers’ best chance to win in the short term is Jones. It allows Purdy time to recover, and ensures that when he does return, it’s not in an addled state of preoccupation about his toe, doubting if can actually play the way he likes to play.
Both quarterbacks, to be clear, are leaving plays on the field. Jones made a few throws into tight windows that could have been intercepted on Thursday. Purdy took far too long to deliver the ball and missed some opportunities he would normally hit on when he returned last week. He lost his superpower of elite anticipation, and it looked like he didn’t fully trust his body or what he was seeing.
Given those dueling dilemmas, the clear short-term answer is Jones. If you’re going to sacrifice one quarterback’s health, let it be your backup, who, previous track record be damned, is on a heater and slinging it with the utmost confidence right now.
It should not be understated that Jones is accomplishing the near impossible: winning over 49ers fans who hated him. His career arc — of an overvalued first-round pick Kyle Shanahan was initially in love with — has allowed him to be lovable. It also helps that he’s got this indefinable, awkward Southern swagger, wearing oversized Two-Face suits and chumming it up in an infectious way.
Jones is not the No. 3 overall pick. He’s your plucky, big suit and bigger knee brace backup quarterback who needed to enroll in the Kyle Shanahan career revival program (patent pending). That relationship was always likely to be effective, and we don’t need to make it about a long-term battle between him and Purdy.
The 49ers get the best of both worlds, and you better believe they’re not worried about a quarterback “competition.” They’re 4-1 and 3-0 in the division with a group of backups leading them. For as long as Purdy is hurt, and for as long as Jones is pulling off knee-hobbled wins in miraculous fashion, the 49ers should stick with Jones.
DRINKING IN LA
by Eli Goldstone
The 77th Emmy Awards were over and I was heading home in the back of a self-driving car. I texted a friend, as I watched the wheel turning by itself: “I feel like I am being driven by a ghost.” And of course, I was: the ghost of the cab driver whose livelihood has been taken away by a tech giant. I listened to music, encouraged by a disembodied voice to sing along as loudly as I wanted to: “We can’t hear you.”
In August I got a message to say I had been nominated for an Emmy, along with the rest of the Philomena Cunk writing team, for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special, for Cunk on Life, and was invited to attend the ceremony. I spent the next three weeks scrolling Vinted in search of an outfit, making a change from the hellish things I was otherwise seeing on my phone. There was desperation in the air for something good to happen, and this would do. “I hear you have been nominated for an Emmy,” people said to me. “Yes,” I replied, “and I don’t know what to wear!”
My mother texted to say she strongly suggested I take a burner phone. People were being turned away at the US border: artists, activists, journalists, academics. I removed myself from a WhatsApp group I had made to co-ordinate a rolling fast to raise funds for Gaza. I deleted my Instagram account. I edited conversations to remove any immediate trace of political involvement. I had to look like somebody who knew nothing, asked no questions, took no action. It was grossly easy to do.
In LA I drank champagne at night and electrolytes in the morning and abandoned my critical faculties. On the evening of the ceremony I put on my dress, negotiated a mild panic attack, and headed to the theater. We didn’t win, which was fine, although just before they announced the winner I had allowed myself a brief moment of anticipation (Saturday Night Live swept the board for its fiftieth anniversary special).
We watched other people win and make speeches. Barack Obama won for doing the voiceover for a nature documentary. I don’t know what he was up to instead, but he couldn’t make it to collect his award.
The only mention of genocide was by the actor, comedian and activist Hannah Einbinder, who ended her acceptance speech with: “Fuck ICE, free Palestine.” Some compelled us to “be kind to one another,” or referred darkly to “the state of the world.” People mainly wanted to talk about how important television is.
Afterwards, we were ushered over to the Governor’s Ball. In the middle of the room stood a humungous, candelabra-lit reproduction of the Emmy statue, reaching towards greatness, tits first. We danced to a band performing “Pink Pony Club” with aggressive professionalism, in a production that shone a multi-megawatt spotlight on what was, after all, a group of colleagues obliged to socialize on the company’s dime. An office party for celebrities.
When I got back to England and reinstalled Instagram my phone was once again flooded with images of unimaginable violence. Palestinians are fighting against epistemicide using the tools available: namely, social media, even as it seeks to silence them. The posts from individuals in Gaza beg us to take notice.
The questions remain the same: ‘Why is nobody paying attention? Why have we been forgotten?’ Red text on a black background: “What more can I do to make our voices reach the world? The world doesn’t want to hear or see.”
“Did you have a good trip?” people asked. “Yes,” I wanted to say. “I stopped thinking about the genocide.”
I first went to LA more than twenty years ago. A guy on the shuttle from the airport invited me to sing with his band. A bartender told me they had watched me walk down the street earlier and prayed they would see me again. I assumed that this attention had been in exchange for the currency of my youth and that this time I would pass invisibly through the streets and beaches and bars as I do at home.
But strangers stopped me to tell me they liked my haircut, asked me who made my dress. I responded to the attention like a sunflower, turning my face towards a warmth that I hadn’t noticed I had been shaded from. I smiled more. I couldn’t frown because of the botox, anyway. When the cashier at Trader Joe’s told me to go ahead and have myself a great Wednesday, I confidently told him that I would.
“We can’t hear you,” the disembodied voice reassured me in the Waymo. It was freeing: the childish desire to be left alone even as you depend on others to get to your destination. A previous passenger had used their freedom to smoke a blunt with all the windows closed.
On my last night in LA, a human cab driver drove me through the hills and said something to annoy me. “Wish I was in a Waymo,” I texted someone. I didn’t, of course; I just felt uncomfortable, and self-conscious, and angry, which are good feelings, which remind me that I am of this world.
(London Review of Books)
A COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
by Jonah Raskin
Giacometti’s Last Ride: A Novel
by Bart Schneider; Art by Chester Arnold;
Kelly’s Cove Press; 2025; $20.
Artists, Ezra Pound once observed, were “the antennae” of the human race and provided a “warning system” about the future. They have also been keen observers of the present and have described the world without embellishments. In Giacometti’s Last Ride, novelist Bart Schneider and painter Chester Arnold, offer a stunning bookend to James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, a literary masterpiece which was just what I wanted and needed as a 19-year-old student eager to become an artist.
In Cormack McCarthy’s western and the film based on it, the Texas/Mexico border is “no country for old men.” The opposite is true for Giacometti’s Last Ride. The novel that Schneider and Arnold have assembled with words and images explores a country of old men, white and European, that provides a model for growing old with dignity.
They have also unromantically mapped a crowded corner of the 20th-century art world that transformed ways of seeing and thinking. Schneider and Arnold surround Giacometti with a cast of aging painters, sculptors, writers and photographers who are beyond their prime. They live and work in Paris and they’re mostly harmonious with one another, though the Picasso who emerges in these pages tends to be competitive with his peers.
In addition to Giacometti and Picasso, the cast includes Giacometti’s brother, Diego, and their contemporaries: Samuel Beckett, known here as “Sam”; and Eli Lotar, a photographer who explains that Giacometti’s work represents “man’s isolation.”
Lotar adds that Giacometti’s tall, thin, dramatic figures—which are less than three-inches in height—had a “particular poignancy after the tragedy of the war when so many people wandered through the world lost.” Giacometti’s art reflects the anxieties of the age in which it was born.
As readers of modern literature know, James Joyce offered the quintessential account of the alienated, anxious modern writer in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, published at the start of WWI and a classic ever since then. Joyce’s Irish-born protagonist, Stephen Daedalus, observes famously, “The only arms I allow myself to use, silence, exile, and cunning. ” The Giacometti who takes his last ride in these pages is far less defiant, though no less experimental than Joyce or his hero and no less dedicated to the demands of art.
Born in Switzerland in 1901 and influenced by the surrealists and the cubists, Giacometti settled in Paris in 1922. He created some of his best known work, including Grande femme debout I through IV, in the early 1960s. Grande Femme Debout 1 sold for $14.3 million and Pointing Man for $126 million. Giacometti died in Switzerland in 1966 two decades after the end of WWII when young white male artists such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning came to the attention of the world.
Giacometti turned to figurative painting in the mid-1950s. His success, which often overshadowed women artists like Helen Frankenthaler, was due in part to the myth that New York not Paris was at the center of the art world. Bye bye Left Bank studios, hello Greenwich Village galleries.
French author, Serge Guilbaut, tells much of that story, which never seems to get old, in his book, How New York Stole the idea of Modern Art: Abstract Expressionism, Freedom and the Cold War. After 1945 and well into the post-war era, New York art critics persuaded consumers to shell out big bucks, buy works of abstract expressionism and display them on the walls of their homes and apartments. As Schneider knows and shows in his new novel, Giacometti’s career benefitted from the notion that New York replaced Paris as the beating heart of the art world.
In Last Ride, the artist himself explains to a Parisian hoodlum how the New York art world operates. “It doesn’t matter if it’s good or not,” Giacometti says. “The fact that I painted it makes it important and valuable.” He adds, “I think it’s absurd but that’s how the art world is.” To sell art in New York, he must sell himself and his personality which becomes increasingly challenging as he ages.
Giacometti asks the hoodlum, who seems to have stepped directly from the celluloid world of film noir, “Why not become a collector?” He adds, ‘”Once you’re a collector, your status rises in the world,” and you “gain access to a wealthy echelon.” The acquisition of art can turn the criminal who plays his cards right into an accepted member of bourgeois society.
How much of the story that Schneider tells is based on fact and how much is based on fiction , the author doesn’t say. There are no acknowledgments to any of the biographies, including Giacometti: A Life (1997) by James Lord, who knew the artist and his entourage intimately well. Still, Schneider allows that he has ”fabricated some events, minor characters and the dialogue.” Which ones, a reader would like to know. Did his wife, Annette, and his lover, Caroline, really spat like two cats, or was that fabricated?
In a note at the back of the book, Chester Arnold writes that the “masterworks” by Giacometti and his contemporaries “provided inspiration for any child born in the mid-twentieth century with ambitions to be an artist.” He includes himself as one of those ambitious kids. Arnold adds that the great artists were as “recognizable in their persons as in their creations.” That was certainly true of Picasso who turned himself into an iconic figure, albeit less true for Giacometti.
Four women join the cast of the novel’s indelible characters: Giacometti’s wife, Annette, who begins her life as a member of the Swiss bourgeoisie and who is eager to become a bohemian; Caroline, a sex worker who serves as Giacometti’s model; his sister-in-law, Odette; and his mother whose funeral he attends before he embarks on his last ride.
His mother’s death awakens memories of boyhood when he learned from his artist/father to draw things as he sees them and to aim for “authenticity rather than perfection.”
For the most part the women characters revolve in Giacometti’s orbit and don’t have their own autonomous lives. The wives, lovers and models for Picasso and Rodin were often their co-creators. Was that true of Caroline and Annette one wonders? Giacometti’s Last Ride leaves that question unanswered, though the novel offers hints. One would also have liked one or two overtly political figures and perhaps a cameo appearance by Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.
Schneider dedicates the novel to “Catherine, who drove with me along the winding Giacometti road.” He says that she “opened her French kitchen to him.” Not surprisingly, mouth-watering food and wine are almost as decisive in these pages as art. Giacometti is always ready for champagne and oysters, though his stomach gives him acute pain and sends him to a hospital.
The narrative, which is told effectively through concise dialogue, moves deftly across the landscape of Paris. It slows down long enough to situate the artist in his atelier, where he clashes and conspires with his models.
“I don’t plan to die now,” Giacometti tells Caroline. “I have too
much work to do. And then there’s the problem of loving you.” She responds, “Problem?” He asks, “who’s going to love you if I’m not around?”
A loveable figure in large part because he’s not narcissistic, Schneider’s Giacometti is an artist worth knowing and admiring as a human being with charms galore. Chester Arnold’s sketches bring bits and pieces of bohemian Paris to life: a pack of Gauloises, the trademark French cigarette; Giacometti’s atelier with its detritus and unfinished pieces; café society; and the artist’s “last ride” in a lovable, funky Citroen 2 CV, known as a “deux chevaux.” (Because it only had “two horsepower.”)
In these pages, the ubiquitous car becomes an icon for Giacometti himself and serves as an emblem for Paris before it was displaced by New York as the cosmopolitan capital of the commercial art world. There’s a lot more than two-horse power in the creative engine that drives this well-crafted novel that paints a picture of what the French call “la condition humaine.”
(Jonah Raskin is the author of Beat Blues, San Francisco, 1955.)
ESTHER MOBLEY: My favorite book about wine finally has a sequel
When people ask for my favorite book about wine, I have an immediate answer: “Adventures on the Wine Route” by Kermit Lynch. Part memoir, part manifesto, it’s Lynch’s account of his travels through the backroads of France as he discovered wines to import into the U.S. The book is an irresistible snapshot of the French countryside in the 1970s and ’80s, and also an encapsulation of Lynch’s ethos: At a time when wine was globalizing and modernizing, he sought wines that had resisted excessive manipulation, that expressed a sense of place, that had what he likes to call a “soul.”
It’s a classic — required reading for budding wine lovers. But after publishing “Adventures” in 1988, Lynch didn’t follow it up with another book, confining his writing to the uncommonly eloquent sales brochures for his Berkeley business, Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant. Until now, that is. This week, Lynch’s second book — a novel — is out: “At Poupon’s Table” (Podium; 288 pages; $19.99).
Although it’s fiction, the new work reads like a sequel. It follows Kendrick Thomas, an American wine importer living in Provence and a clear stand-in for Lynch. If “Adventures” was a bildungsroman of an importer who was just getting started, “At Poupon’s Table,” set in 2006, is a portrait of the same figure in middle age, now established in his career. Both books mount the same argument: that wines with a “soul,” with some indelible sense of authenticity, are the only ones worth drinking.
“More than anything, Kendrick valued beauty, and during his lifetime so far, he feared the world contained less and less of it,” Lynch writes.
Writing the book was a yearslong endeavor, Lynch told me over Zoom from his home in Provence, where he now spends most of the year. (He’s in “partial retirement” from the company, though he noted he’s excited about the new Kermit Lynch store opening at the Marin Country Mart this fall.) The germ of it began decades ago when Lulu Peyraud, the late, legendary proprietor of Domaine Tempier — and one of Lynch’s most important discoveries on his original wine route — gave Lynch a book, “Ma Provence en Cuisine,” by Charles Blavette. At the time, Lynch’s French wasn’t good enough to read it. But when he returned to it decades later, by then a sharper Francophone, he was enchanted.
It was a quiet book, he said, about the quotidian pleasures of eating, drinking and socializing in Provence. “Day to day, wake up, go get a coffee by the port, go to the restaurant with six or seven other people, just one party after another,” he summarized. (If this sounds appealing, I recommend the English-language “Provence, 1970: M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, and the Reinvention of American Taste” by Luke Barr.)
Lynch — also a prolific musician and songwriter — was inspired to write something like “Ma Provence” but feared his own life wouldn’t provide quite enough interest. So he turned to fiction. “Somebody should write a novel like those old (Marcel) Pagnol movies but about today,” he said, referring to the director with a penchant for capturing ordinary life in rural France.
He hadn’t planned to write about his own life in his first book, either. Lynch originally conceived of “Adventures” not as a memoir but as a series of essays about notable French wineries. As a proposal, he wrote “three chapters of college-style term papers about separate domaines,” he said. His agent, Bob Lescher, had arranged for a meeting with Judith Jones, arguably the most revered food-and-wine book editor of all time. Once they got to New York, however, Jones’ publishing house, Knopf, said there’d been a change of plans and they wouldn’t be taking on Lynch’s book after all.
Lynch appealed. He’d come all this way, couldn’t Jones spare just 15 minutes? She agreed, and in that brief meeting gave him one piece of advice: Write it in the first person. That became the key to unlocking the book; it’s impossible now to imagine a version of “Adventures” that isn’t in Lynch’s voice.
His voice, and his life, permeate “At Poupon’s Table,” too. Kendrick’s old farmhouse just outside Bandol is modeled exactly on Lynch’s own French home. Kendrick’s friend Poupon, a local winemaker whose wares Kendrick imports into the U.S., takes his physicality from Alain Pascal of Domaine du Gros Noré. “I gave him the same facial characteristics, but the rest is make believe,” Lynch said. The anecdotes of life as a wine importer are drawn from real life too; the Alsatian winery that, to Kendrick’s consternation, demands full pre-payment for all of its wines is inspired by an actual threat that Lynch encountered from a Loire Valley producer.
There is some plot intrigue, mainly involving an unsightly satellite tower disguised as a cypress tree, Corsican gangsters and a bomb (the satellite tower was real, but Lynch swore he didn’t really have it blown up). But for the most part Lynch has written a lilting paean to the slow daily delights of eating and drinking well — making it the spiritual successor to “Ma Provence” that he hoped to produce. It’s a book of terroir, exuding the particulars of its vividly rendered place. The text is peppered with food descriptions so detailed that they are almost recipes, and wine pairings so carefully chosen that it’s hard not to salivate.
I asked Lynch why he set the book in 2006. “There were a lot more of the great wines in the old days than there are today,” he said. If Kendrick is tasting wines in 2006, “I could talk about old wines from the ’70s and ’80s and they wouldn’t be over the hill.” In 2025, many of those great vintages are past their prime, he believes, and subsequent vintages have rarely achieved their greatness. He has attempted to reverse aspects of this decline over the years, convincing, for example, his producers to stop filtering their wines before shipping them overseas.
“It’s no longer the wine grower who’s deciding how to vinify,” he said. “It’s the enologist, a scientist, and that’s removed more and more what I like to call a wine’s soul.”
Plenty of wines still have a soul, including those imported by Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant. “I am really thankful to wine,” he said. “I had such doubts about my writing, about my singing, about my songwriting and with wine I never had a doubt. I just knew I was right about it all.”
(SF Chronicle)
DAVE CHAPPELLE SAID HE HAS MORE 'FREE SPEECH' IN SAUDI ARABIA THAN THE US as comedian takes jabs at Charlie Kirk during Riyadh Comedy Festival
by Stephen M. Lepore
Dave Chappelle was blasted for saying he had more “free speech” to make jokes in Saudi Arabia while performing at the Riyadh Comedy Festival.
“Right now in America, they say that if you talk about Charlie Kirk, that you'll get canceled,” the comedian told a crowd of 6,000 people in Riyadh.
“I don't know if that's true, but I'm gonna find out.”
The legendary comic was called “soulless” and a hypocrite for performing in front of the Saudi royals and joking about Kirk.
“Dave Chappelle who went to Africa to avoid his show becoming a soulless grab for a millionaire and Dave Chappelle now are not the same guys,” wrote one critic.
Others dared him to take on the likes of Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman for the brutal 2018 murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
“Dave Chappelle should try telling a joke about MBS bonesawing a journalist and report back how that goes,” said Armand Domalewski.
One reporter said: “Saudi law makes it illegal to ‘challenge,’ either directly or indirectly, the religion or justice of the King or Crown Prince. Also illegal: ‘any attempt to cast doubt on the fundamentals of Islam’.”
Pollster Frank Luntz added: “Dave Chappelle said ‘it’s easier to talk here than it is in America’ at a comedy festival in Riyadh where comedians had to contractually agree not to tell jokes about Saudi leadership or religion.”
Fellow performer Bill Burr confirmed on his podcast earlier this week that comics had negotiated with the government to make it so that they could say anything they wanted, except for “the royals and religion.”
Chappelle, who converted to Islam when he was 17, was apparently unmoved by any potential outrage.
“It's easier to talk here than it is in America,” he said.
Chappelle even said he feared reprisal over material critical of Israel's response in Gaza to the October 7 terror attack.
“They're going to do something to me so that I can't say what I want to say,” Chappelle said.
The audience appeared to take notice at the comedian's material.
“I found it so interesting to hear political jokes targeting Trump and Charlie Kirk,” one person in attendance said of the comic's set.
The comic, who has often spoken of being canceled over his stances on transgender rights, also criticized the suspension of ABC's Jimmy Kimmel, The New York Times reported.
The festival — which has booked major acts like Chappelle, Louis CK, Kevin Hart and Bill Burr — has drawn the ire of many for taking the repressive Saudi kingdom's money while complaining of “'cancel culture” at home.
Some comedians have pulled out of the festival or been removed by the organizers due to criticism of the Saudi government.
Comedian Tim Dillon bragged he is being paid $375,000 for his appearance, and claimed some of his rivals were pocketing up to $1.6 million.
“I am doing this,” he said, “because they're paying me a large sum of money – enough money to look the other way.
“A lot of people are doing it. They [the Saudis] bought comedy. So what? Listen, what's your problem? ‘Well, they have slaves and they kill everyone…’ Hey, get over it. Do I have issues with some of the policies towards women, towards the gays? Well, of course I do… But I believe in my own financial well-being and I always have.”
Dillon, who is gay, was later dropped for making jokes about migrant workers in Saudi Arabia.
Australian comedian Jim Jeffries was also removed from the festival after making critical comments on Theo Von's podcast.
Bill Burr, who performed at the festival, defended his appearance and praised the atmosphere.
“It was great to experience that part of the world and to be a part of the first comedy festival over there in Saudi Arabia,” Burr said on his podcast.
“The royals loved the show. Everyone was happy. The people that were doing the festival were thrilled. The comedians that I've been talking to are saying, ‘Dude, you can feel [the audience] wanted it. They want to see real stand-up comedy.’ It was a mind-blowing experience. Definitely top three experiences I've had. I think it's going to lead to a lot of positive things.”
Burr said that the rules had been negotiated by the comics down to two taboos: “Don't make fun of royals [and] religion.”
Comedian and former Arrested Development star David Cross has lambasted the comics who chose to perform at the festival in an open letter.
“I am disgusted and deeply disappointed in this whole gross thing, that people I admire, with unarguable talent, would condone this totalitarian fiefdom for … what, a fourth house? A boat? More sneakers? We can never again take seriously anything these comedians complain about.”
The festival is taking place from September 26 to October 9, 2025, at Boulevard City in Riyadh.
Bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, has been eager to rehabilitate his global image after the killing of Khashoggi, which U.S. intelligence officials accused him of ordering.
He’s also seeking an economic revival for the kingdom to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels, and the occasion was an opportunity to demonstrate that the floodgates for investment were open again.
(DailyMail.uk)
HIGHER ED BOTTOMS OUT
by James Kunstler
"There are so many disgusting animals in public life that we have allowed to fraternize with the rest of society to our absolute peril." Aimee Terese on "X"
Harvard, apparently, can never learn. It has made itself the poster-child for all the failures of contemporary education, including the racketeering around endowments, government grant grifts, race and gender hustles, and intellectual surrender to ideas that would make medieval astrologasters burst out laughing.
Case in point: the university lately announced the hiring of a Boston-area drag-queen to teach a course in the spring semester of 2026 about the TV show known as Ru Paul’s Drag Race. The show features contestants vying for prizes and crowns based on “Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve, and Talent” (C.U.N.T.). Get the picture? Reach into your Jungian psychology tool-bag.
This backwater of the arts was identified some years ago by the literary pop-star Susan Sontag as “camp” derived from the French se camper “to pose in an exaggerated fashion” depicting “unnatural artifice.” Camp is the theatrical cousin of kitsch, which is the celebration of bad taste, with histrionic overtones of exaggerated sentimentality.
Please understand: when you are watching drag-queens, you are not really seeing men posing as women. You are seeing men portraying women as monsters. You might surmise that these are men who labor under “mommy issues.” The giveaway is that they often banter onstage humorously about their male genitalia, and sometimes even attempt sneaky displays of such, which opens that behavior to interesting interpretations.
Harvard’s drag-queen du jour demonstrates all that nicely. Kareem Khubchandani, his legal name, is a professor of theater, dance, and performance studies at Tufts University. He also teaches “Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora.” As a drag star, he goes by the stage-name LaWhore Vagistan. This is how he describes himself to the news media: “[M]y preferred pronouns are ‘she’ or ‘aunty.’ I chose ‘LaWhore’ because my family traces its origins to Pakistan: Lahore is an important city in Pakistan, and well, I’m a bit of a whore. And Vagistan because I see the subcontinent as one, big, beautiful Vag … istan.”
Of course, his fascination with female genitalia, of seeing a whole nation in that guise, is a bit odd considering that A) he is a homosexual performer who is ostensibly not attracted to female sexual characteristics and lacks experience with them, and B) he is a male of the species who does not possess such organs himself. Therefore, on what basis would he have gained so much knowledge of female genitalia and developed such a powerful obsession around them as to imagine the whole country of his ancestors that way? Possibly, it has something to do with mommy. . . something that made her appear. . . unforgettably monstrous.
We will probably never know the answer to these quandaries, and they are somewhat secondary to the main question of Mr. Khubchandani’s employment in this connection at Harvard where young minds get molded to become the future managerial class of our nation. Other questions do present, though. For instance, did Harvard’s President Alan Garber know about this hire and sign off on it, and how would he say it fits Harvard’s mission? Or Provost John Manning? Or Hopi E. Hoekstra, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences? Or Harvard’s Board of Governors?
All this underscores an important lesson that America has apparently managed to unlearn, something that we once knew quite well: that marginal behavior belongs on the margins, not in the center of our national life. The celebration of vulgarity for its own sake is arguably not the highest aspirational ideal for the best-and-the-brightest of our society, however amusing it might be in their hours of leisure, when people are free to pursue whatever lights their imaginations.
It also raises the question as to why would highly-educated women, say, the female faculty and admins at Harvard, virtually all PhDs, certified geniuses in their fields, go along with such a garish display of farcical disrespect for the female of the species, being officially showcased as part of Harvard’s curriculum? Do they see themselves as monsters who deserve mockery and objurgation? Do they enjoy watching a man enact such degrading psychodrama so as to diminish his manhood altogether? Does it signify some sort of conclusive triumph over “the Patriarchy?” (And how much of a good thing is that?)
Harvard happens to have a Psychology Department, including a PhD program in Clinical Science, Social Psychology, and Cognition, Brain, and Behavior, under chairman Matthew K. Nock, PhD. His official Harvard bio states: “Nock’s research is aimed at advancing the understanding of why people behave in ways that are harmful to themselves, with an emphasis on suicide and other forms of self-harm. . . to better understand how these behaviors develop, how to predict them, and how to prevent their occurrence.” Perhaps President Garber should ask Dr. Nock to audit LaWhore Vagistan’s upcoming course to see, for instance, how it speaks to the epidemic of transgender violence currently plaguing the USA. We need all the insight we can get.
THE NATIONAL PRESS CLUB OF AUSTRALIA CANCELLED MY TALK on how the media, by amplifying Israeli lies, have betrayed Palestinian journalists, 278 of whom have been assassinated by Israel.
by Chris Hedges
I was scheduled to give a talk at the National Press Club of Australia on October 20 called “The Betrayal of Palestinian Journalists.” It was to focus on the amplification of Israeli lies in the press, which most reporters know are lies, betraying Palestinian colleagues who are slandered, targeted and killed by Israel. But, perhaps inadvertently proving my point, the chief executive of the press club, Maurice Reilly, cancelled the event. The announcement of my talk disappeared from the web site. Reilly said “that in the interest of balancing out our program we will withdraw our offer.”
The Israeli Ambassador, retired Lt. Colonel Amir Maimon, who spent 14 years in the Israeli military, is reportedly being considered to speak.
It is true that I know only one side of the picture from the seven years I spent covering Gaza. I was on the receiving end of Israeli attacks, including being bombed by its air force and fired upon by its snipers, one of whom killed a young man a few feet away from me at the Netzarim Junction. We lifted him up, each person taking hold of an arm or a leg, and lumbered up the road as his body swayed like a heavy sack. I saw small boys baited and shot by Israeli soldiers in the Gaza refugee camp of Khan Younis. The soldiers swore at the boys in Arabic over the loudspeakers of their armored jeep. The boys, about 10 years old, then threw stones at an Israeli vehicle and the soldiers opened fire, killing some, wounding others.
I was present more than once as Israeli troops shot Palestinian children. Such incidents, in the Israeli lexicon, become children caught in crossfire. I was in Gaza when F-16 attack jets bombed overcrowded hovels in Gaza City. I saw the corpses of the victims, including children. This became a surgical strike on a bomb-making factory. I have watched Israel demolish homes and entire apartment blocks to create wide buffer zones between the Palestinians and the Israeli troops that ring Gaza. I have interviewed the destitute and homeless families, some camped out in crude shelters erected in the rubble. The destruction becomes the demolition of the homes of terrorists. I have stood in the gutted remains of schools as well as medical clinics and mosques and counted the bodies. I have heard Israel claim that errant rockets or mortar fire from the Palestinians caused these and other deaths, or that the buildings were being used as arms depots or launching sites.
I, along with every other reporter I know who has worked in Gaza, including the over 278 Palestinians journalists and media workers who have been killed by Israel since the start of the genocide, many in targeted assassinations, have reported a reality in Gaza that bears no resemblance to how it is portrayed by Israeli politicians, its military and many media outlets that serve as Israel’s echo chamber.
Lt. Colonel Maimon can obviously, if he chooses, enlighten us about the artificial intelligence-based program known as “Lavender” and how it selects people, along with their families, in Gaza for assassination. He can explain how Israel determines the quotas of civilian dead, how soldiers are permitted to kill as many as 20 civilians in order to target a Palestinian fighter and hundreds for a Hamas commander. He can let us know why Israel continues the mass slaughter when an internal Israeli intelligence database indicates that at least 83 percent of Palestinians killed are civilians. He can tell us how Palestinian civilians are abducted, dressed in Israeli army uniforms, have their hands tied, and are then forced to walk as human shields in front of Israeli troops into buildings and underground tunnels that are potentially booby-trapped. He can explain how the special unit called the “Legitimization Cell” carries out propaganda campaigns to portray Palestinian journalists as Hamas operatives to justify their assassinations. He can detail the targeting, bombing and controlled demolitions that have damaged or destroyed 97 percent of Gaza’s educational system, including every university and nearly all its hospitals. He can explain how, after Israel blocked all humanitarian aid on March 2 to starve the Palestinians in Gaza, Israeli officials set up the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to lure emaciated and malnourished Palestinians to four aid hubs in the south — aid hubs with little food and which Human Rights Watch calls “death traps” and Doctors Without Borders calls “orchestrated killing.” These hubs, open only an hour, usually at 2:00 am, ensure a chaotic scramble for scraps of food. Israeli soldiers, along with U.S. mercenaries, who include members of the Infidels Motorcycle Club, a self-professed anti-“radical jihadist” biker group that counts members with Crusader tattoos among its ranks, fire live rounds into the crowds killing over 1,400 Palestinians and injuring thousands more in and around the hubs since May. He can lay out the plans for the concentration camps in southern Gaza and the efforts to ultimately expel the Palestinians from Gaza and repopulate it with Jewish colonists. He can explain why Israel abandoned its own hostages, why it fired on vehicles headed into the Gaza strip on October 7 carrying Israeli captives and why it used Hellfire missiles to obliterate the Erez Crossing installation when it was seized by Palestinian fighters knowing that dozens of Israeli soldiers were inside.
If Lt. Colonel Maimon spoke with this honesty and candor we could call this balance. It would fill in a side of the equation I glimpse from the outside. It would complete the circle. It would match truth with truth.
But Lt. Colonel Maimon, I see from his past statements, will spew out the mendacious narratives used by Israel to justify genocide — Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields, it operates command centers in hospitals, it sexually assaulted Israeli women on October 7 and beheaded babies. He will make the spurious claim that Israel “has the right to defend itself,” ignoring the fact that Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups, which lack an air force, mechanized units, artillery, a navy, fleets of militarized drones and missiles, pose no existential threat to Israel. More important, he will not address Israel’s flagrant violation of international law by occupying and settling colonists on Palestinian land and carrying out a livestreamed genocide.
This is not balance, unless we accept a world where truth is balanced by lies. It is an abandonment of the fundamental mission of journalists — to hold power accountable. But most egregiously, it is a terrible betrayal of our colleagues in Gaza who have been killed for chronicling the daily savagery in Gaza, for doing their job.
No doubt, the corporate sponsors and wealthy donors of the press club are pleased. No doubt, the club is able to slither away from its journalistic integrity. No doubt, it is spared the attacks that would come from allowing me to speak.
But please, have the decency to remove the word press from your club.
(chrishedges.substack.com)
BILL HOGOBOOM:
I found this excellent quote in a Guardian article this week…
The German-born writer and philosopher Hannah Arendt observed in her 1951 book ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’ that… “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction no longer exists.”
The full article is: A critique of pure stupidity: understanding Trump 2.0 by William Davies, The Guardian 10/2/25
LEAD STORIES, SATURDAY'S NYT
Israel and Hamas Say They’ll Work With Trump on Gaza Plan, but Gaps Remain
For Netanyahu, Trump’s Nod to Peace Puts Him in a Tough Spot
Hamas News Brings Hope, but No Guarantee. Here’s What to Know.
Trump Seizes On Shutdown to Punish Political Foes
Trump Administration Is Said to Plan to Cut Refugee Admissions to Record Low
A Freeze on Medicaid Payments Is Forcing Cuts to Rural Health Care
“EARLY IN LIFE I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various “party lines.”
― George Orwell, ‘Homage to Catalonia’
ANON:
Our entire country and culture, from politics to sports to movies to lame late-night TV shows, revolve around the same axis: the cold civil war taking place throughout the entire West between the Globalist/neoliberal managerial/ownership class and the Nationalists, who comprise more or less everyone not on the other team from Christian conservatives to libertarian tech bros.
Nothing else matters: judges and generals and bureaucrats and journalists and professors etc will do or say anything—journalists against free speech, judges against the Constitution, professors against free thought (debate is violence!) etc—that is required at any moment to help and support their own side and attack and wound the other side.
It is a waste of time and energy to keep sniffing out hypocrises or inconsistencies or violations of oath or duty, and certainly a waste of time to parse truth and fact from lies—all these standards and claims are dead and buried.
The progressive aristocrats who consider themselves the rightful owners of "Our Democracy" have no interest in anything but destroying their political opponents and stripping them of social power.
THE BLUET
And is it stamina
that unseasonably freaks
forth a bluet, a
Quaker lady, by
the lake? So small,
a drop of sky that
splashed and held,
four-petaled, creamy
in its throat. The woods
around were brown,
the air crisp as a
Carr's table water
biscuit and smelt of
cider. There were frost
apples on the trees in
the field below the house.
The pond was still, then
broke into a ripple.
The hills, the leaves that
have not yet fallen
are deep and oriental
rug colors. Brown leaves
in the woods set off
gray trunks of trees.
But that bluet was
the focus of it all: last
spring, next spring, what
does it matter? Unexpected
as a tear when someone
reads a poem you wrote
for him: "It's this line
here." That bluet breaks
me up, tiny spring flower
late, late in dour October.
— James Schuyler (1988)
48
1/8 + 1/4 = 3/8 remaining after reading 30 pages.
Therefore he read 5/8 of the book equals 30 pages.
30/5 X 8 = 48
Book has
48 pages
I see why my mother is against going into assistant living. Besides the fact that it’s not in her culture (she and her sister took care of her mother into her 90’s) it’s a sentence of life without parole—she will never get out of there once she’s in.
Her apartment is also a death sentence but it’s like one of those Mexican prisons where you can bring in girls, have meals cooked to your liking, and still run your drug empire. Granted my mother’s dope-selling operation has gone from smack to tweak to just a few high schoolers buying joints from her back door, but it helps with the income and she feels useful delivering my stony weed to developing minds.
AMERICA’S SHAME–
VIOLENT ICE ATTACKS ON PEOPLE IN CHICAGO
“Body Slamming, Teargas and Pepper Balls: Viral Videos Show Ice Using Extreme Force in Chicago: A facility in Broadview, a mostly Black suburb, has become the site of escalation and ‘targeted attacks’ on protesters”
THE GUARDIAN, 10/4/25
Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, and Gregory Bovino, a border patrol sector chief, were seen at an Ice facility in suburban Chicago on Friday where law enforcement has been cracking down on protesters.
In recent weeks the Broadview facility has become the site of escalations by federal agents against protesters and journalists. Videos of agents deploying tear gas, pepper balls and roughly throwing protesters to the ground have gone viral, amidst the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
The Trump administration targeted Chicago with federal law enforcement starting in August, falsely claiming there had been a rise in crime in the city in recent years. Since then, there have been increasingly aggressive reports of Ice enforcement in communities, including helicopters hovering over apartment raids. There have also been arrests of local officials and candidates for office who were protesting, including Illinois’ ninth congressional district Kat Abughazaleh, who went viral with a video of an Ice agent slamming her to the ground, Daniel Biss, the Evanston mayor, and a city alderman who were aggressively arrested while trying to advocate in a hospital setting.
In Broadview, several people were arrested early Friday morning, after Ice along with Illinois state police, the Cook county sheriff’s office and other local law enforcement arrested and shoved protesters gathered for a weekly demonstration.
A local cabinet-making business, adjacent to the Broadview Ice processing facility, has had tear gas seep into their warehouse and workers hit by pepper balls, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
On Thursday, a group of Illinois law enforcement agencies, including the Broadview police department had announced they were forming a unified command to “enable the peaceful expression of the first amendment”, as well as ensure that local businesses and people in Broadview were kept safe, according to a press release. The statement also said: “The agencies involved in this operation will neither assist nor obstruct enforcement of federal immigration statutes in compliance with state and federal law.”
Broadview, the mostly Black, working-class suburb of around 8,000 people, has become a flashpoint in what the Department of Homeland Security has deemed “Operation Midway Blitz.” There aren’t any figures publicly available for how many people are detained at the Broadview facility, which is not staffed or intended to be run as a detention center.
In the state of Illinois, almost 5,000 people have been detained this year, according to data from The Deportation Data Project and analyzed by the Chicago Sun-Times.
For the people detained inside the facility, they describe not receiving adequate food or water, and having to use the bathroom in public. One person described to a Chicago Sun-Times reporter, not having soap or toothpaste and dealing with severely overcrowded conditions.
Katrina Thompson, the Broadway mayor who has been in office in since 2017, said in a letter to DHS that Ice agents were “making war in our community”, last Friday, and in response the agency warned there would be a “s—t show” in Broadview.
The treatment of protesters and journalists has drawn attention to Broadview. One protester, named A’keisha who declined to share her last name, said that it seemed like Ice agents wanted to hurt protesters.
“What was unique on the first day is that it didn’t feel like Ice had planned to use their legal tools to remove us,” she said. “They have the right, right to say, ‘Y’all gotta leave, arrest them.’ But they didn’t. They chose instead to be violent and, like, push us and throw us to the ground and drag us.” A’keisha has been involved in faith-based movements to end mass incarceration for years and has organized against militarization for almost a decade. She said she was moved to join protests because of her Haitian heritage and solidarity with immigrant communities.
Another protester, Reverand David Black of the First Presbyterian church of Chicago, said that he was pelted with about seven or eight “pepper exploding pellets” that hit his head, face, torso, arms and legs, while in a position of prayer.“I’m not a political ideologue, but I am very deeply rooted in my faith, in the ways that it calls me to show up in this moment as someone who can proclaim the good news and call these Ice agents into their right mind,” he said.
Local journalists have been detained or attacked by federal agents as well. Over the weekend, Steve Held, Unraveled Press co-founder and reporter, was detained by agents while covering a protest outside of the facility. A Chicago-Sun Times reporter was also tear-gassed and pelted with “rubber projectiles”, according to the outlet.
On Sunday morning, CBS Chicago News reporter Asal Rezaei, was attacked by an Ice agent who shot a pepper ball into her car from about 50ft away and was exposed to chemicals on her face. She said in a social media post that after the incident, she was “puking for two hours”.
In addition to protesters and journalists, legal observers, often delineated in the Chicago-land area by their bright neon green hats that read “legal observer” were also attacked in recent weeks by Ice agents.
“There has been an extreme escalation in the use of force by federal agents at that facility against people who are exercising their first amendment rights, and targeted attacks against members of the press and legal observers with The National Lawyers Guild,” said Molly Armour, a volunteer attorney with the National Lawyers Guild Chicago for over 15 years. What was most troubling about the behavior of federal agents at Broadview for her, Armour said, was the use of “violent military-style offensive weaponry used against people, such as tear gas canisters, [and] different kinds of aerosol chemical agents”, particularly against people just observing what’s going on.
Democrats should just get a spine and keep the government shut down until the President is impeached and removed from office.
RE: Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, and Gregory Bovino, a border patrol sector chief, were seen at an Ice facility in suburban Chicago on Friday where law enforcement has been cracking down on protesters…
What was most troubling about the behavior of federal agents at Broadview for her, Armour said, was the use of “violent military-style offensive weaponry used against people, such as tear gas canisters, [and] different kinds of aerosol chemical agents”, particularly against people just observing what’s going on.
—>. September 26, 2025
For months, the complaints have rolled in from parts of the country hit by natural disasters: The Federal Emergency Management Agency was moving far too slowly in sending aid to communities ravaged by floods and hurricanes, including in central Texas and North Carolina. Many officials were blaming Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, whose agency oversees FEMA…
“I can’t get phone calls back,” Ted Budd, the Republican senator from North Carolina, told a newspaper this month, describing his attempts to reach Noem’s office. “I can’t get them to initiate the money. It’s just a quagmire.” The delays were caused in part by a new policy announced by DHS that requires Noem’s personal sign-off on expenses over $100,000, several news outlets reported.
But records obtained by ProPublica show how one locality found a way to get FEMA aid more quickly: It asked one of Noem’s political donors for help.
The records show that Noem quickly expedited more than $11 million of federal money to rebuild a historic pier in Naples, Florida, after she was contacted by a major financial supporter last month. The pier is a tourist attraction in the wealthy Gulf Coast enclave and was badly damaged by Hurricane Ian in 2022.
https://www.propublica.org/article/kristi-noem-fema-florida-naples-sinan-gursoy
Boo👻!
‘Tis the season, no?
Don’t fret,
I won’t be long,
Couldn’t help it.
So long,
“The 16,157-square-foot Grocery Outlet will be constructed on the corner of South Franklin Street between South Street and North Harbor Drive on the site of the old Mendocino County Social Services building.”
Shouldn’t Grocery Outlet take over the former Rite Aid building as their new location? Seems like a no brainer.
Exactly what I was thinking