San Francisco is treating the Shelter in Place very seriously to the point of not passing those Joints around.

The City’s much ballyhooed annual 4.20 celebaration commemorating, now legal in California, marijuana was snuffed out by City Officials as a Health and Safety measure.

San Francisco seemed to take it in stride. Folks here figure there will be another time in another year to celebrate the Herb.

Anyway the citizenry can light up in the privacy of their Shelter in Place dwelling.

Top photo – Lee Heidhues 2019 4.20 Celebration

San Francisco Chronicle 4.20.2020

Adriana Sparkuhl approached the fence circling Hippie Hill in Golden Gate Park just before 4:20 p.m. Monday to capture the unusual scene on her phone: an empty meadow. Not a puff of smoke in the air. Park rangers cruising on four-wheelers and helicopters droning overhead.

“It’s official. Shut down,” the San Francisco resident said while filming the scene for her social media followers. “We’re at ground zero — we get to see it for ourselves.”

Like everything else, the unofficial 4/20 gathering of smokers, stoners and marijuana lovers in Golden Gate Park was hindered by the pandemic. City officials built a fence around Hippie Hill and Robin Williams Meadow where for many years thousands have congregated to smoke. Signs read: “CLOSED for COVID-19 (coronavirus) health precautions,” and police officers and park rangers patrolled the perimeter.

People complied. Typical park activity — joggers, walkers and bikers wearing masks and breathing fresh air — replaced the usual party scene. Officers who had been there since morning, and planned to stay all day, said there were few problems.

Recognizing the potential for trouble, Mayor London Breed last week started warning people to stay away from San Francisco and stay home for 4/20. Police Chief William Scott echoed the same message.

“So far things are going really, really well,” Scott said during a news conference early Monday afternoon. “I’d like to thank everyone for that but remind everyone to please keep this momentum going. This is literally a matter of life or death, and I don’t think I’m being melodramatic when I say that.”

In a video tweeted by Breed, Bay Area rapper E-40 also urged people to stay home.

“This is the bay, we’re Bay Area strong,” he said. “Let’s stay in the house, man. We love 4/20 but let’s not get out there in crowds and all that, let’s not do that. It’s gotta be canceled this year.”

On Monday afternoon, some park-goers forgetting what day it was were confused by the fence, while others showed up just to see it.

Jun Kobashigawa hopped off his bike, pushed his sunglasses to his forehead and snapped a few pictures on his iPhone.

“I guess I should get the fence,” he said, stepping back and snapping again. “It’s part of it.”

The longtime 4/20 participant spread his arms wide as he recalled the blanket of hazy smoke that drifted above a laid-back crowd in years past.

“Maybe I was stoned at the time,” he laughed. “But I was very impressed.”

Kobashigawa pedaled back down the trail with a treat tucked in his pocket to find a more secluded spot.

“I mean, you’re not supposed to smoke outside,” he said. “But you know, today’s 4/20!”

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Coronavirus-on-4-20-No-crowds-at-Golden-Gate-15214270.php#photo-19320729

It is the height of greed and selfishness for Outside Lands to still be on schedule for this August in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.

It is beyond shameful that Another Planet which stands to make millions is too concerned about its bottom line and not the health of the community.

In this time of the Coronavirus the Another Planet should not be waiting for San Francisco officialdom to take the step it should have taken already.

The promoters should be more than exploring. Cancel Outside Lands 2020 now.

Excerpted from Bloomberg  News 4.18.2020

Many artists and promoters don’t think there will be live music at all in 2020.

Outside Lands, a music festival held in San Francisco every August, is exploring a move to October or next year, according to Gregg Perloff, one of the festival’s organizers. “The odds of it happening in August go down with each passing day,” Perloff said from his home in Lafayette, California. “We have to have a situation where the public feels safe, we feel safe and the bands feel safe.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-18/will-there-be-any-concerts-in-2020-artists-promoters-think-not

The Screaming Trumpistas will fight to support their totally unhinged hero until the bitter end.

These bitter enders may be struck down during the Pandemic. No matter. They’re True Believers all.

These folks will tune into Fox News and its duplicative cousins to drink the Kool-Aide being spoon fed to them.

These gullible citizens will howl in disbelief while they are going down while blaming everyone but the Shyster who put them in danger of death.

Daily Beast 4.18.2018

He is telling us plainly that he will stoke civil unrest and further harm public health to find a political pathway out of a galactic-scale fuck-up of his own making.

Trump’s stirring up his base will have consequences. Many of the people at his “liberation” rallies may well get or spread COVID-19, just when the country’s continued diligence and caution about flattening the curve through social distancing is most vital. These engineered protests are taking resources that first responders desperately need to respond to the crisis, not Trump’s crisis actors. 

Donald Trump fired the first shots in the COVID Civil War this week, a modern-day Jefferson Davis of the Pro-Plague States of America sending his opening salvo from Fort Twitter at Democratic governors who dared to question if it wasn’t just a wee bit early to end the stay-at-home orders in states still far to the left of the peak.

He started the week with claims of “total authority” and then cried about a supposed mutiny by mouthy state leaders. By Friday, he was up to calls to “liberate” states.

Who does he want people to rise up against, exactly: People who don’t want to die? People who don’t want protesters spreading a deadly disease that’s already killed 34,000 Americans? Governors who swore an oath to serve their states and protect their citizens? Science? Medicine?

Whatever the enemy, the Trump horde is lurching toward it with protests “breaking out” in state capitals across the land filled with MAGAmericans clad in their Red Badge of Credulity hats and carrying the banners of Esoteric Trumpism. Events in Florida, Kentucky, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, and California have popped up in the last 36 hours, with more on the way.

In Ohio, one striking photograph showed the screaming faces of Trump supporters pressed against the glass doors of the state capitol, their incandescent rage caught in a single moment of fury. Surrounding capitols, blaring horns, they’re ready to protest side by side, fighting social distancing to the death.

First of all, you should understand that none of this—zero, zip, nada —is organic. None of this is real. Every bit of it is being pushed on Trump’s behalf via the twin modalities of our doom: Fox and Facebook.

Just as the Tea Party had a brief, organic origin story but was soon managed, harnessed, controlled and weaponized, so too is today’s Trump movement. The crowds showing up for these “liberation rallies” are lowing cattle, led down a chute to be fed or slaughtered, depending on the day. Their ignorance of their own state as philosophical zombies whose lives Trump is literally willing to sacrifice for a tiny bump in the stock market is breathtaking. Dying for a second-order economic effect will show the libs, right?

I’ve gotten in trouble before for calling them a bunch of credulous boomer rubes, but have a look at the demographic of any person at these stupid protests in pro-plague America; lily-white, assertively boomer, and as shrill as Tomi Lahren after an espresso colonic.

The first Civil War was against the vilest institution imaginable: a war to end a regime that treated humans as property, and waged at a horrific, bloody cost. Trump’s cosplayed civil war is against science, medicine, healthy public policy, and the desire to not have millions of Americans die in a preventable and shockingly resilient plague.

He wants his rebellion because it feeds into his brand of transgression and he believes it will benefit him politically; Donald Trump’s never tried to liberate a damn thing in his life except for banks from their money, porn stars from their panties, and rubes from their votes.

Let’s be clear about the things he’s going to do and the risks he is willing to take with the American people. Trump is telling us bluntly and plainly that he will stoke civil unrest to find a political pathway out of a galactic-scale fuck-up of his own making. He’s willing to let a disease that’s already killed 33,000 Americans due to his inaction and dishonesty spread further, faster, and more widely.

While the American President bloviates, distracts and divides the country the scientific community is doing its job looking for a cure to the Coronavirus.

The Bizarre behavior of Donald Trump and his Base supporters is the best example of why science and politics should never intertwine.

Let the scientists do their job unimpeded by ignormaus politicians.

Deutsche Welle 4.17.2020

Coronavirus-infected monkeys treated with the experimental drug remdesivir improved significantly, an initial medical trial has shown. The animals showed marked improvement just 12 hours after the first treatment.

On Thursday, it was reported that the drug had also been regarded as effective on coronavirus patients in Chicago who are participating in the trial.

US government scientists reported Friday that the antiviral drug remdesivir was effective in treating monkeys infected with COVID-19.

“Early treatment with the experimental antiviral drug remdesivir significantly reduced clinical disease and damage to the lungs of rhesus macaques infected with SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19,” said a press release from the National Institutes of Health, which ran the experiment.

The small study, which is preliminary and has yet to be peer-reviewed, mimicked treatment procedures that are being used in a large human trial conducted on patients who have been hospitalized with either COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2.

Remdesivir works against the COVID-19 by adding mutations that ultimately destroy the virus. 

Improvement after first treatment

In the experiment with monkeys, two groups of six rhesus macaques were intentionally infected with the respiratory virus. The test group was treated with the drug, developed by Gilead Sciences, while the untreated comparison group was not.

 

Some patients are receiving treatment with remdesivir in trials

The test group was given their first dose of the drug intravenously 12 hours after the initial infection, then every day for the next six days. The first treatment was timed to occur just before the virus reached its maximum level in the monkeys’ lungs.

Twelve hours after the first treatment, the macaques’ symptoms had significantly improved. Their conditions continued improving over the week.

At the end of the test phase, just one of the six treated animals displayed mild difficulty breathing, while all six animals in the untreated group had difficulty breathing.

The treated group also displayed significantly lower levels of the virus in their lungs than the untreated group and also had less lung damage.

Read more: Could an existing drug help against the new coronavirus?

More trials underway

Remdesivir is one of the first drugs thought to be capable of treating the new coronavirus. Clinical trials are already underway with human patients.

https://www.dw.com/en/antiviral-drug-remdesivir-shows-promise-in-trial-on-monkeys-with-coronavirus/a-53170509

It’s a disgrace that America and the World has had to live with such a clueless moron for nearly four years.  I mean Donald Trump.

The clown can’t even string a couple of sentences together and here he is cutting funding to the World Health Organization which has been in the lead to combat Covid-19.

All those easy to entertain and politically seduce Americans who watched “The Apprentice”and helped to propel this huckster showman into office are now paying the price for their idiocy at the ballot box and possibly with their health.

Let’s hope (and pray for the religiously inclined) the world rids itself of this political charlatan next November.

Germany has a person in power who can speak intelligently having been a scientist. Angela Merkel obtained a doctorate in quantum chemistry in 1986 and worked as a research scientist until 1989. The American system and its electorate would never elect such a distinguished person, let alone a woman.

While drafting this post I am listening to Moussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.” It is fitting music for The Pandemic. We saw it performed at the San Francisco Symphony several years ago. Beautiful music in a time of stress and fear.

Deutsche Welle 4.16.2020

More than 140,000 people have died due to complications of the novel coronavirus and two million more have been infected. The pandemic has strained healthcare systems across the globe and led to historic social and economic disruption.

The German chancellor has expressed her full support for the UN health agency, saying a “strong international response” is the only way to end the pandemic. US President Trump has accused the WHO of failing its mandate.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has thrown her support behind the World Health Organization (WHO) as it tackles the devastating novel coronavirus pandemic, government spokesman Steffan Seibert said on Thursday.

“The chancellor stressed that the pandemic can only be defeated with a strong and coordinated international response,” said Seibert. “To this end, she expressed her full support for the WHO and numerous other partners.”

Merkel’s comments were made during a video conference call with G7 leaders, just a day after US President Donald Trump announced he would suspend funding for the UN health agency.

The move was widely criticized in Europe. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said the funding freeze amounted to “throwing the pilot out of the plane in mid-flight.”

“It makes no sense at all to question the functioning and significance of the WHO now,” Maas said. He described the WHO as a the “backbone of the fight against the pandemic.”

Other G7 leaders also appeared critical of Trump’s unilateral action against the WHO. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the other G7 leaders, including Italy’s Giuseppe Conte and France’s Emmanuel Macron, recognized the need for a multilateral response to the pandemic.

Meanwhile, the White House said Trump’s conversation “centered on the lack of transparency and chronic mismanagement of the pandemic by the WHO,” adding that G7 leaders had urged a “thorough review and reform process.”

On Wednesday, Trump announced he would suspend more than $400 million in annual funding to the WHO, saying the UN agency “failed to adequately obtain, vet and share information in a timely and transparent fashion.”

https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-angela-merkel-backs-who-after-donald-trump-cuts-funding/a-53156070

There is nothing I have to say except to read the following story and shake your head in dismay and disgust.

What is most distressing is the FACT this same officer engaged in behavior totally unbecoming yet faced no reprecussion whatsoever.

Message:  The cops protect their own.

San Francisco Chronicle 4.15.2020

A San Francisco police officer assigned to the San Francisco International Airport bureau was arrested and booked into jail on suspicion of domestic violence and sexual assault, The Chronicle has learned.

Simon Chan, a 23-year veteran at the department, was placed on unpaid leave effective April 9 and an internal investigation is ongoing, said Sgt. Michael Andraychak, a San Francisco police spokesman.

Chan, who currently works as a K9 handler, was one of four San Francisco police officers named in a 2005 lawsuit that alleged the officers forced a gay man they caught urinating in the street to kneel down and mop up the mess with his hair.

The city ultimately settled the lawsuit for $82,500, but none of the officers faced discipline because the Police Department missed a legal deadline to investigate the allegations.

Chan was arrested at SFO in the early morning hours of April 10, booked into jail and released later that day after posting $100,000 bail. Wagstaffe said Chan was arrested on suspicion of forcible rape and domestic violence, with the alleged incidents occurring between Dec. 24 and April 1.

The district attorney declined to comment further on the case, which is being investigated by San Bruno police.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/SF-police-officer-arrested-on-suspicion-of-15203408.php

Trouble Comin’ Everyday –  Pandemic Economic version.

Now the banking world is being hit hard by the Coronavirus and its impact on the work force.  When individuals and institutions cannot pay their loans to the banks the spread of the economic malaise widens.

Wall Street Journal 4.14.2020

The large U.S. lenders are preparing for an economic downturn as millions remain out of work

What’s more, banks and other lenders are starting to toughen their loan-approval standards, particularly for new customers. That means many people could find it hard to get credit just when they most need it.

Big banks sent a clear message in first-quarter earnings Tuesday: This recession is going to be bad.

Shares for both JPMorgan and Wells Fargo fell, with JPMorgan dropping about 3% and Wells Fargo losing about 4%.

JPMorgan earned $2.87 billion, down 69% from $9.18 billion a year earlier. The bank earned $0.78 per share, missing the $2.16 forecast by analysts polled by FactSet.

JPMorgan revenue was down 3% to $28.25 billion. That fell short of the $29.55 billion analysts had predicted.

Wells Fargo earned $653 million, down 89% from $5.86 billion a year earlier. The bank earned 1 cent per share, missing analyst expectations of 38 cents.

JPMorgan JPM -2.74% Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo WFC -3.98% & Co. set aside billions of additional dollars to get ready for a flood of customers to default on their loans as the coronavirus pandemic pummels the economy. That sunk the banks’ quarterly profits.

“We don’t know what the time frame is or how quickly the economy will recover,” said Wells Fargo CEO Charles Scharf. “What we do know is the contraction is real.”

Both banks have pledged to help troubled borrowers and small businesses by, for example, waiving late fees or allowing them to temporarily suspend their monthly payments. They have also taken a central role in disbursing government stimulus money to businesses. But that might not be enough for workers who could be out of a job and small businesses that could be shut down for many months.

Spending on credit cards dropped for both banks. JPMorgan said most customers kept up payments on credit cards through April 1, but that more customers have been late on those loans in the past two weeks. Wells Fargo said that consumers had already contacted Wells to defer more than a million payments, mostly on mortgages and auto loans.

Here’s a positive aspect of Congress being unable to conduct its business.

The federal surveillance powers put in place following the 9/11 terrorist attacks have lapsed, limiting the governments power to use its virtually unlimited authority to conduct investigations

Excerpted from the Wall Street Journal 4.13.2020

WASHINGTON—The recent lapse of a set of federal surveillance powers has begun to limit the FBI’s ability to pursue some terrorism and espionage suspects, a top Justice Department official said, outlining how the ripple effects of the coronavirus pandemic are being felt across U.S. national security efforts.

Privacy advocates have challenged claims that the expiration of the tools jeopardizes national security.

“Clearly, the sky hasn’t fallen,” said Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the national security program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “What we are seeing is that the intelligence community has turned into the boy who cried wolf, because they are always painting the most dire picture if they lose an authority.”

The business records provision can allow for investigations that were taking place before March 15 to continue unencumbered. Mr. Demers acknowledged that officials were “considering right now” whether to try to file some business records applications using that part of the law.

He also said investigators haven’t been able to obtain renewals for existing roving wiretaps since the law’s expiration, but declined to quantify how many.

While most employees at the Justice Department are able to work from home during the coronavirus pandemic, many employees in the national security division don’t have that luxury because of the need to be in the office to access classified information in secure rooms.

The quiet building has taken some getting used to: Its cafeteria is shuttered, and Mr. Demers said he has been visiting a nearby restaurant every day that offers takeout.

“I have to introduce some variety into my lunches,” Mr. Demers said.

The Incumbent will cynically use xenophobia and the Pandemic to foist himself on sufficient numbers of gullible American voters to maintain his grip on power another four years.

The latest ploy is to blame China for the Coronavirus Pandemic. His enablers on Fox News, servile Republican politicans and a xenophobic electoral are all too ready to support this charade.

Sadly the Democrats don’t have a clue on how to respond.

Excerpted from Daily Beast 4.12.2020

President Donald Trump and his allies are leaning heavily into a new 2020 strategy tying Democrats and their presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden not just to China but to its role in spreading the coronavirus.

Democrats are increasingly worried that the strategy will work.

The Trump re-election campaign released a new ad this week going after Biden over his opposition to restrictions on travel from China designed to control the spread of the coronavirus outbreak. That was followed with a fundraising solicitation on Saturday that hammered home the point: “I am TOUGH ON CHINA and Sleepy Joe Biden is WEAK ON CHINA,” it declared.

Inside the campaign, the strategy is simple: make China the villain of a global pandemic that has complicated well-laid electoral plans and sparked growing criticism of the president.

“[China’s] among many weaknesses, but when people learn about Biden’s attack on the president’s China travel ban, his other weak positions on China, and his conflict with Hunter Biden’s business deal with China, voters are horrified,” John McLaughlin, a Trump pollster, told The Daily Beast on Friday. Other Trump 2020 officials said that the campaign had always intended to hammer Biden on China until the election in November, and the coronavirus “angle” was merely another way to go after the Bidens and China simultaneously.

In one sense it’s simply an extension of Team Trump’s months-long strategy to tie Biden to a country increasingly viewed with suspicion by American voters. The campaign and the Republican National Committee have been hammering Biden for months over his youngest son Hunter’s past business dealings in China.

But the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, which originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan, has made the country a far more potent political villain. And the massive disruptions in daily life caused by the virus virtually guarantee that China will remain in the headlines—and on the minds of American voters—for months as election day approaches. Polls already indicate that Americans of both parties overwhelmingly blame China for the virus’ initial spread.

For a Trump campaign that’s a potential political goldmine. “China was an effective wedge issue for Trump in 2016,” said one Republican strategist close to the campaign. “Now that it’s at the top of everyone’s mind, and Biden has a long record of being weak on China, just imagine how much more effective it will be in 2020.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/democrats-fear-trumps-china-bashing-on-coronavirus-is-working?via=newsletter&source=Weekend

There are many reasons to watch Season 3 of Babylon Berlin which takes place in 1929 as the world economy crashes and the Nazis are in the ascendancy.

Hans Litten is part of the story line. In real life he cross examined Adolf Hitler during a criminal trial in 1931. Nazi thugs had attacked patrons in a popular German night club. Hans Litten kept Hitler on the witness stand on May 8, 1931 and thoroughly humiliated him. Hitler never forgot or forgave.

In the fictionalized Babylon Berlin, Hans Litten takes up the case of a woman who is wrongfully convicted of the murder of a progressive Prosecutor.  It’s riveting watching and politically intriguing.

Irish Legal News 3.25.2020

The latest series of the gritty and stylish TV drama Babylon Berlin, set in Weimar Germany, introduces Hans Litten as a civil rights lawyer battling to save the life of a woman sentenced to death after being tricked by the Nazis into assassinating Germany’s Jewish chief prosecutor. Connor Beaton shares his inspiring and moving story.

He was everything Hitler hated: an intelligent Jewish lawyer who defended communists and spoke truth to power about the Nazi Party’s violent, hateful ideology.

Hans Litten was not a typical 1930s Berlin lawyer. He reluctantly studied the law under pressure from his father, quipping in his diary: “When the ox in paradise was bored, he invented jurisprudence.”

Although he passed his exams with flying colours, he turned down lucrative job offers from the German government and a leading law firm – instead going into practice with his friend Dr Ludwig Barbasch, a left-wing radical who narrowly escaped a death sentence for his part in a communist revolt.

The pair quickly established themselves as “advocates of the working class”, defending workers from the brunt of the police and the state in the dying days of the Weimar Republic.

But it was an electrifying courtroom encounter with Adolf Hitler, head of the nascent Nazi movement, that sealed Litten’s fate.

Representing four workers injured during an attack by Nazi paramilitaries on a popular dance-hall, Litten had Hitler – then attempting to carve out a respectable reputation among Germany’s middle-class – called into court on the morning of 8 May 1931.

Litten’s three-hour cross-examination of the future dictator thoroughly shook and humiliated Hitler, who fumbled and contradicted himself when challenged on his party’s violent actions and rhetoric.

For years to come, Hitler lashed out at anyone who dared to mention Litten’s name – and when the Reichstag fire allowed the Nazis to assume total authority in 1933, Litten was one of the first people to be arrested.

He spent the rest of his life in prisons and concentration camps, beaten and tortured by Nazi authorities in a bid to have him betray friends and colleagues who posed a threat to the fascist order.

Those who languished in prison with him recall a man who was well-liked for his knowledge and love of culture – someone who fought valiantly to keep others’ spirits high in desperate circumstances.

Sadly, Litten eventually took his own life in Dachau on 5 February 1938, becoming one of millions who were driven out of this world by a fascist movement that committed mass murder on an unprecedented industrial scale in the final years of World War II.

To this day, Berlin’s district court and the German Bar Association can be found on the German capital’s Littenstrasse as a stark reminder of the dangers of leaving racism, anti-Semitism and fascism unchallenged.

As he approached the end, Litten sang the traditional song Die Gedanken sind frei to his fellow prisoners in defiance of watching SS officers, taunting them with apt lyrics:

“And if I am thrown into the darkest dungeon,
all these are futile works,
because my thoughts tear all gates
and walls apart: Thoughts are free!”

https://www.irishlegal.com/article/our-legal-heritage-the-lawyer-who-put-hitler-in-the-dock

To learn more in detail about Hans Litten I would recommend the book, “Crossing Hitler: The Man Who Put the Nazis on the Witness Stand.” – Benjamin Carter Hett – 2008, Oxford University Press