The Twilight Zone Meets Mad Magazine

Talking Points Memo – 1.11.2019

Upon returning back to the White House following a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border — a trip he admitted to reporters was just a photo op — President Trump concluded that the U.S. is being invaded by immigrants.

Artwork created by my daughter Atlanta Kane

Check out the photo.  It’s Great. Hillary, second from the left, along with her San Francisco City Hall staff.

It is really shameful that Hillary Ronen was not selected by her comrades.  More glaring is the fact the  presumed Progs now have eight of the 11 Supervisorial seats.

Last Friday  I was cycling across McAllister and Polk by City Hall.  Supervisors Sandy Fewer and Norman Yee walked across the street by me in deep conversation.

That should have been a “heads up.”

Heather Knight’s column on the masthead of the Bay Area section in Tuesday’s Chronicle says it all.  There’s a vicious double standard at work here.  Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, now Hillary Ronen all get dissed because they are assertive and aggressive women.

I have never liked this misogynistic behavior.  Sandy and Aaron Peskin should be ashamed of themselves.  I suppose Sandy has a quasi-decent rationale because Norman Yee is Asian and now that late Mayor Ed Lee is gone the Asian community needs an influential voice in a power position at San Francisco City Hall.

There is no excuse for Aaron’s behavior.

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez has a good column in today’s Examiner about the internecine warfare amongst the Progs.

This is typical disgraceful Board of Supervisors behavior and all too typical of San Francisco. Leave it to the presumed Cadres, Sandy Fewer and Aaron Peskin, to torch the advancement of a True Progressive. I am a D1 resident and supported Marjan Philhour in 2016. Moderate (whatever that means) she may be. At least I knew what to expect in supporting her candidacy. Let the Cadres hope for their day in San Francisco. It’s going to be a long wait.

Amazing and Shameful … So much for Freedom of Speech in America

Excerpted from The Guardian of London 1.8.2019

The veteran civil rights activist Angela Davis said she was “stunned” by the decision of Alabama’s Birmingham Civil Rights Institute to revoke an award she was set to receive.

The institute announced in October that Davis, a Birmingham native, would receive the Fred Shuttlesworth Human Rights award, calling her “one of the most globally recognized champions of human rights, giving voice to those who are powerless to speak”.

But last week, the organization reversed course and said she does not meet the criteria after all, in an apparent response to objections over her outspoken support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement that protests against Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

“I have devoted much of my own activism to international solidarity and, specifically, to linking struggles in other parts of the world to US grassroots campaigns against police violence, the prison industrial complex, and racism more broadly,” Davis said in a statement on Monday night.

“The rescinding of this invitation and the cancellation of the event where I was scheduled to speak was thus not primarily an attack against me but rather against the very spirit of the indivisibility of justice.”

Davis, who was an active member of the Black Panther party, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the US communist party, said her support for Palestinian prisoners is consistent with her support for political prisoners in other parts of the world.

Why are the Republicans so Upset? What AOC said on 60 Minutes is credible.

Washington Times 1.8.2019

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Sunday there is “no question” that President Trump is a racist.

“The president certainly didn’t invent racism. But he’s certainly given a voice to it and expanded it and created a platform for those things,” the new New York congresswoman told Anderson Cooper in her “60 Minutes” interview.

She argued that the president’s rhetoric includes the “historic dog whistles of white supremacy.”

“When you look at how he reacted to the Charlottesville incident, where neo-Nazis murdered a woman, versus how he manufactures crises like immigrants seeking legal refuge on our borders, it’s — it’s night and day,” she said.

In a statement to CBS, the White House slammed Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’ comments as “sheer ignorance” and said the president “has repeatedly condemned racism and bigotry in all forms.”

German journalist posted an anti-Nazi slogan.  The post earned her vitriol and death threats from far-right users.

Deutsche Welle 1.7.2019

Prominent German lawmakers and journalists have posted messages of support for a journalist who was virulently criticized for posting “Nazis out” (“Nazis raus”) on her personal Twitter account.

“What @nicolediekmann is experiencing right now, as a woman, as a journalist, as a democrat, affects us all,” wrote the Greens’ parliamentary leader, Katrin Göring-Eckardt.

The phrase — a play on the neo-Nazi phrase “Foreigners Out” — is a well-known anti-fascist slogan in Germany. Nicole Diekmann, a journalist at public broadcaster ZDF, received hundreds of comments and thousands of retweets after she posted it on New Year’s Day.

Read more: German Green Party chief Robert Habeck quits Twitter after data hack

While many comments were supportive, others lashed out at her for using the phrase and writing, “Everyone who doesn’t vote for the Green Party” in a sarcastic reply to one user who asked her: “Who is a Nazi?” Some of the posts implicitly called for Diekmann’s murder.

The controversy intensified on Monday after the Berliner Zeitung newspaper published a commentary denouncing Diekmann’s critics, leading many German publications and politicians from the Greens, Social Democrats (SPD) and Left Party to publish posts with the hashtag “#NazisRaus” (Nazis Out).

Ongoing “Every Picture Tells a Story, Don’t It?” Series

Speaker Pelosi Takes the Reins of Power in Congress

This is reminiscent of the Weimar Republic which was founded in 1919 after WWI.  Fourteen years later the Nazis came into power on January 30, 1933.  In Germany today the middle road is being carved out.  The extremes are gaining more prominence. The AfD has 93 seats in the Federal Reichstag.  Well over 10 percent.

Deutsche Welle 1.4.2019

German authorities may soon release three suspects who were detained following a blast near the AfD’s local office in Döbeln, officials said on Friday.

The men, local Germans aged 29, 32, and 50, are suspected of detonating an “unknown substance” in the street on Thursday evening.

The explosion damaged the door and windows of the AfD office and set fire to promotional materials inside, prompting firefighters to deploy to the scene. Nearby cars were reportedly also damaged. No injuries were reported.

On Friday, prosecutors said they suspected the three men were behind the attack, but added that they would not request their detention because there was insufficient grounds to do so.

“The attack against the AfD office in Döbeln is extraordinary given that the explosion meant accepting that people could be harmed,” the state police said. A task force for investigating extremism and terrorism, it added, was probing Thursday’s incident.

Police said there had been a series of attacks against AfD offices in the eastern state of Saxony in recent weeks, but added that most of them were limited to vandalism.