Mendocino County Today: Saturday 11/15/2025

Partly Sunny | Porcini | Prep Football | Blaisdell Appointed | Strategic Hiring | Halloween Fun | Judicial Shortage | LRM Newsletter | Space to Rent | Walton Book | Cloverdale Development | Local Events | Marco Radio | Dam Workshop | No! | Adult Bicycle | Yesterday's Catch | Same Way | Crow Tree | Big Ballrooms | SNAP Stats | Better World | Treatment Center | Hide & Seek | Dad Hits | Mofo Windfarms | Wanderer | Running Man | Glen & Brisket | Dogs & Cats | Good Music | Brazen Theft | Ice Sea | Beware | Lead Stories | Up Yours | Not Pleased | Nonstop Warmongering | Roadside | Our Democracy | Forget What | Storm Warnings | Greifswald Meadows

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THE BREAK in wet weather ends this evening or Sunday morning. Rain is possible in Lake, Mendocino, and Trinity this evening and overnight. More widespread rain and gusty south winds is possible Sunday into Monday. Frost is possible Monday night and Tuesday night. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A brisk 42F under clear skies this Saturday morning on the coast. After a lovely day today rain returns tomorrow into Monday morning. Then dry a few days, then wet a couple days, then dry for a while ? Maybe.

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UKIAH RACKS UP PLAYOFF WIN

No. 5 Ukiah 26, No. 4 Antioch 15: The Wildcats rallied from a late third-quarter deficit to defeat the visiting Panthers in their first-round playoff game Friday night.

Beau David hit Dareon Dorsey for an 11-yard go-ahead touchdown with a minute left in the third to put Ukiah (7-4) ahead 19-15. David then hit Ryan Todd for a 46-yard touchdown late in the fourth to seal the win and advance to the Division 3 semifinals.

David also had a rushing touchdown in the first quarter to get the scoring started.

Antioch (7-4) led 7-6 at halftime before Chris Thompson broke free for a 48-yard rushing touchdown to put the Wildcats back on top 12-7 early in the third.

The Wildcats will play at top seed Vintage (7-4) next Friday night at Memorial Stadium in Napa.

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FOOTBALL FRIDAY SCOREBOARD:

North Coast Section playoffs, Division 7, First-round game At Middletown
Middletown 36, Archie Williams 7
(Middletown will host Concord in semifinals next Friday, 7 p.m.)

Other first-round games:

Concord 36, Vallejo 24

Willits 27, Redwood Christian 0

Piedmont 49, St. Patrick/St. Vincent 7

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MENDOCINO COAST HEALTH CARE DISTRICT APPOINTS MIKAEL BLAISDELL TO THE BOARD

The Mendocino Coast Health Care District has appointed Mikael Blaisdell to fill a recently-vacated board seat. This is a short-term appointment that will conclude upon the certification of the November 3, 2026, election results by the Mendocino County Clerk.

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GOOD NEWS — IF YOU THINK THAT NOT FILLING VACANCIES TO SAVE MONEY IS A GOOD WAY TO SAVE MONEY…

From the CEO Report for October 2025:

“Based on year-to-date payroll actuals through October 2025, plus utilizing the most recent payroll to annualize the remaining fiscal year payroll expenses, the County is anticipating realizing $4,645,000 or a little over 85% of the total $5,246,657. The County must remain diligent and continue to follow the Strategic Hiring processes to realize the full attrition savings for FY25/26. Additionally, the County must ensure one-time funds are utilized for one-time expenses.”

Mark Scaramella Notes:

1. CEO Darcie Antle’s final sentence in the above item sounds like a routine statement of the obvious. But it comes just two weeks after last week’s big disclosure that County finance people found a $12 million (or maybe $11 million or $16 million) carryover after last year’s books were closed (as of June 30, 2025). In light of that, we conclude that Ms. Antle is emphasizing to the Supervisors and the operational departments that they better keep their grubby hands off her carryover.
2. Last May CEO Antle promised to provide a monthly report on vacancies and associated finances/savings as the “strategic hiring process” played out. We have yet to see any such reporting or details about the “strategic hiring process” which is now purported to have “saved” up to almost $4.7 million by leaving vacancies unfilled. There has been no listing of where the vacancies and alleged savings are, no mention of of whether any of the newly vacated positions are scheduled for re-hire and when, nothing about the impact of the vacancies on the operational departments, nor what the vacancy rates are in the General Fund departments where the vacancies have grown so large.

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FROM THE SOCIAL SERVICES DEPARTMENT’S OCTOBER REPORT:

Sometimes staff engagement means taking a moment to have a little fun. At MCDSS, our staff work hard every day to support the county’s most vulnerable community members—work that can come with a certain level of stress. That’s why finding ways to connect, laugh, and recharge is so important. This Halloween, the department embraced that spirit of fun during its staff celebration. Director Parker and Assistant Director White joined in the festivities, donning Star Wars-themed costumes alongside staff. The lighthearted event brought smiles throughout the offices and served as a reminder that building a strong, supportive workplace culture includes making space for moments of joy and connection.

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LIE OF THE WEEK

Mendocino County court officials say the Ten Mile Courthouse in Fort Bragg is not closing, but a judicial shortage is prompting temporary schedule changes.

ED NOTE: We have more judges per capita than any county in the state.

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LITTLE RIVER MUSEUM NEWSLETTER TIME

The Little River Museum is mailing out it's winter newsletter. If anyone out there would like one, please email me your snail-mail address, and I'll mail you one.

Also, we have over 100 jigsaw puzzles selling for $5 each. We are closed for the winter, but there will be two weekend sales in January and again in April. If you would like an email notification of the sales--send me your email address.

Ronnie James, [email protected]

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SPACE FOR RENT: office/storage/shop spaces available at the floodgate 707-895-3517

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TODD WALTON (Mendocino):

I wanted to let you know my new book The Dog Who Wanted A Person is now available as a handsome paperback from online booksellers and can be ordered from Actual Bookstores in your town and all around the world. The e-book and audio book editions will follow in a few weeks. 

The Dog Who Wanted A Person is a beautifully illustrated and very funny fable about a charming one-year-old dog named Huleekalabulee who is seeking a person to call his own. I think you will enjoy the story and may find this volume an ideal gift for a special someone or two. If you’d like to read more about the book and how it came to be, I have just posted the happy news on my blog, along with viable links for purchasing: https://underthetablebooks.com/blog/archives/7409

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JULIE BEARDSLEY WRITES:

“Esmeralda, a Bay Area-based developer founded by Devon Zuegel, wants to transform the 266-acre property on Cloverdale’s south end into a new mixed-use neighborhood with homes, public parkland, restaurants, retail space, multiple hotels, and a conference and event center. Zuegel said the plan scales back what has been approved on the site for the past two decades and adds a public park that would be gifted to the city.

The development would offer 166 detached single-family homes, from one-bedroom starter homes to four-bedroom models with accessory dwelling units. The average single-family home would be about 1,582 square feet.

Plans also call for 239 attached “village flats” — studios to three-bedroom apartments — and 200 “active living senior” units, from studios to two-bedroom apartments. Home prices would range from $600,000 to $4 million, according to Esmeralda documents, which note that pricing would shift with the housing market.

The resort component would include three separate lodging concepts: a 120-room resort hotel with two restaurants, a 64-room boutique hotel and a 16-unit apartment-style resort building.

A spa, fitness center, racquetball club, Japanese-style hot spring and more than 21,000 square feet of retail space round out the concept.”

The deep-thinkers of this huge development just south of Cloverdale need to ask themselves where is the WATER going to come from?

To say that this development would drastically change the character of Cloverdale, is a massive understatement. Everyone in Cloverdale that I’ve talked to says a resounding “NO” to this project.

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LOCAL EVENTS (this weekend)

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MEMO OF THE AIR: Good Night Radio all Halloween night on KNYO and KAKX.

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

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

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

A fast, flip history of Japan, by Bill Wurtz. https://kottke.org/16/02/a-history-of-japan

Car size. Hover text: "They really shouldn't let those small cars drive in traffic. I worry that I'm going to kill somebody if I hit one. They should have to drive on the sidewalk, safely out of the way." https://xkcd.com/3167

And how we get menstrual pads. It reminds me a little of the web press at Willits Printing that used to print my newspaper, Memo. 4,000 copies, $400, including all the camera work and photographically etching the plates. It took them an hour and a half while I slept in my delivery car and went for breakfast across the street. That was all the sleep I got for two days after finishing the layout by hand. Juanita and I were in our thirties. Happiest time of my life. Anyway, menstrual pads: https://twitter.com/i/status/1988849362902954442

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

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NO!

No sun—no moon!
No morn—no noon—
No dawn—no dusk—no proper time of day—
No sky—no earthly view—
No distance looking blue—
No road—no street—no "t'other side the way"—
No end to any Row—
No indications where the Crescents go—
No top to any steeple—
No recognitions of familiar people—
No courtesies for showing 'em—
No knowing 'em!—
No travelling at all—no locomotion,
No inkling of the way—no notion—
"No go"—by land or ocean—
No mail—no post—
No news from any foreign coast—
No Park—no Ring—no afternoon gentility—
No company—no nobility—
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member—
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,—
November!

— Thomas Hood (1844)

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"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race."

—H. G. Wells

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Friday, November 14, 2025

BRENT ANDERSON, 39, Westport. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs, drinking in public.

ALEX CORDAWAY, 55, Stockton/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

RICKIE CURTIS, 52, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, contempt of court.

ZACHARY DORN, 31, Hopland. Narcotics for sale, transportation.

NICOLE GARRISON, 24, Willits. Domestic battery.

CALLUM HENDRY, 34, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

MATTHEW HILL, 42, Ukiah. Disobeying court order, probation revocation.

RUBEN JUAREZ-GONZALEZ, 29, Pittsburg (CA)/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

CARLOS MAY-CASTILLO, 42, Fort Bragg. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

JOSHUA MORALES, 44, Roseville/Ukiah. Probation revocation.

BRANDON TODD, 30, Olivehurst/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

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“EVERY MAN'S LIFE ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.”

― Ernest Hemingway

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BIG BALLROOMS

Editor:

The Great Plains ballroom at North Dakota State University is 10,500 square feet and can accommodate approximately 1,000 people for speaking engagements or 576 for dining. That’s 10.5 square feet per person or 18.3 respectively. In theory then, a 90,000 square-foot ballroom should be able to accommodate 8,571 people for speaking or 4,918 for dining. That’s a pretty big party. I don’t know how often a president has a gathering that large, but I do know that American taxpayers will be paying to heat and cool and clean and do maintenance on our president’s proposed ballroom 365 days a year. I know how much that can cost for my modest home, so, yikes!

The president has said “they” have been wanting to do this for 150 years. I don’t know who “they” are, but the people who are donating money to build his ballroom are in business and have not been alive for 150 years. “They” apparently have enough extra cash laying around, thanks to certain tax cuts and government contracts, that “they” can donate millions to build something average taxpayers will be obliged to maintain.

Don Galloway

Sebastopol

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SNAP STATS

• Nearly 60% of Americans enrolled in SNAP are either children under 18 or adults who are 60 or older.
• About 1 in 5 non-elderly adults with SNAP benefits have a disability.
• Less than 10% of all the people receiving SNAP benefits are able-bodied adults without children who are between the ages of 19 and 49.
• Around 55% of all families with children that receive SNAP benefits include at least one employed adult.
• About 35% of the Americans who get benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program are white, around 26% are Black and 16% are Hispanic.
• Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for SNAP. Only 4.4% of SNAP recipients in the 2023 fiscal year were immigrants who were not citizens but were legally present in the U.S., such as refugees. (Trump budget ended SNAP for all immigrants, regardless of status.)

— Counterpunch

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ELLE GARDNER:

Except they aren’t just grabbing and terrorizing “illegals.” In my city they took a man who was born here. He’s brown. It’s evil the way they are doing it. I don’t care how you look at it, grabbing people off the street is straight up fucked up. And to criticize those following them to try and stop this bogeyman shit as worse than what they are doing is just playing favorites. Yeah there are morons like the man playing woman and his bullhorn, but that doesn’t make what the ICE raiders are doing any less deplorable. If everyone stopped pretending their team was better than the other team and recognized the divide and conquer shit is a ploy maybe we would actually have a better world. Instead it’s still oh the dems did this and the trumpers did that instead of seeing we are all being played for greed and power. This isn’t a Dems issue. It’s a human rights issue. It’s not okay and they deserve to be called out for the way it’s going down.

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HIDE AND SEEK

Where are we?
What the hell is going on?
The dust has only just begun to form
Crop circles in the carpet
Sinking, feeling

Spin me round again
And rub my eyes
This can′t be happening
When busy streets
Amass with people
Would stop to hold
Their heads heavy

Hide and seek
Trains and sewing machines
All those years
They were here first

Oily marks appear on walls
Where pleasure moments hung
Before the takeover
The sweeping insensitivity
Of this still life

Hide and seek
Trains and sewing machines
(You won't catch me around here)
Blood and tears
They were here first

Mmm, what′d you say?
Mmm, that you only meant well?
Well, of course you did
Mmm, what'd you say?
Mmm, that it's all for the best?
Of course it is

Hmm, what′d you say?
Hmm, that it′s just what we need
You decided this
What'd you say?
Hmm, what did she say?

Ransom notes keep falling out your mouth
Mid-sweet talk, newspaper word cut-outs (Paper word cut-outs)
Speak no feeling, no I don′t believe you (I don't believe you)
You don′t care a bit, you don't care a bit

Ransom notes keep falling out your mouth (Hide and seek)
Mid-sweet talk, newspaper word cut-outs
Speak no feeling, no I don′t believe you (Hide and seek)
You don't care a bit, you don't care
You don′t care a bit

— Imogen Heap (2005)

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'I WAS ONLY 15 years old, so I had to get a fake ID. My parents never knew I was in the Golden Gloves until the week before the championships, when my father saw my picture in the paper. He was against the idea of my fighting. To him, I was like a bum.

I couldn't argue with him. You don't argue in our house. My father hits. Even now, I'm 24 years old, married, a father with 44 pro fights, and my father still thinks he can beat me. What am I going to do?

Actually, my father changed his mind about boxing when I turned pro, although it took him a long time. When I would come home after a fight and talk about the fight with my brother, sister and cousin, my father would make believe he wasn't interested in what we were saying.

The first time my father saw me fight was in the Felt Forum against Danny McAloon. I didn't even know he was there. After I won, he jumped into the ring. When I saw him, I started to run away. I thought he was going to give me another beating, but he grabbed me and hugged me. Ever since then he carries my bag to all my fights. But he still gets on me if I step out of line.'

— Vito Antuofermo

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‘MOTHERFUCKIN’ WINDFARMS’: SAMUEL L. JACKSON AT THE SEASIDE

by David Yearsley

Screenings in Berlin cinemas begin with about ten minutes of advertisements that come before the previews of upcoming feature films. These show-before-the-show-before-the-show mini-films and silly spots hawk all kinds of wares, from candy bars to high culture, from beer brands to Beethoven.

Normally, one casually tunes in and out of these marketing medleys, pays desultory bits of attention, maybe laughs at a few on-screen gags, but otherwise chats away with friends or concentrates on fighting through the packaging of the goodies bought at the concession counter.

But when Samuel L. Jackson suddenly appeared, pitching offshore wind farms before a screening of the North Sea island anti-idyll Amrum, I practically choked on my popcorn. The celebrated American actor’s laser eyes and melodious yet abrasive voice jolted me upright in my soft cinema seat. “Motherfuckin’ windfarms!” he seethed, spitting out his words like those bullets that whizzed by him in Pulp Fiction thirty years ago.

Before Jackson speaks, the ad shows a rocky coast lashed by waves. A lone figure strides towards the sea, his back to the viewers. His dark clothes are nearly the color of the slick, surf-sprayed shelf of stone he walks on, with a swath of green algae farther along the point. The palette of water and sky lightens towards the cirrus-strewn horizon notched by a dozen giant windmills.

The composition is poached from the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, who often depicted solitary souls in silhouette from behind, staring out to sea, waiting. This masterful painter of many more shades of melancholy than fifty sometimes put ships on the swell, or a foundering fishing boat. But the masts of these schooners seemed fragile, easily overturned, like the human soul—not the forever-straight, inexorably at-work, storm-proof masts of today’s wind machines.

The task of admen painting their moving pictures across the cinema canvas is to find—and flog—the romance of three-armed industrial ogres set out in precise, regimental formation. It’s a tough sell. There’s no tougher seller than Samuel L. Still, the soundtrack will have to ride to the rescue.

Amrum tells the tale of a young boy in the last days of World War II. He begins to sense, if falteringly, the depravity of his perfect Aryan family’s faith in the Führer. The island has windswept dunes; wide mudflats alongside white beaches; abundant avian and aquatic life; rough fields ploughed by horses; and whitewashed, thatch-roofed houses that appear unchanged since Caspar David Friedrich’s day.

All this beauty and more is captured in gorgeous, often long-held shots from cinematographer Karl Walter Lindenlaub’s camera. The gorgeous photography seems all the more impossible given the wartime horrors inflicted on the mainland so close across the water. I’d seen the movie preview already, ogling its sumptuous images that seemed folded into a widescreen travel brochure extolling the scenic wonders of the North Sea islands. Amrum’s current economy relies heavily on the tourist trade.

Off the low-lying land, there are no turbines to spoil the cinematic view, or to be dabbed out by CGI, as Friedrich used solvents. About 25 miles west of Amrum is a group of 80 turbines owned by the German multinational RAE, too distant to be seen.

Samuel L. Jackson is not working for RAE, but for the huge Swedish corporation Vattenfall. In 2023, the concern committed to building Germany’s largest offshore wind park 100 kilometers out to sea, changing the undertaking’s name from the unsexily techie “N 7.2” to the picturesque (one might even say C. D. Friedrich-ian) “Nordlicht I”—now to be joined by Nordlicht II (that is Northern Lights I and II). The rebrand, says project manager Matthias Buko, is meant to show how the “fossil-free electricity produced there [will be] symbolically in harmony with the generation of light.” By 2027, the wind park will supply energy for a million German households. As in Amrum the movie, the ghosts of the war need to be exorcized. Last month, Vattenfall proudly announced that it had cleared several unexploded Nazi mines from the seabed as construction on the project proceeded. Vattenfall is sonically sensitive: “To mitigate underwater acoustic impact, the company deployed a 90-metre bubble-curtain system via a dedicated vessel to reduce shockwave transmission and protect marine life.” (Wind turbines are getting quieter, but another, devastating, take on their output—and its acoustic, political, cultural impact—can be heard and seen at an engrossing, aggrieved, frightening yet still uplifting video and sound installation currently at the Munch Museum in Oslo, called Zifzafa by Lawrence Abu Hamdan.)

In the Vattenfall pre-movie spot, the opening distant view is brutally cut away from to a close-up of Jackson chucking something into his mouth and crunching it down, then raising a pair of binoculars to his scowling face. What he sees prompts those scalding alliterative Fs: “Motherfuckin’ windfarms.” Over the sound of the surf and the wind, he continues his litany of complaint: “Loud, ugly, harmful to nature.” But then he lowers the glasses and shakes his head at such idiotic notions. “Who said that?”

Above the gentle symphony of nature, the music starts in, a mini–Big Ben-like melody as from an off-screen, offshore wind chime. The environmental encomium gathers momentum. Jackson gestures towards the turbines with his bag of chips and assures us that “these giants are standing tall against fossils, rising up out of the ocean like a middle finger to CO₂.” The electro-acoustic melodies tumble and twirl benignly around his words. The synthesis begins to swell into a meta-human chorus raising a sacred hymn with Saint Samuel of Offshore Salvation: “Deep beneath the waves they can become artificial reefs creating habitats for sea life to grow.”

The seasoned huckster, with campaigns for Capital One, Adidas, and Apple on his richly remunerated résumé, turns to the camera, now brandishing his bag of “Vattenfall Windfarm Seaweed Snacks.” The music rises in benediction of all that megawattage as the celebrant holds out an algae-green wafer of absolution toward the cinema supplicants. We can’t take the holy snack from him, so he pops it into his own mouth, delighted. “Mmm! Mmm! Serious gourmet shit!”

Nourished by spiritual food and the turbines of redemption, he’s ready to repeat the antiphon: “So what’s it gonna be?” First, he delivers that opening liturgical line angrily—“Motherfuckin’ windfarms?!”—shouting it into the relentless breeze. Then he repeats it in a tone of beatific praise, turning his face toward the camera, repositioned so that the turbines spread out behind him like a field of revolving crosses: “Motherfuckin’ windfarms!” The choral intimations now cogenerate an ecstatic chop of percussion, like self-flagellating blades propelled by shimmering, synthesized harmony rising upwards toward forever, to that place where the lights are always on.

The initial pictorial composition is returned to. The lone figure strides back down the beach, presumably to his off-screen e-limo and thence to the airport for the long flight back to California’s distant, ever-narrowing shores.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uEpdIKzspA

(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.)

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EVERYTHING 'THE RUNNING MAN' DOES WRONG

by Drew Magary

If you’re my age and you like watching stuff blow up real good, you know the definitive Arnold Schwarzenegger movie canon. That canon includes a handful of now-established science-fiction masterpieces (“The Terminator,” “Terminator 2,” “Total Recall”), but it also accommodates for the small handful of low-fidelity masterpieces that became unforgettable thanks to Arnold’s sheer force of personality. Arnold made two such films in the year 1987 alone. The first was “Predator.” The second was “The Running Man,” an adaptation of a Richard Bachman (née Stephen King) novel. The “Predator” franchise has thrived in the intervening years, spawning a total of nine film installments(!!!), the last of which just dominated last weekend’s box office tally. But unlike “Predator,” “The Running Man,” one of our greatest dad movies, remained an intellectual property teat that had gone un-milked.

Until now.

You might be vaguely aware that a remake of “The Running Man” is coming out in theaters this week. Since I am a member of the Arnold generation, I took immediate offense to the mere IDEA of papering over the 1987 original, and all of its 1987 charms, with some boilerplate 21st century retread. Yup, I’m a big ol’ baby, just like the rest of my fellow Gen Xers. Dare to remake my cultural touchstones, and I’ll scream YOU RUINED MY CHILDHOOD. I take my ultraviolence just that personally.

But given that Hollywood will remake anything, even s—t that it’s already remade; given that I, a father of three, relish any chance I can get to hit up the movies by myself; and given that these celluloid grave robberies are sometimes actually quite good, I decided to take in a screening of this 2025 “Running Man.” I also watched the original immediately afterward, because I hadn’t watched it myself in well over 20 years. Does Arnold’s old work hold up, or has it been bested? Let’s get to my patented dad movie FAQ to find the answers.

OK, what is “The Running Man,” and why are you so worked up about it?

“The Running Man” takes place in a dystopian future America where everything is state-controlled, including television. To sate the masses, the state network broadcasts a game show titled “The Running Man,” in which poor people, many of them branded criminals even if they are not, are released into the open and tracked down by a team of elite hunters. It’s the No. 1 show on television — a cross between “The Most Dangerous Game” and “Survivor.” Survive being hunted for 30 days, and you win a billion bucks. No one has ever won.

LOL that sounds like America right now LOL

Yeah. The allegory ain’t subtle. Anyway, shut up while I give you the rest of the plot outline. A jobless nobody named Ben Richards is chosen to compete on the show, and he ends up giving the hunters, the network and the country’s dictatorship a little bit more than they bargained for. In the original, you know that Ben Richards is no ordinary runner. Because he’s Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Who’s Arnold this time?

Glen Powell, who has yet to find a blockbuster role that matches

Does this one?

Almost. Powell — who first flashed in Richard Linklater’s “Everybody Wants Some!!” — is the rare marquee actor who’s incredibly hot while also being effortlessly charming. You wanna punch Glen Powell in the face right up to the moment he starts talking. Then you’re like, “Oh, he’s actually kinda cool.” There’s a reason this man keeps getting cast in roles that Tom Cruise used to occupy.

Is Powell cool in this?

Yep.

As cool as Arnold was in the original?

No, but that’s not actually his fault. Powell works wonders with the script he’s been given, particularly when his Ben Richards plays word association with the network psychologist at the beginning of the film (“Anarchy.” “When?” “Justice.” “(snorts) No.”). But this Ben Richards, as written, is a much weaker character than his 1987 counterpart.

Why is that?

Because director/co-writer Edgar Wright (“Shaun of the Dead,” “Hot Fuzz,” “Baby Driver”) is too faithful to the original book.

Wait a second, are you saying that Stephen King was wrong?

Yeah, but Stephen King has notoriously awful taste in film adaptations of his own work.

So what did King get wrong this time?

In King’s novel, and in Wright’s adaptation, Richards is a down-on-his-luck guy who needs medicine for his sick kid, so he volunteers to go on “The Running Man” so that he can afford her medicine. That’s very sweet of him, but it doesn’t make his character terribly interesting. I’ve seen a million dads-with-families-in-peril in action movies. Borrrrrrrrring. It’s only when Powell starts talking s—t to everyone he meets that his Ben Richards comes alive.

But Wright’s slavishly faithful remake has a lot of other problems that show up over this film’s 133-minute (come on, Edgar) running time.

OK, Dad, get it all off your chest.

I will. The 1987 “Running Man” was co-written by Steve de Souza. De Souza also wrote “Die Hard,” one of the greatest action films ever made. Here’s how de Souza condensed King’s original story into 101 tidy minutes:

First of all, he ditched the sick kid story entirely and made Ben Richards into a state helicopter pilot who defies state orders to massacre a bunch of innocent civilians. For his insolence, Richards is immediately accosted by the rest of his crew, framed via deepfake for the ensuing crowd massacre, imprisoned, and then offered a spot on “The Running Man” because he puts down some incredible tape during a prison break.

De Souza’s 1987 script restricts it exclusively to a 400-block “game zone,” shortens the hunt down to three hours on TV, rather than 30 days, and gives every “stalker” a distinct, WWE-style persona. The resulting broadcast is not too dissimilar from an NFL game. I would watch this “Running Man,” and maybe put down a few bets on it.

Would you watch this new “Running Man” TV show?

No. Wright’s “Running Man” goes bigger by reverting to King’s 30-day, world-spanning contest and makes the “hunters” (save for Lee Pace’s McCone) NPC cops. The results never scan as particularly telegenic. I never bought that people in our future hellscape would actually watch it. The 1987 version understands television much better than this new one does, especially when it comes to the villains.

But Lee Pace is cool as s—t!

He is, but the hunter/stalkers are secondary villains. The real bad guys in “The Running Man” are the TV people, and this is where de Souza made his wisest tweak of all in 1987.

Go on.

Originally, King had two bad guys at the top of the food chain: “Running Man” host Bobby T (played in the remake by Oscar nominee Colman Domingo) and network honcho Dan Killian (Josh Brolin, rocking serious MAGA veneers). In 1987, de Souza combined those two characters into one: Damon Killian, who both hosts “The Running Man” and controls every aspect of it, including who lives and dies. Then, director Paul Michael Glaser made one of the greatest casting decisions in movie history by tapping Richard Dawson to play him.

Richard Dawson? The horny “Family Feud” guy?

I know. You think I’m exaggerating when I laud Dawson’s casting so effusively. But Richard Dawson was a regular on “Hogan’s Heroes” well before he got tapped to host “Family Feud.” Watch his resulting performance in “The Running Man,” and you’ll see how his skills as both an actor and an emcee work so brilliantly together:

Dawson’s Killian is one of the great movie villains of all time. He’s a criminal, a huckster, a liar and a killer. But he’s also a very funny guy who knows how to work a crowd.

Hey! That sounds a lot like Donald Trump!

Sure does. A lot of pop culture entries, “The Simpsons” foremost among them, are credited with predicting Trump. But Dawson’s Killian portends Trump with almost eerie precision, particularly during his final monologue, which I’m gonna blockquote here:

“Let me explain. This is television. That’s all it is. It’s nothing to do with people; it’s to do with the ratings. For 50 years, we’ve told them what to eat, what to drink, what to wear. For Christ’s sake, Ben, don’t you understand? Americans love television. They wean their kids on it. Listen. They love game shows, they love wrestling, they love sports and violence. So what do we do? We give ’em what they want! We’re number one, Ben, that’s all that counts, believe me. I’ve been in the business 30 years.”

Is that not perfect for right now? De Souza wrote this passage nearly 40 years ago and somehow nailed our current predicament flawlessly. Then de Souza had Arnold launch Dawson through a billboard and blow his ass up. What a goddamn movie.

Yeah, but it was made in 1987! It couldn’t have aged well!

“This hasn’t aged well” is the lowest form of criticism. Just watch the f—king thing if you don’t believe me.

You’re supposed to be telling me about the new “Running Man.”

Right yeah, sorry. Wright wants his “Running Man” to serve as straight-up resistance porn. Deepfake videos are epidemic, Americans are encouraged to snitch on each other for money, and hired killers get treated like war heroes. America needs someone willing to fight back against all of that, and Ben Richards is just the sensitive-but-tough liberal to do it. #SquadGoals!

This approach is all very good and responsible of Wright, but his primary responsibility needed to be to the story. And this new one is too rushed at the bookends, and too overstuffed with “this is just like right now!” s—t in the middle. I didn’t HATE this new “Running Man.” I laughed plenty, I loved Michael Cera showing up for a goofy “Home Alone”-style siege at the midway point, and Wright knows how to stage a solid action sequence. I enjoyed this movie.

But nothing about it feels fresh. Powell’s Ben Richards becomes a folk hero among the citizenry for vague-ish reasons. Arnold’s Ben Richards won over America by being stronger and smarter than the men stalking him, and by winning prop bettors a s—tload of money. That feels far more urgent to 2025, doesn’t it? The best allegories are ones that don’t quite know what they’re allegorizing yet. That’s what made Arnold’s “Running Man” a classic dad movie, and it’s why the new one is mostly forgettable.

Well, and the Arnold one had a dude getting a chain saw up his asscrack.

That too.

(SF Chronicle)

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OWNERS OF DOGS will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.”

― Christopher Hitchens

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“I SAY, LET MY CHILDREN HAVE MUSIC. I said it earlier. For God’s sake, rid this society of some of the noise so that those who have ears will be able to use them some place listening to good music. When I say good, I don’t mean that today’s music is bad because it is loud. I mean, the structures have paid no attention to the past history of music. Nothing is simple. It’s as if people came to Manhattan and acted like it was still full of trees and grass and Indians instead of concrete and tall buildings. It’s like a tailor cutting clothes without knowing the design. It’s like living in a vacuum and not paying attention to anything that came before you. What’s worse is that critics take a guy who only plays in the key of C and call him a genius, when they should say those guys are a bitch in C-natural.”

– Charles Mingus, “What is a Jazz Composer?”

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THIS IS A MASSIVE PAYDAY for Republicans. It would allow eight of their senators to shovel millions, millions of dollars into their own wallets. I’m talking cash money. Not for their states, not for their constituents, no, no, for their own personal bank accounts… It is wrong and it’s probably the most brazen theft and plunder of public resources ever proposed in the United States.

— Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Massachusetts) on the perks embedded in the Reopen the Government Bill

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BEWARE of capitalism's politicians and preachers! They are the lineal descendants of the hypocrites of old who all down the ages have guarded the flock in the name of patriotism and religion and secured the choicest provender and the snuggest booths for themselves by turning the sheep over to the ravages of the wolves.”

― Eugene V. Debs

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LEAD STORIES, SATURDAY'S NYT

As Trump Escalates Pressure on Venezuela, the Endgame Is Unclear

Justice Department to Investigate Epstein Ties, but Not to Trump

U.S. Attorney Under Pressure After Order to Investigate Democrats

Trump Cuts Ties With Marjorie Taylor Greene, Calling Her ‘Wacky’

Trump Organization Said to Be in Talks on a Saudi Government Real Estate Deal

A Mideast Development Firm Has Set Up Shop in Trump Tower

Fired Scholars and Big Grants to Favored Projects: Inside Trump’s N.E.H.

Inside a Chaotic Week for New York’s Food Stamp Program

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UP YOURS, up mine
But up everybody's, that takes time
But we're working on it

— Worst Band in the World (10cc)

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THE EMPIRE ONLY DE-ESCALATES In One Area So It Can Escalate In Another, And Other Notes

by Caitlin Johnstone

Just as things cool down a bit in the middle east, the US has relocated the USS Gerald Ford from the Mediterranean Sea to the Caribbean while the Trump administration discusses plans to bomb Venezuela.

The violence of the empire remains constant. Peace is never the goal. You get happy they’re pulling the world’s largest aircraft carrier away from Iran, then it turns out they’re only doing it so they can move it to Venezuela. You get happy they’re pulling out of Afghanistan, then suddenly they’re waging a proxy war in Ukraine.

These days whenever you see the imperial war machinery getting pulled from one area, you know it’s just going to be sent someplace else.

Peace is never pursued for its own sake, because there’s nothing in it for the empire. There’s too much power and money in nonstop warmongering for peace to be allowed to become the norm.

Which is just insane if you think about it. Every normal person wants peace in their own lives. None of us want our time on this planet to be disturbed by violence, chaos and bloodshed.

The western world has created a machine whose behavior goes against every healthy human impulse. The US-led world order has given birth to an out of control monster with an insatiable appetite for human flesh.

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Reuters reports that in 2024 the Biden administration had intelligence showing that the IDF was using Palestinians as human shields in Gaza. But Biden continued shipping genocide weapons to the Israelis the entire time he was in office.

You’ll still periodically see online liberals trying to shame leftists for not voting for Kamala, but the more information comes out about what the Biden administration was up to during that time the more genocidal they look. Biden-Harris are looking worse with time, not better.

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When you see what a large-scale power broker Jeffrey Epstein was for Israeli intelligence, you understand why it’s entirely reasonable to suspect that extensive state resources would be put toward an elaborate plot to murder him in his prison cell and make it look like a suicide.

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Vice President JD Vance and Fox News propagandist Sean Hannity spent some time furiously agreeing with each other during a recent interview about how wonderful Elon Musk’s Grok AI is.

“I’m a Grok guy. I think it’s the best. It’s also the least woke,” the veep said.

It’s wild how Musk just openly showed the entire world in real time how powerful people can build political biases into AI services for their own benefit. He won’t be the only one doing this. Just as trust in the legacy media collapses, the ruling class has created a replacement to retain control of the narrative.

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Generative AI stuff only looks impressive to mediocre people for the same reason a chess novice couldn’t tell you whether they were playing against a Grandmaster or just someone who’s pretty good at chess. We can only appreciate something up to the level of our own adeptness.

To someone who’s not very bright, an AI’s imitation of reasoning looks sharp. Someone with no aptitude for writing or appreciation for great literature will think its prose reads brilliantly. Its poetry looks good to those who don’t understand poetry. Its “art” looks great to those with no artistic sensibility. It’s music sounds awesome to those with no musical depth. Only those who are emotionally stunted and incapable of meaningful human connection will find them to be stimulating conversationalists and companions.

Like so much else capitalism produces, it’s a product that’s designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator. For everyone else it looks vapid and gross, just like daytime talk shows, Hollywood blockbusters, and trashy tabloids always have.

That’s just how it works in a society which only elevates that which can generate profits. The food is designed to induce craving rather than facilitate health. The entertainment is designed to distract and sedate rather than to edify. The social media is designed to be addictive rather than to help people connect with each other. It’s all geared to appeal to our baser instincts rather than to improve and inform us.

Anyone who is interested in actually growing as a person will have less and less use for anything GenAI has to offer. Past a certain point of personal development, it simply cannot satisfy.

(caitlinjohnstone.com.au)

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‘OUR DEMOCRACY’ (I’M SURE)

by James Kunstler

By now, whenever you hear anyone invoke the phrase “saving our democracy,” that should be a signal that they are intent on destroying this republic, and with that, your natural rights to free speech, economic liberty, and public order. What began in 2016 as a simple, high-level plot to take out Donald Trump and squash Trumpism — a grassroots revolt against those very high-level DC insiders —turned sharply in 2017 into a long-running cover-up operation that spawned a multiplying cycle of seditions, treasons, and betrayals of the public — as the insiders desperately tried to evade culpability for each previous act — and finally blossomed into a rolling coup with crypto-Jacobin overtones as the insiders’ useful idiots were recruited to run with the ball of color revolution.

For those who can’t quite wrap their minds around this game, a color revolution is the surreptitious overthrow of an elected government by concealed parties. Neocons in the US State Department developed the practice of color revolution on many countries over the years. Mr. Obama added a layer of gnostic Marxists to the personnel mix at State, and these wannabe revolutionaries built a fantastic matrix of NGOs outside State to marshal the useful idiots with jobs and salaries. The NGOs, in turn, were connected to international moneybags, with strange agendas of their own such as the megalomanic climate change crusader Bill Gates and George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, which funds anarchist district attorneys, the defense of election fraud, mass illegal migration, internet censorship, and money-flows into Antifa, the Left’s street fighters.

The motives of these players might appear murky, but at this point they can be boiled down to 1) staying out of jail, and 2) retaining control of their empires. Hillary Clinton, for instance, surely wants to stay out of jail for her RussiaGate caper, and retain the ill-gotten lucre of the Clinton Foundation she lives off. At 95, George Soros himself is probably beyond caring about all this, but his son Alex, 38, carries on, and recently cemented his alliance with the Clinton Foundation by marrying the former Mrs. Anthony Wiener, Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s long-time wing-gal.

The Democratic Party plays an increasingly curious part in this rolling coup as all its efforts look evermore insane and self-extinguishing — the bootless government shutdown being the latest exercise. The party can no longer meaningfully represent organized labor — since labor moved to faraway lands — so it attempted to replace that earnest bond with fronting for women and minorities. This has resulted in two problems. 1) women taking over the actual machinery of the party has transformed mere politics into never-ending psychodrama and boosted the amplitude of political dirty-fighting to dangerous new levels; and 2) cultivating minority groups has led to an orgy of race-and-gender hustles that amount to gigantic racketeering operations (i.e., making money dishonestly).

All of that sound, fury, and roguery is now dedicated only to staving off the party’s collapse and thwarting Mr. Trump’s attempt to restore something like regular order in public affairs, which the Democratic Party calls “authoritarianism.” Regular order is something that healthy male psychology takes an interest in, since it entails defense of the culture, in this case, Western Civ and its heritage. That implies the uses of strength as opposed to the stratagems of weakness. It must acknowledge and rely on classic virtues such as fortitude, prudence, and a preference for what is — as opposed to wishes and fantasies.

Psychodrama dispenses with all that for the sake of emotional gratification, often mis-characterized as empathy or caring. It can transform easily into sadism — as you can see now with the calls for violence and murder against Trump-adjacent persons. Meanwhile, be aware that the cries for “saving our democracy” come from the people opposed to regular order in elections, that is, voter ID, voting on election day only, with results reported out at day’s end, paper ballots and no electronic counting machines, and no mail-in ballots (except for people out of the country on election day). All of these stipulations are observed in other nations of Western Civ, and beyond, even in lands where people go about half-clothed.

The current psychodrama, of course, is the latest installment of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. The Democrats are flogging it with Wile E. Coyote zeal. I suspect it is an Acme booby trap for the ages and it is being carefully laid by Mr. Trump, the Roadrunner, to blow up in the Dems’ faces when all the documents are finally sorted out. Anyway, it has nothing to do with the real-world problems that the US faces, such as runaway financialization of the economy, a broken medical system, mass job layoffs, the collapse of education, surging mental illness, the drug plague, and the sinking middle-class.

We’re entering a new phase in the ongoing color revolution, the coup against America, and it’s liable to be the final phase in which all the mystery gets wrung out, the motives are revealed, and the players are correctly sorted and labeled according to their deeds. No new psychodrama will avail to stop what’s coming.

(kunstler.com)

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STORM WARNINGS

by Mark Lilla

What is “conservatism”? Just a word.

There is no essence to “conservatism,” any more than there is to “liberalism,” or “the right,” or “the left.” These are labels we make for little boxes into which we drop things that seem related, for reasons we can't always articulate and sometimes can't even remember.

We can, as a post-facto exercise, try to discern what qualities are shared by the things we've gathered over the years, but it's always a loose fit. And over time, as more things accumulate, we may find that it makes more sense to disaggregate the contents of the boxes and label them differently for a tighter fit. We are like the employees in the TV series ‘Severance’ who stare all day at matrices of vibrating random numbers on computer screens until the moment when a set of numbers “feels” related and it can be slipped into a particular folder at the bottom of the screen.

In the Age of Trump, our ideological boxes are in bad need of rearranging. Over the past decade we have accumulated piles of unfamiliar ideas, passions, and movements, all linked through new means of communication and mobilization. Which boxes to put them in? Consider a new human type among us: the Silicon Valley tech bro who wants to cut taxes and end censorship of the Internet, dreams of post-human immortality, belongs to a reading group studying Leo Strauss, listens to Peter Thiel's lectures on the Antichrist, and posts anonymous misogynistic rants on 4chan. Is he a libertarian? A liberal? A conservative? A reactionary? He would probably call himself a revolutionary, though to what end he seems not to have considered.

But it is the box labeled “conservative” that most needs our attention today. It was only after World War II that certain American thinkers and politicians on the right began to gather self-consciously under that rubric and develop for themselves a genealogy that supposedly ran continuously from Edmund Burke to William F. Buckley.

This epos was first set down by a then obscure scholar based in rural Michigan, Russell Kirk, in his influential study ‘The Conservative Mind’ (1953) and later in his capacious anthology ‘The Portable Conservative Reader’ (1982).

What held this ideological family together, according to Kirk, was not consanguinity or adherence to a particular church. It was a set of principles: limited constitutional government, local control, incremental social change, respect for tradition and religious piety, and suspicion of empire building.

From the mid-1950s through the Reagan administration there was, then, a box in which ideas, thinkers, and movements declaring themselves in line with those principles were stored by both self-declared conservatives and those who studied them.

But from the start countless other artifacts that would not have passed Kirk’s litmus test kept getting dropped in. First there was the legacy of Joseph McCarthy and the Cold War policies that led to foreign entanglements on virtually every continent. Soon laissez-faire economics, the great destroyer of traditional institutions and temperamental moderation, was baptized a part of “fusion” conservatism, preparing the way for supposed local control purists to shill for a global financial system that since the 1980s has laid waste to Main Streets from coast to coast. Half a century later wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were promoted by neoconservatives who made a mockery of Burke's advocacy of prudent statesmanship. By 2016 no one on the right really knew what “conservatism” meant anymore. The bottom of the conceptual box gave way, and now we are left to sort it all out.

All this is fairly obvious, and we certainly have our hands full coping with the aftermath. But as a historical matter, how are we to understand how we got here? Three interpretations have been suggested so far.

One is that MAGA is the apotheosis of the conservative movement, revealing what has always been at its core: greed, cruelty, irrationality, racism.

Another is that MAGA is a betrayal of conservativism, which only proves the necessity of combating Trumpism and restoring the intellectual tradition.

Another still is that this belief in the continuity of a conservative tradition blinded the mainstream moderate right to the growing number of nihilistic, apocalyptic fanatics in their midst who had no interest in conserving anything, only in staging a counterrevolution against the Sixties, against liberalism, against moderation, against pluralism, against even democracy itself. On this view, the MAGA right is fed not by conservative ideas but by chthonic forces in human nature that at different points in history gather like a hurricane and can level any decent political order.

(New York Review of Books)

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