Sunny | Final Trip | Ukiah Sunshine | Political Return | Wittig Identified | Quiet Magnetism | Local Events | Dear Santa | Spring Flow | Logging Rail | Yesterday's Catch | Christmas Miracle | Smoke Break | Pathetic Man | Nobody Counts | Mamdani Spirit | Take Over | Hard Times | Weirdos | Eight Dems | Been Lost | Dear Mick | 24th Street | San Franciscan | Worker Solidarity | New Travis | Suing Trump | Nothing Stat | Centarian | Black Capsule | No Country | Game Players | Prize Composition | The Bourgeois | Philip Roth | Little Woman | Anti-Profanity | First Strike | Mind Discipline | Every Meeting | Lead Stories | Antisemite List | Dental Hygienist | Toad Time | Simic Interview
DRIER AND COLDER weather is expected to last today. Light rain returns from south to north Wednesday into Thursday, followed by a frontal system with moderate to heavy rain, high mountain snow and gusty winds on Friday. Bouts of rain and gusty winds are forecast to continue into the weekend. (NWS)
STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 37F under clear skies 3rd day in a row on the coast this Tuesday morning. See that system off the coast of Baja?, that's our next rain maker arriving tomorrow evening. Friday is forecast to be a bigger rainfall event currently. Rain continues well into next week but with forecast amounts dropping way off so we'll see what actually unfolds as we get closer ?
LAYTONVILLE WOMAN FOUND DEAD AFTER SUV ENTERS FIELD
No foul play is suspected
by Elise Cox
A 74-year-old woman was found dead in her vehicle on Saturday after her SUV left a rural road near a curve and entered a field in Laytonville, authorities said.
Local fire personnel responded to the scene at approximately 12:55 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 27, along with the California Highway Patrol, according to a firefighter who answered the phone at the Laytonville Fire Station. Sheriff’s deputies arrived shortly afterwards.
A CHP spokesperson said the incident was initially dispatched as a traffic collision. After examining the scene, however, officers determined the driver, identified as Colette Secher, had left the roadway near a curve and entered a field near 5,000 Woodman Peak Road. The vehicle was found mired in muddy terrain.
The spokesperson said the incident was ultimately classified as a medical emergency.
The firefighter said first responders believed the vehicle left the roadway hours before it was discovered. A neighbor told responders she noticed the vehicle in the field around 9 a.m. Saturday but did not realize anyone was inside.
Capt. Quincy Cromer of the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office said Secher was found deceased in the driver’s seat of her vehicle, a 2001 Toyota SUV. The vehicle was located approximately 13 yards from the roadway. Cromer confirmed that Secher’s next of kin had been notified.
Secher was nationally known for her work as a French bulldog breeder. Friends and colleagues who wish to contribute memories or information for an obituary may contact [email protected].
(Mendolocal.news)
JON KENNEDY (Potter Valley):
The sudden Trump/USDA interest in Potter Valley feels less about dams and more about Congressman Doug LaMalfa’s newly reshaped district. It’s a hot local issue, he’s likely vulnerable, and this is an easy way to look like he’s “fighting for the people.” That said, members of Congress weigh in on national and neighboring issues all the time, so it’s fair to ask why this only became urgent after lines were redrawn.
If FERC denies PG&E’s surrender, the costs don’t vanish, they land on a relatively small group of California ratepayers. So I agree with the recemt Press Democrat editorial: if the feds want to override a locally negotiated deal for political reasons, they should fund it and own the liability.
Also worth noting: funding these dams forever still doesn’t solve the fish habitat issue. It just freezes the conflict.
And let’s be honest, MAGA isn’t winning California. Even they’ll do the math and move on once the political return dries up.
MACKERRICHER BEACH DROWNING VICTIM IDENTIFIED
On 12/22/2025 at approximately 2:00 P.M., Sheriff's Deputies with the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office were dispatched to the area of MacKerricher Beach at the MacKerricher State Park. The Sheriff's Office Dispatch Center was contacted by CalFire Howard Forest Dispatch Center, requesting deputies respond to assist medical and California State Parks personnel.
Sheriff's Deputies responded and learned a subject was knocked off a rock by a large wave and swept into the ocean. Bystanders who witnessed the incident were able to rescue the subject from the ocean and brought the female back to the shore. The female who was rescued from the ocean became unresponsive and lost consciousness after being brought to the nearby beach.
Advanced live-saving measures were performed but were unsuccessful and the female subject was pronounced deceased by fire and medical personnel at the scene. Sheriff's Deputies responded to conduct a coroner's investigation and determined nobody at the scene knew the female subject and nobody was visiting the MacKerricher State Park with the person who died. The decedent is described as an elderly, white, female adult in her 70s with no unique identifying features (scars / marks / tattoos etc.) and no identifying documents were located with the female.
No suspicious circumstances were found at the beach as the incident was witnessed by bystanders who rescued the subject from the ocean.
Additional investigative efforts were conducted to include checking unattended vehicles left at the parking area of MacKerricher State Park and inquiring with other local law enforcement agencies regarding possible missing persons reports. Sheriff's Deputies are still attempting to positively identify the elderly female adult who died on 12/22/2025 and additional information will be released regarding this investigation once the decedent has been properly identified and their legal next-of-kin have been notified of the circumstances of this coroner's investigation.
The Mendocino County Sheriff's Office notified local and regional law enforcement of this investigation and requested to be contacted immediately if other law enforcement agencies are notified of a missing person matching the general description / age of the elderly female from this case.
A post-mortem examination will be conducted in the following week by a forensic pathologist. The official cause and manner of death will not be released until the pathologist completes their examination and investigative reports.
Anyone with information related to this investigation is requested to contact the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office at 707-463-4086 (option 1).
Update:
As a part of this continuing coroner's investigation, Sheriff's Deputies were able to identify and notify the legal next-of-kin for the decedent. The decedent was identified as Diane L. Wittig, a 77-year-old female from Fort Bragg.
An autopsy was performed as a part of this investigation on 12/23/2025 and the preliminary cause of death was determined to be acute asphyxial brain injury, submersion in water, and drowning. The final cause and manner of death determination is pending the completion of investigative reports by the Forensic Pathologist.
UKIAH: ONE OF THE BEST AFFORDABLE TOWNS TO RETIRE IN
Ukiah offers retirees the kind of quiet magnetism that comes from a deep-rooted sense of place. Even with a median home price in roughly the high-$400,000s to $500,000 range, Ukiah still comes in at around half the broader California median, which is why many buyers here are downsizing from costlier wine-country or Bay Area ZIP codes. At the Grace Hudson Museum, housed on the former homestead of the early 20th-century painter, visitors encounter more than just artwork, they find an intimate record of Pomo life and the Hudsons' legacy in California anthropology. Just beyond, the adjacent Wild Gardens create a seamless bridge to Ukiah's native landscape, planted with species that reflect the region's ecological history.
Downtown, the Mendocino Book Company stands as a cornerstone, independently run for decades, with shelves that seem to anticipate what readers didn't know they were looking for. A short walk away, Schat's Bakery earns its reputation not just for sourdough, but for the steady line of longtime locals waiting for morning coffee and almond horns. Those seeking something quieter often make their way to City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, one of the largest Buddhist monasteries in the U.S., open to the public, with peaceful grounds and a vegetarian restaurant where retirees can take lunch in near silence.
Retirement in California doesn't have to mean compromise; it just requires choosing the right map. In these six towns, housing costs loosen their grip, and the things that usually feel like upgrades, trailheads, working harbors, serious museums, family-run diners, come standard. The decision, in the end, is simple: pay for a famous ZIP code, or buy yourself time, mobility, breathing room, and a genuine daily life you actually look forward to living.
(WorldAtlas.com)
LOCAL EVENTS (this week)
DEAR SANTA,
I want words that leave cinders, curls of smoke
rising from black ash,
words without paper,
words that set desks afire, burn holes in doors,
melt & shatter vaults, the eyes of buildings — molten glass perforations.
TUNGSTEN WORDS! I want TUNGSTEN WORDS !
white hot & clean, words that brand space ownerless –
the public domain… words that ignite & nourish,
words that feed green
as can only the cold potash remains of brush-choked-bluffs,
words black as the eye of the vulture, the beak of the raven,
words that eat fever & plague to grow swifter & stronger,
to glide higher & farther.
I want words to silence a hundred-thousand pairs of
starched-white-cuffs plotting endless money supply,
endless cash flow, cuffs sliding back & forth across
polished mahogany teak, oak & maple, white slick cuffs
linked behind bolted authorizations, behind
printed circuitry, behind instantaneous
printouts of non-communicative communication,
sliding cuffs signing execution orders with the
intragalactic pen of usury. I want words denser than
the clogged air, words to set these cuffs crawling,
curbed, hand-over-hand in their own excrement of
2000 year old tree stumps, stripped earth,
dead cities & discarded species,
losing breath,
stacking themselves in blackened pyres
putrid … turgid … flesh.
I want words that suck the sick breath, the stench
of conflagration
& exhale sunlight
through sheets of rain.
Hurry Up Please! Scatter these words everywhere. There is
great need. Tell Rudolph to dim his nose, to fly low & fast into the darkness.
There will be guides and openings of light for rest.
Get Moving!
Solstitial Greetings!
God-speed & thank you,
— Donnie Shanley, Newport Chute, December 1977
FROM THE ARCHIVE: WHERE WAS THAT RAILROAD, ANYWAY?
The wreck of Navarro Lumber Co. Engine Number Two.
by Bill Seekins (October 2014)
The Albion River Railroad was incorporated in 1885. It started out as a logging railroad to supply logs to the Albion Mill. The locomotives were brought in by sea and the rail line started at Tidewater Gulch, 3 miles up river from the mill. From there, the logs were floated to the mill and the finished lumber was sent out by ship. By 1891, the rail line reached Keene's Summit, some 11 miles inland. In 1902, the railroad was sold and was incorporated as the Albion and Southeastern Railroad. Plans were made to extend the line to the Wendling Redwood Shingle Co. mill on Soda Creek, some 20 miles inland. In 1903, the rails were extended from the Albion wharf to Brett, formerly called Tidewater Gulch.
It was not easy to extend the line from Keene's summit, because the ground was steep. There was a 3% grade and two switch-backs had to be constructed. When a train reached a switch-back, it would stop, the brakeman would get off and throw the switch, and the train would proceed in the reverse direction. In 1905, the rails reached the Wendling mill which had recently been purchased by the Stearns Lumber Company. Telephone and telegraph lines were built to connect Albion and Wendling at this time.
In 1907 the railroad, now owned by the Santa Fe and the Southern Pacific, incorporated as the Northwestern Pacific Railroad Albion Branch. At this time, the Southern Pacific was building a railroad in Mexico and they needed large numbers of ties and timbers. They bought the Albion Lumber Company in August of 1907, and extended the railroad branch from Clearbrook Junction, some 6 miles inland, toward Comptche. In 1908, the Northwestern Pacific Railroad made an agreement with the Stearns Lumber Company to build the Floodgate Extension and lay tracks from Wendling to Christine on Mill Creek. A work force of over 100 men and 80 mules finished the extension in June 1908. The town of Christine was located just south of Clark Road near its intersection with Highway 128 in Anderson Valley. The Stearns Lumber Company built a logging railroad spur up Floodgate Creek. They had been logging the land around their mill using gravity rail cars and steam donkey engines.
In 1914 the Navarro Lumber Company was formed and they purchased the Stearns Lumber Company. The mill site was first called Wendling's Mill, then Stearn's Mill and then Navarro Mill. The town of Wendling and the Navarro Mill became known as Navarro. The old town of Navarro at the mouth of the Navarro River became known as Old Navarro.
In 1915 the Navarro Lumber Company began building a logging railroad up Mill Creek from the end of the Northwestern Pacific's tracks at Christine. At this time, they bought a double-truck Heisler logging locomotive from the New York & Pennsylvania Redwood Company. This locomotive became Navarro Lumber Co. Engine Number 2.
In 1920, the Albion Lumber Co. purchased the Navarro Lumber Co. and more land and timber rights along the NWP's right-of-way. The Southern Pacific needed more ties and timbers for the railroad they were constructing in Mexico. In 1922 there were seven miles of logging railroad on the North Fork of the Albion River, three and a half miles on Dutch Henry Creek from Keene's Summit, three miles in Perry Gulch and two short logging lines just south of Dunn.
There were no locomotive turntables on the railroad, so the trains went in the forward direction when they were going away from Albion and reverse when they were returning. They would reverse direction when they encountered switch-backs, however. In 1923 the AV Fire bought a Model TT Ford truck which they equipped with railroad wheels and there were turntables for this vehicle.
This railroad history was condensed from an article by Stanley Borden in “The Western Railroader,” December, 1961. It surprised me that there are so many conflicting accounts of this early history, but Stanley Borden obviously did his homework and researched court records and newspaper articles. I believe his account is fairly accurate. However, the Northwestern Pacific RR Historical Society, Inc. has a map of the Albion Branch which has some significant errors. The town of Christine was located on the west bank of Mill Creek, but their map shows it a mile east of Mill Creek. They also show the Navarro Lumber Co. railroad going up Lazy Creek, not Mill Creek. I have walked for miles along Mill Creek and its tributaries, mapping the route and taking pictures of old trestles. I estimate that there were some 10 miles of track along the Mill Creek drainage. I don't believe any rails were ever laid in the Lazy Creek drainage.
According to Stanley Borden, Navarro Lumber Co. Engine Number Two suffered a runaway and was wrecked beyond repair in 1918. Oscar Newman, the engineer, and the rest of the crew all jumped and they were unhurt. The train ran away when not enough hand brakes were set on a log train coming down a steep grade. I found what's left of the wreck near the intersection of Mill Creek and Hungry Hollow creek, some 6 miles up stream from the Mill Creek bridge on Highway 128. However, I talked to Donald Pardini and got a different account of the accident. Donald's father, Earnest, was the fireman on the train's last ride. According to his account, the train was loaded with tan bark and was supposed to go all the way to Albion where the load would be sent out by ship. At the that time, the railroad camps had hand crank phones connecting them to Navarro and Albion. Oscar called up the boss in Albion and said that there was ice on the rails and he wouldn't be able to leave for a while. The boss reportedly told him that the ice would be melted by the time he got up steam, and to come on in. I think Donald's version of events is correct. It is likely that Stanley Borden only heard management's side of the story.
Stanley Borden's article notes that the Southern Pacific railroad finished its project in Mexico and the Navarro Mill was shut down in 1927 and the Albion Mill was closed in 1928. The government required the railroad to make one round trip a day from Albion to Christine to fulfill their license agreement. These last runs were made with their Model TT Ford truck, Motor Car Number 7. It cost the railroad $4 for a round trip with the Model T and $45 for a round trip with a steam locomotive. The railroad stopped operation on January 16, 1930. In 1937 the rails, locomotives, cars and mill machinery was sold as scrap and the locomotives were used to tear up the tracks. I have heard stories that the boiler from the wrecked Navarro Number Two was pulled out at this time to be used as an apple dryer fire box. I have also heard that the running gear was pulled out in 1922. The cab was left in the creek bed and when I first saw it 40 years ago, it was intact, upright and showed little damage from the crash. When I saw it a couple months ago, there were a few scattered pieces of metal in the creek.
The first railroad cut on the Navarro Lumber Co. line can easily be seen running parallel to the north edge of Holmes Ranch Road less than a tenth of a mile from Highway 128. It is between Handley Cellars Vineyard and Holmes Ranch Road. It is over 10 feet deep in places and it was dug in 1915 with teams of mules dragging a kind of scoop shovel called a fresno.
After 100 years, the evidence of the railroad is fading away. I think it's important to document it while we can.
CATCH OF THE DAY, Monday, December 29, 2025
DANIEL HAMFF, 58, Willits. Failure to register/“Gain/LV resid.”
WENDY KERSKI, 51, Boonville. Domestic battery.
ELIZABETH LOPEZ, 26, Clearlake/Ukiah. Domestic battery.
CALVIN MAGPIE JR., 43, Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs, suspended license for DUI, no license, probation revocation.
KINGDAVID SHORT, 22, Ukiah. Failure to appear.
PENELOPE YOUNG, 46, Branscomb. Domestic battery.
NORM CLOW:
We stopped at Kroger in front of our subdivision on the way home from church yesterday to get gas and some groceries. At the gas pumps, I noticed that the price of regular was down to $2.099 a gallon, and figured with my Kroger Reward's points I might have as much as another ten cents off. While I was fumbling around getting my rewards and debit cards out of my wallet, a fellow walked over from the other side and asked if I was going to use my rewards. Yes, I was. He said, "I don't use the Kroger gas in my new pick-up, and have a one dollar per gallon reward that I won't use. Would you like to use them so they don't go to waste?" Merry Christmas, yes I would, and thank you so much. He scanned his rewards card at the pump and sure enough, a Christmas miracle, $1.099. I can't remember the last time I paid that little for gas. We filled up with almost fifteen gallons for barely $16. Nice way to finish the year. There really are a lot of thoughtful folks in the world.
MURDER AT SEA
Editor:
Our president, in his first run for the most powerful office in the world famously said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?” I thought at that time he was saying he could commit cold-blooded murder and his fans would still support him. This man is now slaughtering anonymous people in boats, in the middle of nowhere, with no warnings — boats he could stop, board and inspect for drugs and then arrest the occupants if there was evidence. But he chooses to kill them. And his fans back him without question. I guess he was right.
As a veteran who served my country in war and is proud of our service people, I feel nothing but embarrassment and shame for this pathetic man.
Chris Wilbur
Santa Rosa
WHAT WOULD HARRY DO?
Editor:
The first evil year of the imperial presidency has been depressing, so many people have turned inward to read novels that feature people of morality. I am a fan of Michael Connelly, a prolific author of countless books, my favorite being the Harry Bosch detective series. A fictional Los Angeles police detective, Bosch is a complex character, driven by the ethic that all cases are important cases. His credo is: Everybody counts, or nobody counts. Yeah, it’s fiction, but doesn’t it ring true with the gold-obsessed remodeler of the White House?
Establishing the largest secret national police force under the banner of Immigration and Customs Enforcement is deplorable. If Hispanic immigrants are hunted down on U.S. streets and shanghaied to another country without recognition of their U.S. constitutional rights, then nobody counts — not me, not you.
Connelly’s fellow fictional LAPD Detective Renee Ballard said: “If you lose your empathy, you lose your soul.” How can we stand by and watch this moral decline day after day? How is your soul? Rise up Americans, register to vote, hit the streets in protest, mark your 2026 calendar and get out the vote on Nov. 3. Democracy will be on the ballot.
Corey Hudson
Santa Rosa
BILL KIMBERLIN: Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani will be sworn into office at the old City Hall subway station, its tiled arches, chandeliers and vaulted ceilings emblematic of a Gilded Age civic ambition that Mr. Mamdani is seeking to honor in spirit. The station opened in 1904.
HOW TO TAKE OVER MENDOCINO COUNTY
Charter: A written document that establishes a town or city and outlines the powers, rights, and privileges afforded to its governing body. The first such document issued in what is now the United States was the First Charter of Virginia, signed by King James I in 1606, which gave the Virginia Company of London the right to establish the Jamestown settlement the following year.
Council-manager government: A form of municipal management in which the governing council appoints a professional manager to oversee the daily operations of the city and implement the policies decided by the council. The largest cities in the United States currently using the council-manager form are Phoenix, San Antonio, and Dallas.
Deficit: An excess of expenditures over revenues in a given fiscal period, which can accumulate over time into debt. In 2013, the City of Detroit filed for bankruptcy after running up one of the largest debts in US history: $18.5 billion.
Dillon’s Rule: A narrow interpretation of local authority that limits municipal governments to the exercise of only those powers explicitly granted by the state legislature and those indispensable to the continued existence of local government.
Home Rule: The right of a local government to exercise unimpeded self-governance so long as its actions do not conflict with state or federal law. In Ohio, which does not abide by Dillon's Rule, all municipalities are afforded home rule; in Washington state, where the principles of Dillon's Rule and home rule coexist, only cities with more than 10,000 residents have the right to the latter.
Mayor-Council Government: A form of municipal organization helmed by an elected mayor who wields administrative and budgetary authority while the council retains legislative authority. The mayor-council form is less common than the council-manager form in US municipalities overall, but it's more common in the country's oldest and largest cities, including New York.
General Law City: A municipality that does not have a charter but rather takes its structure and powers from the general law of the state. General law cities have less autonomy than charter cities, where local laws on specifically municipal affairs (like whether plastic bags are allowed in stores) may trump state laws.
Ordinance: A law, statute, or regulation enacted and enforced by a municipality. Common ordinance violations include littering, loitering, and public urination. Ocala, Florida, once declared pants that sag two or more inches below the waist a violation; Oil City, Pennsylvania, prohibits front-yard “clutter.”
Public Hearing: A type of public meeting in which a governing body hears public testimony pertaining to an issue or proposed action. Recent hearings in New York City covered a range of subjects, from language access in public schools to police accountability and the state energy plan.
MITCH CLOGG:
People can be happy in hard times. World War 2, in America, was exceptional. While her sons were dying violently everywhere, they were relatively few of the country’s 132 million. The rest were working like hell to support them. Fewer than one soldier (or sailor or airman) in six ever heard a shot fired in anger. The rest were in support, work done fast, efficiently and enthusiastically.
Enthusiasm was the order of the day. It seems almost profane to say so, but they were joyous times. The only people out of work were incapable or clinically lazy. Nobody was broke. Everybody had jingle, if not “the long green.” Supporting the troops included honoring them by enjoying the fruits of freedom they were fighting for, what the factories were humming, clashing and clanking for. Americans made love in the name of freedom, danced entire nights into day, ate, drank and made merry (and Sue and Sally). And why not? You couldn’t hardly buy anything. You couldn’t get a stick of butter, much less a car. “Oughta call ‘em margarine flies,” muttered my father, driving the Buick when a fat yellow butterfly splattered the window. Oleomargarine was disgusting, despite the advertisements.
Refrigerators, bicycles, pleasure boats—you name it. It wasn’t available “for the duration.” Money was for love and pleasure and whatever good, wholesome foods that were available, that you could buy with your ration stamps. Nobody was fat. What passes for normal in 2025 was plump in 1940. Today’s “fat” was yesterday’s “gross.” Today, in a stupendous act of cultural denial that unites all races and creeds, “normal” includes what every medical practitioner and every observant person, regardless of training, knows damn well is morbidly obese.
Gasoline was severely rationed. Long trips and long commutes were out of the question unless justified somehow for the War Effort. Where we jump into the car now, we walked then. We were slim and fit. Watch an old-movie channel. We neutralize science’s fabulous discoveries and research’s intense work with Big Macs.
Those were hard times. People died by the millions. Died hard, the innocent and the evil. But in America, it was ever spring. We were TOGETHER, Democrat and Republican, man and woman, union and non-, liberal and conservative. This despicable hatred that now covers us like stink was not tolerated. It was not legal, even. Except for interning Japanese-Americans and maintaining our prejudices against Jews, African-Americans, Irish, Italians and Catholics. We were tolerant of each other and our differences. The war was a unifying factor, as it so often is. Out of many, we were one.
Covid did that, too. Had we a governing class with an ounce of sense or decency, our common plight of disease would have (at least) recovered some of that intoxicating together-ness. That banging at apartment windows at Seven in Manhattan, using cook pots for timpani, was a joyous and commendable thing, a brave, grinning defiance of Fate.
These are bleak times. Our very souls are degraded. Ellie says often, in defense of all-but-indefensible Homo sapiens: “But when we are good, we are VERY good.” We are the means, she contends, that Nature examines itself. We are the only creature, she goes on, that can choose kindness, pity, generosity, Humanity over instinct.
All this is surely related to democracy—and just as surely separate from it. People knew joy and love and contentment and mutual care a million years before they knew democracy, just as they knew endurance, just as they knew that hard times don’t foreclose happiness.
EIGHT DEMS IN THE RUNNING FOR THE WHITE HOUSE
Mayor Pete's Secret… Kamala's Revenge Plot… and Gavin's hidden family weakness…
by Mark Halperin
The ball hasn't dropped on 2025 but there's already buzz in the air over 2028.
The unofficial race for the White House has begun even if the candidates won't admit it and their press secretaries would sooner swallow a microphone than confirm anything.
I am picking up an unmistakable energy among the whispering political class. Fundraisers are filling their calendars, donors are getting restless and eager office-seekers are gaming out where they'll work the rope lines for the 2026 midterms in March.
For Republicans, they're fieldling a small team this year, as President Donald Trump continues to suck up the oxygen in Washington, leaving tiny gulps of air for rumored aspirants like Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and even Texas Senator Ted Cruz.
On the other hand, the Democratic side is generating a whole heap of speculation. And, while most voters are blissfully ignoring it all, I and others have begun handicapping the field.
Though before I reveal my top eight picks for who will win the Democratic nomination for president in 2028, a few necessary caveats…
One, it's still early. No one knows what the primary election calendar will look like. The Democratic National Committee hasn't even received applications from the state parties (due in January) as they jockey to maximize their influence on the contest. As former President Joe Biden proved in South Carolina in 2020, a well-positioned primary victory can change everything. Order matters, but so does momentum and timing.
Two, some major figures will most assuredly end up not running. Right now, the party's vigor is on the progressive wing, but the mood of the electorate seems to change hourly.
Now, without further ado, the eight most likely – as of this moment – Democratic nominees for president in 2028, ranked least likely to most likely.
8: Bronx Brawler
Some say New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the most likely to win the nomination, others wouldn't rank her at all. But if the base of the party decides it wants a torch-wielding outsider, she becomes instantly formidable.
Her strength is the unmatched grassroots energy she generates. Nobody else on this list can summon a movement the way she can.
Her secret strength is that behind the scenes, she's built more bridges within the party than people assume, reaching out to more moderate members of her own party and even to a few Republicans.
Her weaknesses? Skepticism from centrists, limited experience that comes with relatively young age, 36, and concerns over her seriousness. Running for president means sacrificing on nearly everything else. Insiders question if she's ready for that.
7: Chicago Style
If Democrats decide they want a billionaire after all—and stranger things have happened — Illinois governor JB Pritzker is waiting in the wings.
His greatest strength goes together with his most obvious weakness. With an estimated net worth of $3.7 billion from an inherited Hyatt Hotels fortune, he can self-fund, but many Democrats aren't eager to nominate someone who can buy their own campaign.
His secret strength is that he's deeply connected to Democratic interest groups, especially labor unions – and wears his working-class sympathies on his sleeve, advocating for minimum wage hikes and forgiving medical debt.
6: Tinseltown's Man
Wes Moore is the charismatic governor of Maryland. Hollywood loves him — George Clooney is already aboard — and many Democratic donors and strategists do too. He's got that 'It Factor', a seemingly stellar résumé and the ability to dazzle donors and voters alike.
Secret advantage: This US Army combat veteran is not just charming on camera; he's personally magnetic in the rooms and salons of the Democratic elite, which is where nomination fights are often meaningfully advanced.
His weakness is that he hasn't been in national politics long – and his accomplishments in public life can be listed on the back of a napkin. If the hype ever races ahead of the record or his glittering bio turns out to be less than all that, the backlash could be intense.
5: Southern Snoozer
Democrats dream of a candidate who can appeal to red-state voters and mild-mannered Governor of Kentucky Andy Beshear fits the mold. Some insiders nearly demanded that I place him higher. Still, others don't believe he belongs on the list at all.
His strength is that he looks like a president out of central casting and – believe it or not – that matters enormously in identity-oriented Democratic circles right now. His appeal appears to come from a steady calm persona — never rattled, never theatrical, reassuring to jittery party elders who crave stability.
But he's not exactly electric on stage. And, fair or not, Kentucky politics is not the big time. Some wonder whether he has the grits to withstand the brutality of a modern presidential campaign.
4: She's Baaaack!
I didn't place Kamala Harris in my top eight just a few weeks ago, but she has begun to lean more openly into the notion that she's considering a run, with those close to her making it clear her recent interviews and book tour stop announcements are meant to send the signal that she should not be overlooked by the Great Speculators.
Her known strengths are enormous: a national profile, deep relationships with core Democratic constituencies and the historic weight of being a former vice president. A lesser-known strength: privately, she is far looser, funnier, and more natural than the cautious politician Americans see on television. If she showed that version more often, some of her critics might soften.
Her weaknesses are familiar: inconsistent execution, difficulty making crisp decisions under pressure, and skepticism from donors and strategists who simply don't believe she can win. That's a heavy headwind.
3: Mr. Mayor
Pete Buttigieg is a prodigy of modern Democratic politics. He came on stronger as the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who can speak six foreign languages and won a top stop as Biden's Transportation Secretary. But from there, he's seemed to have stalled.
His main strength is verbal: he can talk anyone into anything, or, at least, to anyone about anything. Bill Clinton likes to describe people like Buttigieg as folks who can 'talk the owls down from the trees.'
His secret strength is that he and his team are ruthlessly strategic when they need to be, ready, for instance, to stealthily drop opposition research on a rival when the time is right. But he still has a Black voter problem — a fatal one if he can't fix it. And some say he's too cerebral, too tidy, too much 'PowerPoint as a person.'
Passion counts in politics. So does messiness. Buttigieg sometimes feels laminated.
2: Pennsylvania Pretzel
Josh Shapiro is the popular governor of Keystone state, who may have already won the political lottery by being passed over by Harris to be her running mate in 2024.
His strength is obvious: he's a strong communicator, pragmatic progressive, pro-Israel and middle-of-the-road enough to win over moderates, maybe even some MAGA types.
Secret advantage: He is favored by many of the party's power players — Pelosi, the Obamas, the Clintons.
Weaknesses? The progressive left doesn't trust him, and some party insiders believe he hasn't shown the necessary steel and determination under pressure. In a nomination fight, you can't let incoming fire merely bounce off — you must send some back. Some members of Team Shapiro on aiming to fix this flaw pronto.
1: California Dream
It may come as no surprise that Gavin Newsom sits atop the list – not because he's the handsomest governor since the invention of hair gel, though that never hurts – but because he has momentum.
He's commonly treated like a shadow president in some Democratic circles – meaning he is driving conversation on terms that will be favorable to his candidacy.
Not to mention, he has buckets of donor money, an established national profile and he exceeds the aura of a man auditioning for higher office every time he opens his mouth.
Those are his known strengths. His unknown strength is that he has a killer staff—professional, experienced, and capable of building a national machine at frightening speed.
Weakness? He can come across as a political show pony, all gleam and angles. Quietly, those around him say his ambition sometimes cools at inconvenient moments, often fueled by a family who is not super keen on a race.
That's the early, very early, list. It will shift. Some will swap out and in as the months go forward. And if you disagree — good. It means you're paying attention.
(DailyMail.uk)
THERE’S NO GOOD REASON TO GO TO A MOVIE THEATER ANYMORE
by Mick LaSalle
Dear Mick LaSalle: A recent Wall Street Journal article forecasted the curtain call for movie theaters within 10 years and cited declining attendance trends. Essentially, the current building footprints no longer generate the revenue per square foot needed for a reasonable return on investment. What are two things you would recommend to prevent the demise of the neighborhood multiplex?
Ken Kramer, Novato
Dear Ken Kramer: I don’t have two things. I got nothing.
It used to be that the real experience of a movie was in the theater. If you saw a movie on TV, it was on a small screen, with commercials, and sometimes the movies were even cut short to fit the time slot the station needed to fill. Even after the arrival of VHS, the home video experience was still just a blurry, small-scale replica of the real thing. But that’s no longer the case.
Today, the home video experience rivals the theater experience. Screens are big — if you have a video projector it can be 9- or 10-feet wide — and the clarity and sound are remarkable.
So why leave your living room to go to a movie theater? Why park your car and pay $18 for a ticket to watch 40 minutes of commercials and trailers before the movie even starts — just to be in an empty theater or, even worse, a packed house with people behind you coughing into your popcorn?
And that’s a good night. A bad night is when you’ve got people answering their cellphones all around you and you’re afraid to complain because, who knows, they might be crazy.
So I really see no reason why anyone would want to go to a multiplex, unless you’re a teenage couple in search of a dark place.
That said, I do see why people would want to go to a specialty or repertory house, such as the Roxie, the Smith Rafael, the Stanford, the Balboa, the 4-Star, the Vogue and the Pacific Film Archive, because the programs there are well curated, and they show lots of movies you can’t stream at home.
Dear Mr. LaSalle: If someone made a biopic of you, what actor do you think would best capture your “inner essence”?
Michael Biehl, San Francisco
Dear Michael Biehl: At my best, I feel like Fabrice Luchini in “Beaumarchais the Scoundrel” (1996). At my worst, Woody Allen in “Hannah and Her Sisters” (1986).
Dear Mick LaSalle: Do you read much now that you are semiretired? Do you prefer fiction or nonfiction? Do you now prefer reading or watching movies?
Gary Lawrence, Vallejo
Dear Gary Lawrence: Now that I have more free time, I’m able to read fiction again without falling asleep and having the book hit me in the face.
A year ago, I read “A Swim in a Pond in the Rain,” a great book by George Saunders about the art of the short story. Since then, I’ve been reading a lot of short fiction.
Also, I think I may have previously mentioned (bragged) that I read the complete works of Shakespeare when I was 12. I decided to try that again, and I’m discovering there are some plays that I didn’t fully appreciate in 1971 (for example, “Richard II”).
As for movies or books, I have no preference — except that I don’t want to see any movie unless it’s exceptional. But I’d say the same about a book. Nobody wants to read a just-OK book, but many people will tolerate a steady diet of just-OK movies, which I don’t understand.
However, before I present myself as an aesthete, I have to be honest and say that my favorite viewing these days is Netflix’s “Love Is Blind” series. I like it so much that I’m even watching the international versions of the show — as in the ones from the U.K., France, Italy, Mexico and Sweden. Next up is Argentina.
THE SAN FRANCISCAN, I submit, is anything but a snob. He is clannish, yes, but only about his city — every facet of it that delights him. In the old days, he was equally at home in the free-lunch counters of Market St., in Eddie Graney's billiard palace, at the Old Poodle Dog, and in Mrs. Spreckels' big house. He knew Jim Corbett and John L. Sullivan and Oofty-Goofty and Will Tevis, and greeted them all as equals in the egalitarian city. In a later manifestation he could hang out at the Black Cat or Izzy's and feel at ease in Anita Zabala Howard's drawing room.
Today he wears a sweater to Enrico's, a proper suit and vest to the Palace's Happy Valley, black tie to the Museum and tails to the Opera — and knows the best place in Chinatown to get jook, too. He realizes San Francisco has grown larger and stranger and away from itself, dividing into groups that are afraid to stray into the city's unbeaten paths, and for them he can feel only sorrow.
They are missing the far ranging excitement of being a San Franciscan who'd rather look at the Ghirardelli tower than the Jack Tar.
The other midnight, in a Chinatown bar, I met a real San Franciscan. He was a middle-aged longshoreman from the Mission, and he wore a zipper jacket and open shirt. While he quietly sipped a Scotch, he talked of Harry Bridges, Bill Saroyan and Shanty Malone. He was curious about Leontyne Price and Herbert Gold. He wondered if the Duke of Bedford's paintings were any good, he missed Brubeck, and he discussed Willie Mays down to his last spike. He seemed to know everybody in town, by first names — and it was only after he'd left that we discovered he'd bought a round of drinks for the house. For want of a better phrase, he had that touch of class — the touch of a San Franciscan.
Herb Caen, March 12, 1961
A MOVEMENT-BUILDING STRATEGY FOR ALL WORKERS
by David Bacon and Peter Olney
The night Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City, he called his triumph “the victory of the Bangladeshi aunty who knocked on door after door until her feet throbbed and her knuckles ached … of the Gambian uncle who finally saw himself and his struggle in a campaign for the city that he calls home.” Countering arguments that defending immigrants is an election loser, incompatible with fighting for jobs and living standards of all workers, Mamdani answered, “Dreaming demands solidarity.… A life of dignity should not be reserved for a fortunate few.… We can be free and we can be fed.”
“We can be fed” is a call not just for municipal grocery stores but for attacking the corporate domination that keeps workers hungry and angry. To win an election, he says, candidates must defend workers’ class interests. But he combines this with “We can be free,” which means ending raids and detentions. Divided families hear that call, and white workers with German or Italian surnames should remember it from Ellis Island more than a century ago. On Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, those held in detention by racist anti-Chinese restrictions heard it too. It was a call to bring families together here, in the US.
Mamdani’s embrace of immigrants recognizes a basic reality. Modern migration is the product of the exploitation of immigrant-sending countries, and of wars that are both a legacy of colonialism and an effort to keep a neocolonial system in place. Enforced debt, low wages, and resource extraction produce displacement and migration, but also make countries attractive to investors. They relocate production, taking advantage of the vast gulf created in the standard of living between the global south and the global north.
This system criminalizes all people who are displaced—migrants certainly, but also the unemployed and homeless who lose jobs in rich countries. Workers are pitted against each other, and political defenders of the system use this competition to keep them from changing it.
Militarism is the enforcer, whether ICE on the border and in immigrant communities, or armed intervention abroad and the threat of it. Immigrant workers suffer as a result, but so do workers in general. Huge budgets for ICE and “defense” soak up money for meeting social needs.…
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/mamdani-workers-labor-immigrants
CALIFORNIA HAS SUED TRUMP 52 TIMES THIS YEAR. HERE’S WHAT THOSE SUITS HAVE ACCOMPLISHED
by Bob Egelko
With little prospect of fending off President Donald Trump’s agenda in Congress or at the ballot box, California has turned, once again, to the courts. With considerable success so far.
In lawsuits filed or joined by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, federal judges have blocked the Trump administration’s freeze on virtually all domestic federal funding and mass layoffs in agencies such as the U.S. Department of Education and the AmeriCorps volunteer program.
Federal courts have halted Trump’s deployment of California National Guard troops on the streets of Los Angeles, although they have allowed the president to take control of National Guards in California and other states. They have prohibited him from requiring states like California to join his immigration crackdown in order to keep billions of dollars in federal funding for highways and airports, aid to crime victims and security against potential terrorist attacks.
And judges have blocked the president’s orders to cut off food-stamp benefits to 42 million low-income Americans, including 5.5 million Californians.
“We are holding this lawless, repeat offender accountable,” Bonta, a Democrat, said in an interview shortly before leading a multistate legal challenge to the $100,000 fee Trump has ordered for employers who seek H-1B U.S. visas for highly skilled foreign workers. “It is a promise we have kept to the people of California — if the president breaks the law and hurts California, we’ll sue him.”
It is one of 52 lawsuits Bonta has brought against the administration in the first 48 weeks of Trump’s second term. In about 80% of the cases, Bonta said, the courts have ruled in the state’s favor, or the Trump administration has dropped its opposition and agreed to a settlement.
And he said the victories add up to $168 billion in savings for the state — about $33,000 for every dollar of the $50 million appropriation the Legislature approved to his office this year to challenge Trump’s policies.
The legal cases are crucial not only for California and its partner states, but also for U.S. democracy, said Erwin Chemerinsky, the law school dean at UC Berkeley and a liberal legal scholar.
“We’ve never seen a president violate the law and the Constitution in the way that’s been done since Jan. 20,” Chemerinsky said. “If not California, who’s going to bring the challenges? Congress is not serving as a check, so it has to be the courts.”
But the nation’s highest legal authority is the Supreme Court, whose 6-3 conservative majority includes three Trump appointees. Most of California’s cases are still in lower courts, but in the National Guard case, the high court agreed with the Trump administration that immigration officers could arrest people in Los Angeles based on their appearance, the language they spoke and the type of work they were doing.
Rejecting arguments by California and other states, the justices ruled 6-3 in June that federal judges who found the government was acting illegally could not issue injunctions prohibiting those actions nationwide, though they could be halted in individual states. Another ruling by the court in 2022 has forced states like California to scale back their laws against carrying firearms in public.
The court has also ruled against California and other Democratic-led states in environmental cases, including a decision in 2022 that said the federal government lacked legal authority to try to control climate change by reducing coal mining.
In that 6-3 ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts announced the “major legal questions” doctrine, saying that on issues of “vast economic and political significance,” a federal regulatory agency can decide what the law means only if Congress has clearly authorized its actions — a standard that agencies have yet to meet in any of the court’s subsequent decisions.
Bonta’s office was also on the losing side in 2023 when the court ruled 5-4 that the Clean Water Act protected only oceans, streams, rivers and lakes and the waters that flow to them above ground, and not other wetlands.
In another setback, a federal judge in February allowed billionaire Trump ally Elon Musk to access staff records at federal agencies for potential funding cuts and layoffs, ruling that California and 13 other states had failed to show a likelihood of immediate harm.
But the same judge, Tanya Chutkan, ruled in May that Bonta and others could proceed with a suit accusing Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency of illegally exercising power over government operations, without congressional authorization. The states dropped their suit this month after Musk parted company with the Trump administration.
The Supreme Court has not yet ruled on challenges by California and other states to Trump’s multibillion-dollar tariffs on goods imported from foreign countries, though at a hearing in June, some conservative justices questioned the president’s authority to impose the taxes without express approval from Congress.
Overall, however, the Supreme Court majority seems “inclined to a robust interpretation of executive authority,” said Jennifer Chacon, a Stanford law school professor and a former classmate of Bonta’s at Yale Law School. “Lower courts are adhering to settled law, but the Supreme Court is unsettling the law.”
During Barack Obama’s presidency, the court, somewhat surprisingly, upheld most of the Affordable Care Act, which provided government subsidies for people who couldn’t afford health insurance, and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which allowed undocumented immigrants who entered the U.S. before age 16 to remain and work legally if they have no serious criminal record. Republican-led states, which sued to overturn the Affordable Care Act, want the court to overturn those rulings.
Texas and Mississippi also led the legal challenges to the constitutional right to abortion that the Supreme Court had declared in Roe v. Wade in 1973 and repealed in Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women’s Health Organization in 2022. Bonta filed arguments on behalf of California supporting a right to abortion, and the state has provided reproductive care to women from states that have banned abortion since the 2022 ruling.
The Supreme Court also rejected arguments by Bonta and other Democratic attorneys general in June when it upheld a Tennessee law, similar to laws in 26 other states, that banned hormone treatment and other gender-affirming care for transgender minors.
California, which has no such law, has provided medical care to transgender youths from other states. But in a related issue, the Supreme Court, at a hearing in October, seemed likely to overturn laws in California and other states banning “conversion therapy,” in which therapists counsel youths to reject their feelings of being lesbian, gay or transgender and identify instead as heterosexual.
When the Supreme Court in 2023 refused to halt distribution of mifepristone, the pills used in more than half of U.S. abortions, finding that anti-abortion doctors who filed suit had failed to show they were harmed, states such as Texas and Florida filed their own suits, which are still pending. Those states are also suing physicians in California and elsewhere who are sending mifepristone to women in states that prohibit sale or use of the pills.
California was also an active litigant in Trump’s first term, successfully defending its sanctuary law, which prohibits state and local police from cooperating with federal immigration agents and from keeping undocumented immigrants in custody so they can be deported.
Under Attorney General Xavier Becerra, the state filed 123 suits against the Trump administration from 2017 to 2021, more than one every two weeks, mostly over environmental issues, immigration and health care, and won more than two-thirds of them, according to CalMatters.
But Becerra was unable to preserve California’s strict emissions standards for motor vehicles, which were revoked by Trump in 2019 and reinstated by President Joe Biden in 2021.
This June, Trump signed Republican-sponsored congressional resolutions to block California’s emissions standards, including a first-in-the-nation rule that would allow sales of only electric-powered new cars and light trucks in the state as of 2035. A few seconds after the president’s action, Bonta sued on behalf of the state.
No decision has been issued in that case. A week after California’s filing, the Supreme Court ruled in a separate case that oil and gas companies could sue the state over its vehicle standards, saying the companies could be harmed by the new rules but not deciding yet whether the Biden administration acted legally in approving them.
The Trump administration has also sued California for allowing undocumented immigrants to pay the same reduced tuition rates as U.S. citizens at state universities, and over a 2018 ballot measure that banned cages on farms for egg-laying hens. Federal judges have not yet ruled on those cases.
After Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation to prohibit federal as well as state law enforcement officers from wearing masks, the Trump administration said it would disregard the law, ensuring another court battle.
The proliferation of state lawsuits was criticized by Michael McConnell, a Stanford law professor and former federal appeals court judge appointed by President George W. Bush.
“Whether it is Democratic states or Republican states, I disapprove of using taxpayer resources to pursue partisan fights in court,” McConnell said by email. “State AG (attorney general) offices are not meant to be advocacy law firms.”
While some of the states’ legal claims seem appropriate, like their efforts to retain federal funds approved by Congress, McConnell said, “there has been a wave of lawsuits by state AGs in recent years that look more like political resistance than defense of the states’ interests.”
Bonta said that’s not his approach.
“If all we have is political reasons, ideological and policy differences, we won’t go to court,” the attorney general told the Chronicle. “An 80% win rate, that’s not politics. That’s winning on the law and the facts.”
CENTARIAN
A diary of a hundreth year
by Calvin Tomkins
Old age is no joke, but it can feel like one. You look everywhere for your glasses, until your wife points out that you're wearing them. I turned a hundred this year. People act as though this is an achievement, and I suppose it is, sort of. Nobody in my family has lived this long, and I've been lucky. I'm still in pretty good health, no wasting diseases or Alzheimer's, and friends and strangers comment on how young I look, which cues me to cite the three ages of man: Youth, Maturity, and You Look Great.
On the other hand, I've lost so many useful abilities that my wife, Dodie, and I have taken to calling me Feebleman. Look, up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's Feebleman! Dodie doesn't want me to know how old she is, but she's nearly three decades younger than I am, and I become more dependent on her every day.
I was a hundred years old on December 17th when became what is called a centenarian. More and more people are breaking the two-digit ceiling these days, prompting talk in medical circles about much longer life spans.
I believe the record so far is held by Jeanne Calment, a Frenchwoman who was born in 1875 and died in 1997, at a 122, although there is some debate about the validity of her age. When Calment was 90, a widow with no heirs, she sold her apartment in Arles to a local notaire, with the written agreement that she could continue to live there, by herself, until she died, and he would pay the taxes and give her a monthly stipend of 2500 francs. Calment was still going strong when the notaire died, in 1995, and his children paid the taxes and the stipend until her death, two years later.
As Calment put it, “In life, one sometimes makes bad deals.”
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY
I’m in my 70s. After watching my parents both pass slowly, as well as one of my sisters, and the effect that had on the rest of the family, I am bound and determined to punch my own ticket when the time comes. I’d much rather be able to take a black capsule and pass quietly, but since our law makers have chosen to not make that an option, odds are good that when the time comes I’ll eat a bullet. All sane adults should have the option to terminate their lives once it is no longer worth living.
HOW DO PEOPLE COPE with idleness, boredom, pointlessness? What happens when they do not have to work and plot their lives around this activity? Freedom, time, utility, chance — such concepts coagulate around the game player. Why do some players become addicted to the game of their inclination? Why does the long-distance runner torment himself with endless miles consumed each day; the race-car driver confront death on such unfavorable odds; the gambler return to lose more; the chess player exhaust so many hours at his game?
There is a remarkable amount of resistance to the analysis of motives and compulsions operating on sportsmen and game players, in so far as examination of their unconscious motives might be involved. Yet with ardent sportsmen we are dealing with addiction, and we should be inspecting its cause.
Humanism has watered the pastures of leisure and of games with much uplifting speculation. But in the world of games lie areas of darkness, of taboos, of cruel instincts and vile desires. For starters, let us narrow the focus to the chess player face to face, as in so many medieval woodcuts, with Death.
— Alexander Cockburn, ‘Idle Passion’ (1978)
"TO GET THE RIGHT WORD in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself. Anybody can have ideas; the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph."
— Mark Twain, Letter to Emeline Beach, February 19, 1868
“A MAN CANNOT LIVE intensely except at the cost of the self. Now the bourgeois treasures nothing more highly than the self (rudimentary as his may be). And so at the cost of intensity he achieves his own preservation and security.
His harvest is a quiet mind which he prefers to being possessed by God, as he does comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to that deathly inner consuming fire.
The bourgeois is consequently by nature a creature of weak impulses, anxious, fearful of giving himself away and easy to rule. Therefore, he has substituted majority for power, law for force, and the polling booth for responsibility.”
— Herman Hesse
PHILIP ROTH BECAME FAMOUS for offending everyone who thought they owned him.
White critics accused him of obscenity. Jewish leaders accused him of betrayal.
Roth understood early that if everyone was angry, he was probably telling the truth.
In the late 1950s, Roth published ‘Goodbye, Columbus’ and immediately learned the cost of honesty. Jewish organizations condemned him publicly, accusing him of feeding antisemitic stereotypes. Community leaders demanded he explain himself. Defend himself. Apologize.
This mattered because Roth was not attacking from outside.
He was writing from inside.
He wrote about Jewish families, guilt, desire, hypocrisy, ambition, sex, and self-loathing without softening any of it. He refused the role America often assigns minority writers, spokesperson, educator, moral guide. Roth wanted the freedom to be messy, cruel, funny, and human.
The system panicked.
Writers like Roth are dangerous because they cannot be managed by praise. Roth did not write to uplift. He wrote to expose. When ‘Portnoy’s Complaint’ exploded in 1969, selling millions, the backlash intensified. It was called pornographic. Self-hating. Indecent. Liberating. All at once.
Roth absorbed the fury and kept going.
This is the part most stories miss.
Roth paid for that freedom with isolation.
He never settled into literary institutions comfortably. He mistrusted movements. He resisted being claimed. He wrote novels that attacked American innocence, masculinity, nationalism, illness, and aging with equal brutality. Every book risked alienation. He accepted that risk as the price of independence.
As he aged, his work turned colder and sharper. Mortality. Decay. Loss of control. He wrote about the body failing without metaphor. When he stopped writing, he stopped completely, announcing he was done and refusing to return for nostalgia or money.
Philip Roth is often remembered as provocative.
That word is lazy.
His real legacy is refusal. Refusal to represent. Refusal to reassure. Refusal to make himself useful to anyone’s moral project.
The shock is not that Roth angered so many people.
It is that he built one of the greatest literary careers in American history by never asking permission to be loved.
ANTI-PROFANITY
I do not swear because I am
A sweet and sober guy;
I cannot vent a single damn
However hard I try.
And in vituperative way,
Though I recall it well,
I never, never, never say
A naughty word like hell.
To rouse my wrath you need not try,
I'm milder than a lamb;
However you may rile me I
Refuse to say: Goddam!
In circumstances fury-fraught
My tongue is always civil,
And though you goad me I will not
Consign you to the divvle.
An no, I never, never swear;
Profanity don't pay;
To cuss won't get you anywhere,
(And neither will to pray.)
And so all blasphemy I stem.
When milk of kindness curds:
But though I never utter them -
Gosh! how I know the words.
— Robert Service
FIRST STRIKE
The CIA is responsible for carrying out the first US land strike in Venezuela on a port facility believed to have been storing drugs bound for America, sources claim.
President Donald Trump confirmed the Christmas Eve strike on Monday, days after he casually discussed in a radio interview the attack on a facility 'where the ship comes from.'
The strike, which took place on a port dock authorities believe was the home base of the alleged drug vessels that the US military has been targeting in the Caribbean and Atlantic over the last three months, signaled a further escalation of tensions between the two countries.
Multiple sources have now told CNN that the drone strike was carried out by the CIA, after Trump refused to weigh in on the theory.
Asked if the CIA had carried out the attack, Trump said: 'I don't want to say that. I know exactly who it was but I don't want to say who it was.'
But Trump has previously said that he has authorized the CIA to carry out covert operations in Venezuela.
Sources said the strike took place on a remote dock on the coast of Venezuela believed to used by the Tren de Aragua gang to stockpile and transfer drugs.
The CIA received intelligence support from US Special Operations Forces. No one was killed and there was nobody at the facility when the attack took place.
— DailyMail.uk
WE DIE TO EACH OTHER DAILY. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.
— T.S. Eliot
LEAD STORIES, TUESDAY'S NYT
C.I.A. Conducted Drone Strike on Port in Venezuela
U.S. Kills 2 in Strike in Pacific, as Trump Pressures Venezuela
Russia Threatens to Toughen Its Stance on Ending the War in Ukraine
U.S. Pledges $2 Billion for U.N. Aid but Tells Agencies to ‘Adapt, Shrink, or Die’
As Youth Sports Professionalize, Kids Are Burning Out Fast
Twins’ Peaks: The Gilbertson Brothers Want to Rewrite Your Country’s Map
THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT PUT MY NAME AT THE TOP OF AN ‘ANTISEMITE’ LIST
by Caitlin Johnstone
My name appears at the top of a list in a document the Israeli government released earlier this month in order to draw false associations between the Bondi Beach shooting and online criticism of Israel and its atrocities.
The PowerPoint document, released by Israel’s Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, is titled “Delegitimization and Antisemitism in Australia — A Snapshot October — December 2025,” and its claims have been cited by Israeli media outlets like Ynet News.
Page five of the document is titled “Actors: Key generators of anti-Semitism and delegitimization in Australia,” where the name Caitlin Johnstone is listed at the top of a column titled “Active influencers and content creators” which is ranked by number of followers. Page seven describes me as an “Anti-Western blogger, promoting conspiracies and complete delegitimization of Israel.”
This word “delegitimization” appears throughout the document, which I personally find funny. They knew the “antisemitism” claim couldn’t stand on its own, so they had to tack on this weird extra complaint about people “delegitimizing” the state of Israel — as though that’s a bad thing. I’ll always deny harboring any hatred toward Jews or Judaism, but I’ll happily admit to trying to delegitimize a genocidal apartheid state that cannot exist without nonstop violence and abuse.…
SOME TIME BEFORE he became involved in the Dreyfus Affair, Emile Zola wrote an article called ‘The Toad.” It purported to be his advice to a young writer who could not stomach the aggressive mendacity of a press which in 1890 was determined to plunge the citizens of the French Republic into disaster.
Zola explained to the young man his own method of inuring himself against newspaper columns. Each morning, over a period of time, he bought a toad in the market place, and devoured it alive and whole. The toads cost only three sous each, and after such a steady matutinal diet one could face almost any newspaper with a tranquil stomach, recognize and swallow the toad contained therein, and actually relish that which to healthy men not similarly immunized would be a lethal poison.
All nations in the course of their histories have passed through periods which, to extend Zola’s figure of speech, might be called the Time of the Toad: an epoch long or short as the temper of the people may permit, fatal or merely debilitating as the vitality of the people may determine, in which the nation turns upon itself in a kind of compulsive madness to deny all in its tradition that is clean, to exalt all that is vile, and to destroy any heretical minority which asserts toad-meat not to be the delicacy which governmental edict declares it to be. Triple heralds of the Time of the Toad are the loyalty oath, the compulsory revelation of faith, and the secret police.
The most striking example in recent history of a nation passing through the Time is offered by Germany. In its beginnings in that unfortunate country the Toad was announced by the shrill voice of a mediocre man ranting against Communists and Jews, just as we in America have heard the voice of such a one as Representative John E. Rankin of Mississippi.
By the spring of 1933, the man Hitler having been in power for two months, substance was given his words by a decree calling for the discharge from civil service of all “who because of their previous political activity do not offer security that they will exert themselves for the national state without reservation,” as well as those “who have participated in communist activities, even if they no longer belong to the Communist Party or its auxiliary or collateral organizations,” and those who have ‘opposed the national movement by speech, writing or any other hateful conduct” or have “insulted its leaders.”
Thereafter, in a welter of oaths, tests, inquisitions and inquests, the German nation surrendered its mind. Those were the days in Germany when respectable citizens did not count it a disgrace to rush like enraptured lemmings before the People's Courts and declare under oath that they were not Communists, they were not Jews, they were not trade unionists, they were not in any degree anything which the government disliked — perfectly aware that such acts of confession assisted the inquisitors in separating sheep from goats and rendered all who would not or could not pass the test liable to the blacklist, the political prison or the crematorium.
Volumes have since been written telling of the panicked stampede of German intellectuals for Nazi absolution: of doctors and scientists, philosophers and educators, musicians and writers, artists of the theater and cinema, who abased themselves in an orgy of confession, purged their organizations of all the proscribed, gradually accepted the mythos of the dominant minority, and thereafter clung without shame to positions without dignity. Of such stamp are the creatures in all countries who attempt to survive the Time of the Toad rather than to fight it.
If the first street speeches of Adolf Hitler may be said to have become the Time in Germany, then June 7, 1938, signaled the approach of the Toad into American life, for on that day the House of Representatives, under a resolution offered by Mr. Martin Dies of Texas, established by a vote of 181 to 41 the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
— Dalton Trumbo, The Time of the Toad: A Study of Inquisition in America (1949)
SOMETIMES A LITTLE BULLSHIT IS FINE: A CONVERSATION WITH CHARLES SIMIC
by Chard deNiord
I first met Charles Simic in 1994 at a dinner to celebrate the Harvard Review’s special issue dedicated to Simic. I had written an essay for the issue titled “He Who Remembers His Shoes” that focused on several of his poems and so was invited to this dinner and seated next to him. While we were eating, a small black ant started crawling across the white table cloth. Simic became mesmerized by this ant. We both wondered if the ant was going to “make it” to the other side, and then, suddenly, our waiter appeared and swept it up. Simic almost wept. (I later learned that ants were his favorite insect.) What an object lesson it was for me in Simic’s compassion for the smallest creatures, what Czesław Miłosz called “immense particulars.” I stayed in touch with Simic off and on after this night, inviting him to read at the M.F.A. program I cofounded in 2001. Simic declined at first, saying he was “too pooped” after a reading tour in Europe, but then agreed to come in 2005. He read at The Fells, John Hayes’ elegant estate overlooking Lake Sunapee in New Hampshire which New England College rented for the occasion. The indelible image of him with the lake and gardens behind him has stayed with me ever since.
On November 21, I interviewed Simic on Zoom after several failed attempts to meet with him in Strafford, New Hampshire, where he lived. He was already having health issues, then but assured me that he was well enough—and eager—to chat. For an hour and twenty minutes we talked about everything from his local dump to his childhood in Belgrade during World War II. He told me, for instance, about what a “blast” he had playing in the streets of Belgrade even as it was being bombed by the Nazis. While transcribing our conversation, I realized that he never stopped playing in those streets. What a genius he was at witnessing to horror with wit, humanity, and a cold eye. I so envied and admired the way he transfigured such “immense particulars” as a fork, shrimp, breasts, ants, “bare winter trees,” and an alarm clock at the dump into powerful synecdoches.
We ran out of time to talk, and made plans to continue the conversation. But he was rehospitalized several days later, and died in New Hampshire on January 10. I can’t think of another contemporary poet who wrote with such stunning sprezzatura, wit, and compassion. There is no one who can replace him, and he will be deeply missed.
INTERVIEWER
Have you been writing much lately?
SIMIC
That’s all I do.
INTERVIEWER
Your new book has a foreboding title, No Land In Sight. While there are no overt references to politics or current events in the book, your title seems to imply that the world is lost at sea. Am I reading too much into it?
SIMIC
It’s not pessimistic. Everything is just fucked up.
INTERVIEWER
Here is line from a poem titled “Could That Be Me?” that captures your self-effacing, tragicomic style—“An alarm clock / With no hands / Ticking loudly / On the town dump.” Is the dump a metaphor for your study?
SIMIC
It’s not a metaphor. The dump is a place where I’ve spent a lot of time. I’m about five minutes from the dump. It used to be a very different dump. It started out being just one little place filled with garbage. And then it became more complicated, with everything sorted out. But I’m an aficionado of the old, old dump where many, many years ago I found a big alarm clock, an old-fashioned alarm clock, happily ticking.
INTERVIEWER
Poetic lightning seems to strike you often. Have you ever had to pull over by the side of the road and write something down?
SIMIC
I once stopped on I-93 in New Hampshire. I was going to Boston to see somebody. I was there on the side of the road, and I had nothing to write with. I was thinking, Where’s my pencil? Then I looked up. There was a policeman, and he said something like, “Can I help you?” I laughed. “I’m sure you can,” I said. “But I’m not sure how.”
INTERVIEWER
Did he give you a pencil?
SIMIC
He said, “You’ve got to move on.” But it was friendly.
INTERVIEWER
You’ve written so many memorable poems about poetry and about writing poetry, one of which includes this definition—“Poetry is always the cat concert under the window of the room in which the official version of reality is being written.” How exactly would you describe the cat concert?
SIMIC
Look at it this way: I have a cat that’s twenty-five years old. She’s a black cat. She complains. She comes in and she says to me, You’re still here? Poetry really is a comic scene where you, whoever you are, pretend to be in control, but really the speaker is at the mercy of things that are completely out of his hands. But he pretends that he is in control. We’re schmucks.
INTERVIEWER
You and your family immigrated from Yugoslavia to New York City when you were sixteen in 1954. You’ve said that Hitler and Stalin were your travel agents. Despite moving to a new country and having to adapt to a new culture, you never lost your love of Slavic folktales and fables. What enduring influence would you say Slavic folklore has had on your work?
SIMIC
I wouldn’t call it a steady love of Slavic folklore. Much of it is great but it’s predictable. I should explain something about where I grew up. Belgrade was a modern city where there were movies. You could hear jazz, all sorts of stuff. Modernity. Then the war happened—April 6, 1941. Bombs hit the building across the street from me. Fire. I flew out of my bed onto the floor. My parents were in the next room. The room was in a building four stories high. I don’t know what I did but I remember my mother picking me up from the floor and running down the stairs. That day, strangely enough, is still vivid to me. We were running down the stairs of our apartment house, four floors. We were running down some streets. It was war. Bombs were falling. That’s how it started. My war, and my life.
INTERVIEWER
Belgrade was under attack throughout the war. The Americans bombed it in 1944 also.
SIMIC
Yes. The Americans, our allies, were bombing us. We applauded this. We were happy when they hit something. It was a kind of war that was impossible to figure out. Everything was in great confusion—people were disappearing. And at the same time—being a kid, not totally aware of how scary this all really was—me and my friends, we had a ball. Which was nuts. Only later in my life when I put two and two together, did I realize how crazy this time in my life was. My mother used to tell this story to our neighbors and relatives about what an idiot she had for a son. It was May 9, 1945. The war had ended. I was playing in the street. That’s the way I always played. The only reason I would run up to the fourth floor was to get a drink of water, and then run back down. That day the radio was loud. There was so much jubilation. Everyone was saying, “Hey! The war is over, the war is over!” We all stood around the radio. She said to me, “Now there won’t be any more fun for you!”
INTERVIEWER
Were you going to school?
SIMIC
No, that was the great part of it. No school. I remember once in New York there was a party, a long time ago. I started talking to a Polish woman who was a little bit older than me—she grew up in Warsaw during the war. She also said what a great time she’d had. She leaned into my face with a smile and said, “There was no school.”
INTERVIEWER
You won the Pulitzer Prize for your book of prose poems, The World Doesn’t End. In an essay on the prose poem you wrote, “They look like prose and act like poems because, despite the odds, they make themselves into fly-traps for our imagination.”
SIMIC
Memory, too.
INTERVIEWER
Why did you stop writing prose poems?
SIMIC
Prose poetry was just something I tried. I always knew it couldn’t go on forever. I wanted to write something that was very entertaining. I think all of us prose poets—Russell Edson, James Tate, Peter Johnson—we all love to entertain the reader and to proceed without any knowledge of how it’s going to end. You start something and surprise, surprise, surprise.
INTERVIEWER
Was there something about prose as opposed to verse poetry that made that easier for you?
SIMIC
Lying, inventing things. That always attracted me. I like, for example, Emily Dickinson and other poets who were really just wonderful liars. Who knew how to make up something delicious.
INTERVIEWER
If you had a chance to spend a few hours with Emily Dickinson in her parlor or maybe on a walk around Amherst, what might you like to ask her?
SIMIC
It would probably be something about what to drink. I don’t know. I never believed I could become friends with someone like that. She’s too strange. She’d be too scared of a walk, you know. She was scared of snakes.
INTERVIEWER
Would you say that your poetry emerges from your unconscious?
SIMIC
Possibly, but I’m not a surrealist in the sense that my unconscious is constantly supplying stuff to my consciousness. No, poetry is just what happens. Poetry is a miracle. I think of some of the lines I wrote in my life. I say to myself, “Did I write this?” It just came.
INTERVIEWER
It sounds like it’s almost unexplainable.
SIMIC
It is unexplainable. Especially when it is a bad poem, it’s unexplainable—a bad poem that turns out to be a pretty good poem.
INTERVIEWER
Do you keep a notebook to write down your anecdotes and stories and sayings?
SIMIC
I can show you my notebook. I’ll open it. What it consists of are fragments. I’ll be reading something and I’ll like the way it sounds. Reading about Saint Augustine who couldn’t comprehend God’s purpose in creating flies. Or, for example, here is just a phrase: “Something tells me!”
INTERVIEWER
“Something tells me!” Something just clicks.
SIMIC
And what the fuck! This is where my short poems come from.
INTERVIEWER
I talked to Carolyn Forché this morning. She said to say hello and she was wondering why you write such short poems.
SIMIC
I get bored very quickly.
INTERVIEWER
I will tell her that.
SIMIC
I once wrote this piece that does not exist anymore, thank God. I wrote a poem that was something like sixty pages. It was a poem about The Inquisition. An awful, stupid poem. It sounded a little bit like Pound. Thank God I threw it out. Somebody would have found it.
INTERVIEWER
How old is that notebook you showed me?
SIMIC
I like to have good-looking notebooks. This one happens to be from when I was in high school in France. These notebooks might go on for months and years. Here’s a group of titles: “A Little Thing Like That,” “Beyond the Reach of Words,” ”Slow Hurry,” “Budding Leaves at Night,” “Leaving Blanks” and on and on and on.
INTERVIEWER
In addition to your poetry, you have written just as much brilliant criticism over the years, which has been published in The New York Review of Books, as well as in several volumes of books. How were you able to balance both of these enterprises?
SIMIC
The truth is, everything I wrote in books–it was the money. I was tempted by the money. And then also Bob Silvers of The New York Review of Books knew how to mention something so tantalizing my brain would run away with it. Why else write? I liked writing prose very much. I was always arguing with somebody and that was the big thing.
INTERVIEWER
It’s always been so refreshing to read your reviews and your essays for that reason because there’s just no bullshit in your work.
SIMIC
Sometimes a little bullshit is fine.
(Chard deNiord is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently In My Unknowing (University of Pittsburgh Press 2020) and Interstate (U. of Pittsburgh, 2015). He is the co-founder of the Ruth Stone Trust and Ruth Stone Foundation and Professor Emeritus of English and Creative Writing at Providence College. He co-founded the New England College MFA Program in Poetry in 2001, where he also served as the program director until 2008. From 2015 to 2019 he served as the poet laureate of Vermont. He lives in Westminster West, Vermont with his wife, the painter Liz Hawkes deNiord.)
JON KENNEDY (Potter Valley):
Too much mentioning money, and too little mentioning the philosophies that drive the political decisions being made on the Potter Valley project by both the current political establishment in California, and the Trump administration. To fail to recognized the power of philosophical beliefs and faith in politics is to fail to recognize the essence of what is happening.
PG&E’s decision to decommission is purely a political one. From a business stand point, PG&E has one client, the California Public Utility Commission, appointed by the governor. They do what the CPUC orders them to do. Recently the CPUC ordered PG&E to keep operating a solar project that will cost the rate payers in California an extra $200 million. (That was in the WSJ) The cost to the rate payer is never a consideration. PG&E is abandoning the Potter Valley project in the manner they are because that is what the political climate in California dictates. No alternative is considered. No assessment of what would the least cost to rate payers be. There was an offer by water users to purchase the project that PG&E would not consider. Of course they wouldn’t.
I often mention how removing the dams on the Eel won’t change the salmonid population on the Eel. Since the dams have been in place, there have been many decades of huge salmonid runs, now there aren’t. There is no correlation between the size of salmonid runs on the Eel and the presence of dams. But I am told the decision to removes the dams has nothing to do with fish, it is a business decision by PG&E. Yes it is a business decision, a business decision driven purely by philosophical faith and politics.