I pay attention to the Wall Street Journal. 

It gives me an intelligent perspective on “conservative” thought.  In juxtaposition to Fox News, et al. The past year WSJ forecast what Biden would do as President very accurately.  Now he is President. I am looking forward to implementation of the policies decried by the WSJ.

This week begins a new day in Washington on so many fronts. One of which is the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline. President Biden claims he is going to REVOKE the permit as one of his first actions as Chief Executive.

Excerpted from Wall Street Journal 1.21.2021

WASHINGTON—The Keystone oil pipeline’s developer plans to announce a series of overhauls—including a pledge to use only renewable energy—in a bid to win President-elect Joe Biden’s support for the controversial project.

 Aides to Mr. Biden have previously said he plans to revoke the permit, and Canada’s CBC News reported late Sunday that Mr. Biden plans to do so in one of his first actions after taking office this week.

Mr. Biden’s team declined to discuss that report, but has said his position on the pipeline hasn’t changed.

In a bid to save the project, Canada’s TC Energy Corp. TRP 0.29% is committing to spend $1.7 billion on solar, wind and battery power to operate the partially completed 2,000-mile pipeline system between Alberta, in western Canada, and Texas, company officials say. They also are pledging to hire a union workforce and eliminate all greenhouse-gas emissions from operations by 2030.

 Keystone XL is a 1,210-mile expansion to a larger pipeline network. It must connect to the power grid to run pump stations that help push oil through the line. Those stations sit about every 50 miles along the pipelines, driven by electric motors.

The company’s plans reflect new realities at a time when Democrats are taking commanding positions in Washington, and in an era of growing environmental and social concerns.

“In our view, this is the most sustainable and environmentally friendly pipeline project that is ever been built,” Richard Prior, president of TC Energy’s Keystone XL expansion project, said in an interview. “This is groundbreaking stuff for an energy infrastructure project of the size and scale of Keystone XL.”

A company spokesman said Keystone will announce the new measures this week.

Construction of the expansion, long delayed by legal and permitting challenges, started last year under a permit President Trump awarded to sidestep an order by a federal judge blocking construction in the U.S., pending a supplemental environmental review.

Keystone executives hope to keep the $8 billion project alive by making it a showcase for how fossil-fuel projects can still be environmentally friendly and generate good-paying union jobs.

In August, the company struck a deal with four labor unions to build the line itself. And it followed that up in mid-November with a deal for five indigenous tribes to take a roughly $785 million ownership stake. A new labor deal led by North America’s Building Trades Unions gives priority to union workers for the renewable power buildout, too.

Canadian government officials continue to press the case for Keystone with Mr. Biden’s team. They want to get more bottlenecked Canadian crude to the U.S. Gulf Coast, one of the world’s biggest centers for refining oil. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau mentioned the pipeline among his top priorities during his first call with Mr. Biden after the election.

Keystone’s initial proposal became a flashpoint for climate activists. It led many to fight pipelines as a way to combat growing oil production and instead push investment to alternative energy projects that wouldn’t contribute to climate change.

They especially object to the Keystone pipeline because the Canadian crude it carries comes from oil sands, which generate more pollution than other types of oil.

To address those concerns, Keystone is promising to fund new renewable energy infrastructure to generate 1.6 gigawatts of power. That amount would rival the country’s biggest corporate renewables purchases by companies such as Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google that have become common in recent years, and further boost a burgeoning wind and solar market.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/keystone-xl-oil-project-pledges-zero-carbon-emissions-11610930642

Following is a special contribution by associate Blog mistress Liz.

Dear Archbishop Cordileone, Publisher:

It is alarming that the Catholic Church, which sanctifies life, racial inclusiveness, integrity, compassion, accepts money in the form of political ads from the San Francisco Police Officers Association (POA).

The POA is a group which advocates for SFPD with its long history of abusing and harassing people of color, the homeless, the poor, and the disabled.

I was appalled when I saw the POA ad in the 12.17.2020 issue of Catholic San Francisco. 

Catholic San Francisco has a prominent influence in shaping cultural attitudes and moral values.

In 2019 the POA spent nearly 1 MM to destroy the candidacy of District Attorney aspirant Chesa Boudin. 

Chesa was victorious in the DA election.

Since Chesa took office a year ago, the POA has never let up on its line of attack on Chesa’s integrity, reforms to our broken criminal justice system, or reforms to the brotherhood of cops who cover up police misconduct deeds.

It is scandalous that the Roman Catholic Archdiocese allows money from the POA to help the POA retain power and position within the faith community, 

Sincerely, 

Liz Heidhues – a Catholic advocating for criminal justice reform

Page one. The Catholic 12.17.2020 edition

POA Ad in The Catholic 12.17.2020

POA Attack ad – page one 2019

POA attack ad – page two 2019

San Francisco Chronicle critic Mick LaSalle calls Blake Lively’s work the “performance of a lifetime.”

The Rhythm Section is all about one woman’s revenge. It had a too brief appearance in the theaters in early 2020.

Just today it was released on Amazon Prime. If you are totally in a mental fog reading and watching news about the foiled Coup D’Etat of January 6 and the ceaseless pandemic here is some solid escapist entertainment.

Blake Lively makes the movie. The scene when she strips almost bare and walks into near a freezing Scottish lake made me shiver just watching her take a swim. That is one of the more subdued moments in this violent, gritty film.

The film is based on the 1999 novel of the same name by Mark Burnell.

San Francisco Chronicle 1.29.2020 – Mick LaSalle

Blake Lively is beyond good in “The Rhythm Section.” She is flat-out great. And what a surprise. She’s never been this good before.

“The Rhythm Section” — the title refers to coordinating one’s heart rate and breathing while shooting a gun — has an exceptionally smart script by Mark Burnell, who adapted his own novel. This is not the story of a woman who transforms into a killing machine. This remains the story of a fragile amateur, her life in ruins, who is in way over her head. Nothing goes the way it’s supposed to.

There is a lesson in this, one that audiences always forget and that critics should never forget, but we do: Actors are only as good as the chances they get. If someone seems like a lightweight, it might be because they’re stuck in lightweight roles. If Blake Lively has never seemed much more than a pleasant smile, maybe that’s because every other director has hired her only for that.

In this film Lively has the gravity, the aura and even the look of Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, one of the best actresses in Europe. Lively is tough, vulnerable, cracking up, coming apart and fighting back, and she’s communicating thought and being every moment onscreen.

We find out that her family — mother, father, sister and brother — was killed in a plane crash, and that she, Stephanie, has become a heroin addict and a prostitute. We further discover that the plane crash was the result of a terrorist act, but that the terrorists got away with it. Well, our Stephanie has nothing to lose. She doesn’t care if she lives or dies. She hooks up with a former MI6 agent (Jude Law) and volunteers to kill them all.

Along those lines, Morano gives us something here that we almost never see — a genuinely suspenseful chase scene: Stephanie is in a foreign country and people are shooting at her, so she tears off in a stolen car, only to find that she’s driving against traffic. And the car that’s chasing her is only about 10 feet behind. It’s the ultimate no-frills chase scene, but filmed with consummate skill, most of it from the perspective of the terrified driver. The resolution of the chase is equally simple and perfect.

Lively gets good support from her makeup team — she looks horribly unwell at the start of the film, with the complexion of a substance abuser, and only gradually begins to look reasonably healthy. She communicates her physical state through her labored movement, but the bad (and slowly improving) skin helps. Likewise, Lively benefits from having Law and Sterling K. Brown to play off of, not to mention Max Casella, who makes a vivid one-scene appearance.

But it’s Lively’s movie, and it’s she who kicks this superior thriller up an extra notch, to the point that it’s not only worth seeing for the excitement and thrills, but for her.

I would like to believe this is the beginning of something, a great epoch in Lively’s career. But even if it’s not, even if this is the career highlight, Lively has accomplished a performance onscreen that she can point to in 30 years and say, “Yeah, but I did that.” Because she sure did.

“The Rhythm Section”: Thriller. Starring Blake Lively, Jude Law and Sterling K. Brown. Directed by Reed Morano.  (R. 109 minutes.)

The Federal government is coming down hard on the mob of Neo Nazi style insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on January 6. 

Egged on by Trump these thugs probably thought there would be no ramifications.

The only way to bring a halt to the insurrection is to smash it by all means available to the government.

Excerpted from the Wall Street Journal 1.14.2021

Use of the Civil War-era law would signal the government’s intent to treat the siege as an assault on national security

Over almost 160 years, U.S. sedition laws have been used sparingly, including against a Christian militia group, Puerto Rican militants and Islamic jihadists who conspired to blow up New York landmarks.

Now, federal prosecutors say they plan to bring seditious conspiracy charges in their rapidly developing probe into the pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol last week. The charge is a powerful tool for prosecutors, signaling their intent to treat last week’s siege as a grave assault on national security.

The mainstream media’s unceasing, dishonest and disingenuous attacks on District Attorney Chesa Boudin are an insult to San Francisco. In office for a year the DA has implemented many policies he advocated during his victorious campaign.

The MSM is doing the work of the Police Officers Association which spent nearly $1,000,000 to defeat Chesa Boudin in 2019.

Unable to sink their collective teeth into a tabloid style scandal the mainstream media in the most craven manner has become fixated on the New Year’s Eve tragic deaths of two women on the streets of San Francisco.

DA Chesa Boudin being sworn in January 8, 2020 as Mayor London Breed and Chesa’s wife Dr. Valerie Block look on

Their deaths were caused by a parolee who, by many accounts, should have been in jail.

The entire onus has shamelessly been placed on the shoulders of the District Attorney by a sensationalized local media.

Enlightened media outlets have put out a more nuanced and balanced story. Regrettably these outlets do not have the audience of the MSM.

Last Sunday the San Francisco Chronicle ran a scurillous editorial damning Chesa and taking several shots at progressive District Attorneys. I wrote a letter to the editor. It has not been published. It follows.

The crime by Troy McAlister resulting in the deaths of two women on New Year’s Eve is reprehensible. Particularly for their families. The Chronicle is taking advantage of a criminal act and tragedy to destroy the District Attorney. It is simply wrong to state that Chesa Boudin has failed to take responsibility. He has consistently assumed accountability in several media appearances. The DA has stated that the responsibility is shared. The District Attorney, Department of Corrections, San Francisco and Daly City Police Departments. He will carry the psychological burden with him long after leaving office. The editorial glaringly states its real agenda. Frustration that its preferred candidate was defeated in 2019 and a slap at progressive justice. The Police Officers Association, which spent nearly 1MM to defeat the DA, must be ecstatic that the Chronicle is doing its bidding for them.

Writing in 48 Hills long time local journalist Tim Redmond has published two recent pieces.

The first (1.5.2021) is a detailed analysis of the New Year’s Eve tragedy and the relationship of several law enforcement agencies; San Francisco Police Department, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Daly City Police Department and San Francisco District Attorney.

https://48hills.org/2021/01/a-terrible-criminal-case-leads-to-terrible-politics-and-reporting/

The second (1.14.2021) is a retort to the Chronicle editorial. It includes letters to the editor which the paper squelched.

https://48hills.org/2021/01/chron-rejects-comments-critical-of-boudin-editorial/

Top photo – DA Boudin with Mayor London Breed

The fear that despite having 20,000 armed soldiers at the inauguration the insurrectionists who besieged Congress on January 6, 2021 will be back on January 20.

Even more insidious is the concern not voiced in the mainstream media that those who stormed Washington DC in their abortive Coup D’Etat have active support within law enforcement.

This is a concern which is understandably NOT where the American political Establishment wants to go. Its end game is terrifying.

Excerpted from The Nation 1.13.2021 – Elie Mystal

If we protected Black people from racist cops on the street, we wouldn’t have to worry about protecting presidents from their own Secret Service details. Maybe now, white people will get that. But I’m not willing to bet the continuity of the US government on it.

Joe Biden will be inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States on January 20. He could choose to observe this ritual in a bunker or on a plane or in a box with a fox. Instead, however, he will do it on an open-air platform erected just outside the Capitol in Washington, D.C.

Biden is taking what precautions he can. Reports indicate that he is changing his Secret Service detail to bring on agents who served him while he was vice president. It’s a wise move, but how in the hell does that help Kamala Harris?

Biden has to be there, but Kamala Harris does not. Nor does Nancy Pelosi. The principle of protecting the continuity of the government suggests that Harris and Pelosi, who are respectively the first and second in line to assume the presidency should something happen to Biden, must be shielded at all costs during Biden’s big day.

The problem is, even more than a celebration, we deserve Harris alive.

I don’t think the MAGA crowd can overcome the United States paramilitary apparatus that is set to be deployed to defend our government. I don’t think law enforcement can be overpowered in a repeat of its January 6 failures—unless, that is, its members want to be overpowered. We still haven’t wrestled with the fact that the people who stormed the Capitol clearly benefited from inside help—or at least from permissiveness from members of the Capitol Police.

Ayanna Pressley reports that the panic buttons had been ripped out of her office. Women of color like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Cori Bush all recount harrowing experiences. Jim Clyburn says the mob found his private, unmarked office—not the one with his name on the door. Nobody knows if people of color in Congress are safe from their own law enforcement.

Nor will we have found all the violent white supremacists currently embedded in the National Guard. Or working for the Secret Service.

As it is, the Secret Service is investigating one of its own for posting a pro-Trump meme and praising the rioters who stormed the Capitol. The Washington Post reports that the meme shows Trump shaking hands with himself under the caption, “Here’s to the peaceful transition of power.”
We know, at the very least, that many in law enforcement sympathize with Trump because their unions almost universally endorsed him. Most people reacted to the police union endorsement of Trump as mere politics, but Black people have been trying to tell the rest of you for years that the police are aligned with white supremacist forces in this country.

Some of the people who participated in and incited the insurrection have already blended back in with the rest of society. That’s because they were allowed to just walk away—because the cops didn’t make mass arrests at the scene of the violence. And so, we might never catch all of the law enforcement personnel who breached the Capitol. We certainly won’t catch all the law enforcement personnel who stayed outside but cheered them on.

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/biden-inauguration-safety/

Every Picture Tells a Story – Ongoing Insurrection series

Top photo – US inspired Coup d’etat in Chile 9.11.1973 resulting in overthrow of democratically elected regime of Salvador Allende

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

Shown below – Updated 2004 Time Magazine cover from US Iraqi invasion to reflect the current State of Siege in America.

Reichstag Fire. Berlin 2.27.1933 cemented Adolf Hitler’s grip on power in Germany.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire

COUP D’ETAT, INSURRECTION, and IMPEACHMENT may be words of the week in most news outlets following the Trump inspired assault on Washington January 6.

It’s reassuring?? to know that Fashionistas still have their own priorities and are dispensing with some Glitterati critique for the incoming Veep in these nightmarish final days of Trump.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 1.11.2021

A “washed-out mess” or “sloppy work”? Social media users blasted the chosen photo, while the VP-elect’s team reportedly asked for another.
The pictures were shot by Tyler Mitchell, who gained fame as the first Black photographer to shoot an American Vogue cover in the magazine’s history — it featured Beyoncé in 2018. While Mitchell did not directly weigh in on the debate on Sunday, he tweeted the cover of Harris in the powder blue suit that evening.

Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris, the first woman of color to hold the second-highest office in the US, will appear on the cover of fashion magazine Vogue in February. Yet the image chosen came under fire for being poorly lit and styled after the magazine tweeted it on Sunday.

In the picture in question — one of two that will be used for the digital version of the magazine — the Vice President-Elect stands in front of a pink drape with a pale green background, casually dressed in a two-piece suit and Converse Chuck Taylor sneakers.

One Twitter user called it “a washed-out mess.”

Another felt it disrespected the Vice President-Elect in its sloppiness. “Folks who don’t get why the Vogue cover of VP-Elect Kamala Harris is bad are missing the point. The pic itself isn’t terrible as a pic. It’s just far, far below the standards of Vogue. They didn’t put thought into it. Like homework finished the morning it’s due,” wrote LGTBQ rights activist Charlotte Clymer.

Later on Sunday evening, the magazine released a second image that featured Harris dressed more formally in a powder blue suit in front of a gold backdrop.

Fashion photographer Tyler Mitchell

https://www.dw.com/en/kamala-harris-vogue-cover-causes-controversy/a-56192057

Every Picture Tells a Story – Insurrection series

Three huge screens of Trump with the backdrop of the White House on January 6, 2021.

It looks like a scene straight out of a cinematic remake of George Orwell’s novel 1984.

This is not fiction.  It is Donald Trump inciting his crowd of Fascist Proud Boys, QAnon and fellow travelers to storm the halls of Congress.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four

It’s refreshing and reassuring to realize there are women like Joan Baez.

When I was coming of age in the ’60s her music and political activisim were a fixture of American culture and politics during the American imperialist Vietnam war and closer to home, the civil rights movement.

Joan Baez must be appalled but not surprised at the coup d’etat attempt by Trump and his unhinged nihilistic Nazi like bands of thugs.

Excertped from Deutsche Welle 1.9.2021

DW’s Susanne Spröer recalls how Baez changed her life. –

Joan Chandos Baez was born on January 9, 1941 in Staten Island, New York to Albert Baez, a Mexican-born physicist, and Joan Bridge, born in Scotland. She was the second of three daughters.

Her father’s work led the family to move often; they lived on the East Coast of the US, then in Baghdad, Iraq (where the 10-year-old Joan read The Diary of Anne Frank), and later in California. Throughout her childhood and youth, Joan suffered from anxiety attacks and found it difficult to connect with her peers. Her family was her refuge.

That all changed when Joan was given a ukulele. All of a sudden, the outsider — who had been marginalized in school by the white kids because her skin was too dark, and by the Mexican kids because she couldn’t speak Spanish — found her place by playing songs in the schoolyard for the other school children.

Her first act of civil disobedience came at around that time too: She boycotted a nuclear war exercise she felt was ridiculous. From then on, she remained committed to music, and to social activism. She enjoyed being the center of attention.

To become a top singer in her school choir, she’d invent exercises to train her voice at home. A voice that Time magazine later described “as clear as air in the autumn, a vibrant, strong, untrained and thrilling soprano.”

Joan Baez also had a key experience at the age of 13. In the spring of 1954, her aunt and uncle took her to a concert by folk singer Pete Seeger. An exception in the dazzling music industry of the ’50s, Seeger stood for anti-elitist music.

“Sing with me. Sing for you. Make your own music,” he told the audience. His message was that we should forget big stars — and that everybody should be one.

Joan was electrified. She wanted to make music, and the music she wanted to make was folk. She started practicing folk songs.

In 1958, her family moved to Boston, which was at the heart of the folk revival scene. Joan studied acting, worked on the side — and got her first gig at Club 47 in Cambridge. She was paid $10, and 12 people showed up — mostly family or friends.

Barefoot and in a long dress, she accompanied herself on the guitar, an exotic beauty with a voice clear as a bell, concentrated, intense and natural. It was nothing like the often overdressed showbiz blondes of the time.

Soon more and more people wanted to hear her sing songs such as “John Riley,” “Silver Dagger” or “All My Trials.” In July 1959 she performed at the Newport Folk Festival. Her short performance was a bombshell.

Cover Time Magazine – 1962

Outdoing each other with superlatives, newspapers described her as the “musical Madonna” — long before the other Madonna would stir the music scene. It was the beginning of a six-decade career with more than 30 multi-award winning albums.

The 22-minute piece, “Where Are You Now, My Son?” (one side of the album of the same name), is a unique depiction of the Vietnam War, a collage of sounds, conversations and singing accompanying the lament of a mother who has lost her son.

Joan Baez – Vietnam war protest. Frankfurt, 1966

The sounds were recorded in Hanoi, where Joan Baez was stuck with a delegation of the peace movement around Christmas 1972. While the bombs were falling, Joan Baez was singing “Silent Night“ with the people around her. 

The “Christmas Bombings” were the heaviest bombardments by the US Air Force since the Second World War. Baez later wrote in her memoir, And a Voice to Sing With, that the album “is my gift to the Vietnamese people, and my prayer of thanks for being alive.” 

When the album was released in 1973, Joan Baez was 31 and a world star. Her performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1959 had launched her meteoric career. Many of her records went gold. She was onstage at the legendary Woodstock Festival in 1969 and also made Bob Dylan and his songs world famous (“Forever Young” is one of them). Those were just a few of her musical achievements.

Joan Baez at Civil Rights march in Washington, DC August 1963

Inseparable from Joan Baez’ music was her political activism: In 1963, she marched side by side with Martin Luther King against racial segregation. She was later arrested during protests against the Vietnam War. 

In 1966, right in the middle of the Cold War, she was invited to perform in East Germany on May 1, International Workers’ Day. Rather than serving as the poster child of Communist authorities, she had dissident songwriter Wolf Biermann join her unannounced onstage at the East Berlin cabaret, Distel.

The state had already blacklisted and banned Biermann from performing publicly. But Baez wouldn’t toe any ideological line: She opposed oppression, whether from the right or the left. The concert was filmed for East German television but never broadcast.

If there’s one surprising thing in her career, it’s that she wasn’t inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame until 2017.

https://www.dw.com/en/joan-baez-turns-80-how-she-made-me-a-political-person/a-56038716