SAN FRANCISCO – CHINATOWN PORTSMOUTH SQUARE Lee Heidhues 4.6.2024
When it comes to Mayoral campaign opening day crowds, Supervisor Aaron Peskin has no competition.
Launching his campaign on a sunny Spring morning in a packed Portsmouth Square in San Francisco’s Chinatown, Aaron Peskin was joined by several hundred beyond enthusiastic supporters.It was a gathering of the City’s Progressive glitterati and a representative sampling of multi-cultural San Francisco.
The other entrants in the race. Mayor London Breed; Supervisor Ahsha Safai; Levi Strauss & Co. scion Daniel Lurie and Mark Farrell can only dream of having such a throng cheering them on.
Aaron Peskin’s opponents displayed their boorish behavior. A small cadre brandishing bullhorns and whistles tried vainly to disrupt the festivities. The ringleader of this pathetic crew was Jade Tu whose day job is campaign manager for one of the Mayoral aspirants Mark Farrell.
Supervisor and mayoral candidate Aaron Peskin at his campaign kickoff rally. April 6, 2024
Liz Heidhues. San Francisco native displays her homemade campaign artwork – BREED IS BOUGHT $$ PESKIN IS NOT
Part of the crowd at Portsmouth Square cheers on Aaron PeskinThe crowd gave Aaron Peskin its undivided attention.
Aaron Peskin addresses his supporters with specific objectives he will implement as Mayor
The seniors of Chinatown are a bedrock of Aaron Peskin’s support.
Parrots for Peskin
Mayor to be Aaron Peskin points the way to Room 200 at San Francisco City Hall.
Cameras were in abundance.
Jade Tu, campaign manager for mayoral candidate Mark Farrell with a small group of agitators, attempted to disrupt the event. My sources tell me the disruptors were paid to perform their obnoxious chore. When the allotted time was over they crawled away to their swamp.
Top photo: The crowd cheering on Aaron Peskin under the San Francisco skyline.
The callous murderous reasoning, which boggles my mind, is the slaughter is necessary to protect a closely related species of the barred owl. The northern spotted owl.
The word which comes to my mind is Eugenics. Rather than being practiced on humans as did the Aryan Nazis in Hitler’s Germany against Jews through genocide. The American government proposes to promote one animal species by eliminating another.
A fledgling barred owl sits in a tree at Muir Woods in Mill Valley in 2011. Michael Macor/The Chronicle
Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 3.26.2024
A collection of 75 animal rights and wildlife organizations sent a letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland on Tuesday asking her to stop a plan by federal wildlife officials to shoot more than a half-million barred owls in Northern California, Oregon and Washington in an effort to protect aclosely related species, the threatened northern spotted owl.
The plan to shoot the barred owls, the letter said, will result in accidental shootings of other native owls, the poisoning of habitat if lead ammunition is used, and the disruption of forest ecosystems. The letter also claims the plan is destined to fail because of its large scale, covering millions of acres, and the limited success of previous federal efforts at controlling species for conservation purposes.
In this May 8, 2003, file photo, a northern spotted owl sits on a tree branch in the Deschutes National Forest near Camp Sherman, Ore. Don Ryan/Associated Press
“This plan will cause severe disruptions to wildlife from the forest floor to its canopies, producing an untold number of mistaken-identity kills of other native owl species (including spotted owls), disrupting nesting behavior for animals, poisoning wildlife from dispersed and fragmented lead, and causing rapid dispersal and social chaos among many other species inhabiting these forest ecosystems,” the letter said.
A mother barred owl and her babies
The letter was spearheaded by two animal-rights organizations, Animal Wellness Action and Center for a Humane Economy. The other dozens of signers are mostly state and local animal-welfare groups.
They first appeared in the West in the 1970s, state wildlife officials said, but their numbers began increasing in the 1980s and 1990s and have continued to rise. Meanwhile, the less-aggressive spotted owls have seen their populations decline.
Federal wildlife officials last fall proposed hiring hunters with shotguns to kill barred owls in forests on public and private lands across the three states. They would shoot about 20,000 the first year, then continue killing them for the next 30 years. The plan has been studied and gone through a public comment period, according to the groups, but not yet approved. No firm timeline for the approval process exists, the groups said.
A note to Heather Knight – New York Times San Francisco ‘Nightcrawler’ correspondent (formerly at the San Francisco Chronicle) 4.2.2024
Heather
Seeing your laudatory piece on Mr. Garry Tan.
Going into journalistic contortions. Trying to paint a picture of Garry Tan as nothing more than a civic minded do gooder.
You can’t hide the reality. Garry Tan is a vicious political operative with a fat wallet “trying to buy City Hall.”
Makes me think of your fawning articles on former San Francisco District Attorney Suzy Loftus and current DA Brooke Jenkins.Who replaced the progressive DA you helped destroy with your pen, Chesa Boudin.
The good news is San Francisco Chronicle readers are spared your misleading propaganda cheerleader style reporting.
The bad news is NYT readers may take this PR blurb re Garry Tan as truth.
And I thought you are scribbling for the Times not the New York Post.
Excerpted from The New York Times – Heather Knight – 4.2.2024
Garry Tan. A man evangelizing for change in San Francisco, owning a condo that used to be part of a church comes in handy.
(Blogger’s Note: Sound familiar? Accused felon Donald Trump hawking his “God Bless USA” bible for $59.99)
Last year, Tan scooped up the $3.95 million space near the city’s palm-tree-studded Dolores Park to hold events like this one — events he hopes will shift San Francisco from its idealistic progressivism toward nuts-and-bolts centrism.
Under cathedral ceilings and soaring stained glass windows, Garry Tan clutched a microphone as he greeted a crowd of political centrists, including San Francisco’s mayor, local prosecutors and police brass.
“Welcome to the church of turning San Francisco around!” said Mr. Tan at a fund-raiser he was hosting for local Asian American female political candidates just days before the Super Tuesday elections this month.
But Mr. Tan’s passion, as it is for a growing number of tech industry leaders, is San Francisco politics. He is one of a cadre of love-them-or-hate-them tech executives and investors with lots of opinions about the city and endless piles of cash to, as they say in the tech industry, move fast and break things. (Their critics would say it’s more like they’re trying to buy City Hall.)
Garry Tan and his money politically lynched progressive DA Chesa Boudin in a campaign complete with red baiting innuendo
To some of San Francisco’s political establishment, Mr. Tan, 43, has become the most annoying in a parade of wealthy tech executives. He has created a bombastic online persona while spending about $400,000 on local politics in the past few years — with potentially a lot more to come. And on the social media site X, where he has 425,000 followers, Mr. Tan doesn’t just rub some people the wrong way, he enrages them.
Just after midnight on Jan. 27, he posted on X, formerly Twitter, that seven left-leaning members of the city’s Board of Supervisors, listed by name, should “die slow,” punctuated by an expletive. It was a subtle reference to the rap legend Tupac Shakur’s famous track “Hit ’Em Up,” released 28 years ago as an insult to his music rivals. But to some people, it sounded like a threat.
Die slow motherfuckers – Garry Tan
Mr. Tan was, he admitted when an X follower asked him, drunk.
A few hours after his post went up, Mr. Tan deleted it and apologized. But plenty of people had already seen it.
A couple of days later, some supervisors received anonymous letters at their homes bearing Mr. Tan’s face and the words: “Garry Tan is right! I wish a slow and painful death for you and your loved ones.” Aaron Peskin, a supervisor who is considering challenging London Breed, the San Francisco mayor, in the November election, was one of a few supervisors to file police reports based on Mr. Tan’s post.
Envelope addressed to Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin
Mr. Tan has tried to learn from his online mess — or says he has. In person, he speaks kindly and calmly and smiles often, frequently bowing to people while making a prayer gesture with his hands. At his political fund-raiser in the former church, he said he was sipping a mocktail, a “Green Goddess” with apple, celery and cucumber juice.
“Alcohol doesn’t have a lot to teach me these days,” he said. Asked whether that was because of the drunken post that got him in hot water, he said, “There’s some correlation.”
He thinks moderate Democrats with common-sense ideas are taking back their city, and he’s supporting centrists on the November ballot in hopes they will seize a majority of the board of supervisors.
Garry Tan speaks kindly and calmly and smiles often, frequently bowing to people while making a prayer gesture with his hands.
Mr. Tan encouraged his fellow middle-of-the-road Democrats at the church turned condo to keep the faith. “Politics can be rough. As centrists, we find ourselves facing criticism for questioning policies that haven’t delivered,” he told his quasi-congregation, his voice rising. “My dedication to making San Francisco a city that works for everyone is a commitment I will not abandon.”
The crowd of about 100 roared.
Mayor Breed then spoke about the “dogfight” of San Francisco politics and thanked Mr. Tan, one of her donors, for braving it.
Several supervisors named in Mr. Tan’s controversial post called for candidates who received his donations to return the money. None did. Mr. Tan said the police had never contacted him about the post. The San Francisco Police Department did not respond to requests for comment on whether an investigation was being conducted.
“And no, I’m not giving my money back!” she said to laughter.
Top photo: Irving Penn exhibit – de Young Museum San Francisco
It’s April Fools Day. But when it comes to Donald Trump it’s never a joke.
Never mind that the Trial for his election interference hush money payoff to porn performer Stormy Daniel begins on Tax Day April 15 in a Manhattan courtroom.
Never mind that Trump’s campaign posted a picture of President Biden tied to the back of a pickup truck.
Never mind that Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Trump’s Truth Social platform, closed Monday at $48.66 per share after its opening at $80 last week.
The big news is Trump’s “God Bless USA” bible he’s shilling for $59.99. The New York Times Maureen Dowd nails this shameless con artist Trump to the cross of hypocrisy.
Excerpted from The New York Times – Maureen Dowd – 3.30.2024
Declining faith in religion and rising faith in conspiracies create fertile ground for a faker like Donald Trump. If the profane pol is re-elected, we’ll all reap the whirlwind.
On this holy weekend, one man is taking the Resurrection personally.
Trump is presenting himself as the Man on the Cross, tortured for our sins. “I consider it a great badge of courage,” he tells crowds. “I am being indicted for you.” Instead of Christlike redemption, he promises Lucifer-like retribution if resurrected.
In January he put up a video on Truth Social about how he is a messenger from God, “a shepherd to mankind.”
Trump is, as the nuns who taught me used to say, “a bold, brazen piece.” He is a miserable human who cheated on his wives, cheats at golf, cheats at politics, incites violence, targets judges and their families and looked on, pleased, as thugs threatened to hang his actually pious vice president.
Yet, more and more, Trump is wallowing in his messiah complex.
Two-Corinthians Trump wouldn’t know the difference between Old and New Testaments. So he may not realize that, rather than a sacrificial lamb, he is the golden calf, the false god worshiped by Israelites when Moses went up to Mount Sinai to get the Ten Commandments.
Just as the Israelites melted their ornaments and jewelry to make the calf, Trump is trading tacky products for gilt to pay gazillions in obligations. After his $399 golden Never Surrender High-Top Sneaker, Trump is selling a $99 Victory47 cologne for “movers, shakers and history makers,” in which “a crisp opening of citrus blends into a cedar heart, underpinned by a rich base of leather and amber, crafting a commanding presence.” A gold bust of Trump tops the bottle. (Victory47 perfume for women comes in a Miss Universe-shaped bottle.)
Weaponizing his martyrdom, Trump is selling $59.99 “God Bless the USA” Bibles adorned with a flag and the chorus of Lee Greenwood’s song handwritten by the singer, plus the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and Pledge of Allegiance.
“Happy Holy Week!” he wrote on Truth Social. “Let’s Make America Pray Again. As we lead into Good Friday and Easter, I encourage you to get a copy of the God Bless The USA Bible.”
David Axelrod says that, even as a secular Jew, he’s offended: “This is a guy who has violated 11 of the Ten Commandments.”
Trump posted a promotional video claiming “Christians are under siege” and vowing to “protect content that is pro-God.” He held up the Bible — recalling the appalling moment in 2020 when Ivanka handed him a Bible from her designer bag and he clutched it in front of St. John’s Church, opposite the White House, moments after the police tear-gassed protesters and journalists in adjacent Lafayette Square at a demonstration about George Floyd’s murder.
“All Americans need a Bible in their home, and I have many,” Trump barked. “It’s my favorite book.” Maybe the Bible has replaced that Hitler book Trump’s ex-wife said he kept by his bed. But it’s all a scam. Running for president is about enriching himself, just as when he peddled NFTs, steaks, ties, suits, bath towels, vodka, water, office chairs, Trump University and mug-shot mugs. He even sold pieces of the suit he was wearing when he took the mug shot.
“I want to have a lot of people have it,” Trump said of his Bible. “You have to have it for your heart, for your soul.”
Just what the world needs: a soul cleanse with a grifter Bible, where the profits could well be going to pay legal costs in trials about breaking commandments — bearing false witness to try to steal democracy, coveting a porn star, then paying the star hush money to keep quiet about the sex.
What could be more Elmer Gantry than that? As Sinclair Lewis wrote about his corrupt, power-hungry, narcissistic, womanizing preacher, “He had, in fact, got everything from the church and Sunday school, except, perhaps, any longing whatever for decency and kindness and reason.”
Religious snake-oil salesmen have a storied history in American literature and films, from Flannery O’Connor’s “Wise Blood” to Peter Bogdanovich’s beloved movie “Paper Moon,” about a conniving Bible salesman and his small helper. But it’s shocking when the charlatan might be in the Oval.
Donald Trump’s strategy to avoid his criminal reckoning is delay delay delay.
Trump has failed in his home town New York. It is all too familiar with this man who has evaded accountability for decades.
Trump’s strategy in his effort to stop prosecution of his payoff to porn performer Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 election has wilted.
Excerpted from The New York Times 3.25.2024
Donald J. Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial on charges that he covered up a sex scandal will start on April 15 after a judge on Monday denied the former president’s attempts to delay it further.
The flurry of activity is unfolding nearly a year to the day after the Manhattan district attorney’s office filed an indictment of Mr. Trump, accusing him of falsifying business records related to a hush-money deal with a porn star, Stormy Daniels.
The judge, Juan M. Merchan, appeared unmoved by Mr. Trump’s request for more time to prepare for his criminal trial on charges linked to conduct that could have derailed his stunning victory in the 2016 presidential election.
For roughly an hour, he slammed arguments from Mr. Trump’s lawyers that his case should be delayed further because of newly disclosed documents from a related federal investigation, saying that he found no harm had been done to the former president by the delay. After a 45-minute break, he returned with the new trial date.
Justice Merchan suggested that Mr. Trump’s lawyers were dragging their feet and scolded them for accusing Manhattan prosecutors of misconduct without seeming to substantiate their allegations.
Arrogance personified
“You are literally accusing the Manhattan D.A.’s office and the people assigned to this case of prosecutorial misconduct and trying to make me complicit in it,” the judge exclaimed incredulously.
He noted that many of the new documents were not relevant to the case. “This court is of the opinion that there are really not significant facts to be resolved,” Justice Merchan said, a sign that he might be close to finalizing a trial date.
The judge also pressed one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Todd Blanche, on the number of documents the defense thinks are relevant, saying, “I just want to get a sense of how much time you need.”
A little taken aback, Mr. Blanche consulted papers on the desk before him, and finally came up with “tens of thousands.” Unsatisfied, the judge said that Mr. Blanche was not answering his questions.
One of prosecutors, Matthew Colangelo, estimated that only about 300 documents were pertinent to the trial, and that “99 percent” were irrelevant.
When will it end? The criminal kow towing to motorists in San Francisco.
A City government which pays lip service to safe streets and the goals of Vision Zero.
It’s all just mindless blather. The San Francisco leadership from Mayor London Breed on down does absolutely nothing to stop the carnage caused by reckless criminal entitled motorists.
Coming close on the skid marks of the horrific act by a 78 year old driver and her Mercedes SUV. An entire Brasilian family was wiped out at a bus stop just a week ago. A woman who should be criminally charged. The police may cite these drivers. But, in laissez faire San Francisco the District Attorney will do nothingin the way of pursuing criminal charges.
Now we have yet another reckless criminal motorist crashing into another bus stop. The press will blithely report the fact nobody was killed. Life in San Francisco will go on as normal. Drivers will continue to act in their oblivious criminal entitled manner.
Fortunately an alert citizen was able to capture the scene as a graphic reminder of yet another criminal act by a motorist.
The number of dead will continue to grow on the streets of San Francisco. Caused not by gunshots. But by automobiles.
Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 3.24.2024
A vehicle struck a bus stop near Golden Gate Park in San Francisco on Saturday. A person injured by the criminally negligent driver lay prone next to his scooter. Courtesy of Fabian Skibinski
A pedestrian was injured by a vehicle that crashed near a bus stop near San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park on Saturday, authorities said.
The victim was struck just before 4:50 p.m. near a bus stop at Fulton Street and Park Presidio Boulevard, the San Francisco Police Department said. He was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Fabian Skibinski said he was near the bus stop when a fast-moving car “came out of nowhere” and struck a pole with a “loud bang,” trapping a man underneath. He said the pole grazed a young boy and came within inches of a teenage girl and several other people
The mangled Mercedes SUV driven by a 78 year old driver whose criminal act killed an entire Brasilian family of four in San Francisco – 3.16.2024
It was “basically a miracle that no one died or was maimed,” Fabian Skibinski said, adding that the pole prevented others from injury because it stopped the car.
“The man trapped underneath was in shock but seemed like he was going to be basically OK. He was talking and breathing normally … no visible blood,” he said. “The driver was also in shock, but not injured. Police came within a few minutes.”
The driver, identified as a man, was cited for “multiple moving vehicle violations,” police officials said.
Top photo: A pedestrian suffered non-life-threatening injuries Saturday when he was stuck under a pole near a bus stop after a crash near San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Courtesy of Fabian Skibinski
It was 51 years ago the Nixon administration expelled John Lennon from the United States.
Officially it was the Immigration and Naturalization Service which did the deed. In reality it was the Nixon administration which was aghast at John and Yoko Lennon’s political activities.
San Francisco Examiner front page – March 23, 1973
The story most vividly told in the 2006 documentary ‘The U.S. vs. JOHN LENNON.
Opening scene – The U.S. vs. John Lennon
Had he left America John Lennon’s fate may not have been his assassination in New York City on December 8, 1980. An event I will never forget. The previous night I had gone to bed with a flu. The next morning I woke up and turned on NPR’s Morning Edition. To hear ‘In My Life’. I knew immediately. Even before Bob Edwards came on the air to announce John Lennon’s death.
John Lennon signs an autograph for the man who assassinated him, Mark David Chapman, a short time later in the archway of The Dakota in New York City- December 8, 1980
An AI composite of John Lennon had he lived into the 21st century
San Francisco is on the knife’s edge of unruly civil discourse and District Attorney Brooke Jenkins continues to sharpen terms of the debate.
As San Francisco’s chief law enforcement officer political creature Jenkins was hoisted into office over the political corpse of the man she worked for, Chesa Boudin. Since being named DA by her fellow collaborator Mayor London Breed in the ouster of Chesa Boudin, the current DA has played to the law and order mob in San Francisco.
It may be good for her political future. But it lays waste to any credibility Brooke Jenkins may have as an upholder of justice under the law.Her overheated rhetoric on the steps of the Hall of Justice was nothing more than Red meat for the mob.
Excerpted from The San Francisco Chronicle 3.2.2024
“Get the fuck out of here. This is our protest.”
“She (DA Brooke Jenkins) is rousing up this bloodlust because she’s sucking up every Asian vote that she needs,” said private attorney Rebecca Young, who organized the counter protest. “Every decision that Brooke Jenkins makes about any high profile case is a political decision.”
Young, who worked in both the District Attorney’s Office and the Public Defender’s Office before she was fired by Jenkins, accused Jenkins of politicizing criminal justice issues as she is running for reelection. At one point during the protests, Young asked a sheriff to arrest someone who she felt was threatening her.
DA Brooke Jenkins exhorts the mob at San Francisco Hall of Justice 3.22.2024
“We want to make sure that our Asian seniors have the ability to walk down the street safely in our city,” said Jenkins, who is running for reelection this year. “If there is no accountability for the people who attack them, if we don’t have adequate consequences for that behavior, it will continue.”
A Chinese American activist faced off against a white defense attorney in one of the tensest exchanges during a protest Friday outside the San Francisco Superior Court.
“Do you care about Asian people?” shouted Jade Tu, who is also the campaign manager for mayoral candidate Mark Farrell. Holding a megaphone to the face of Marc Zilversmit, a San Francisco criminal defense attorney, she continued, “How would you feel if you got stabbed multiple times? Get the fuck out of here. This is our protest.”
Zilversmit yelled back. He’d shown up, he told the Chronicle earlier, to defend the independence of the judiciary.
Leanna Louie on steps of Hall of Justice. She was one of the most incendiary rabble rouser insurrectionists who supported the political lynching of DA Chesa Boudin in June 2022
About 60 mostly Asian American activists and community members, joined by District Attorney Jenkins, were outside the Hall of Justice to protest what they saw as an injustice — a San Francisco judge granting probation and mental health treatment to Daniel Cauich, who pled guilty in November to charges related to the 2021 nonfatal stabbing of Ahn “Peng” Taylor, a Chinese Vietnamese woman in her 90s.
Rebecca Young, center, former assistant district attorney fired by Brooke Jenkins, argues with other protesters outside Hall of Justice over sentencing of a high-profile crime case in San Francisco. | Source:Han Li/The Standard
A small counter protest of about a half-dozen defense attorneys stood to the side, interrupting with chants of their own, shaming Jenkins, making this yet another flash point in the politicized debate about how to best treat mentally ill defendants in violent crimes against Asian American residents, particularly older adults.
Lily Ho, one of the protest’s organizers and a newly elected member of the Democratic County Central Committee, said that none of the protesters thought the judge’s decision was right.
“Shame on you,” she said. “This case is exactly the reason why I personally supported new judges,” referring to a largely unsuccessful push by political moderates to elect new tough-on-crime judges in the recent March election.
Top: Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni buries her eyes when a member of the Green Party in parliament tells her “Don’t Look at Me With Your Disturbing Eyes.”
After a 78 year old driver of a Mercedes SUV killed a Brasilian family of four a shaken San Francisco Mayor London Breed vows to expedite traffic safety, focusing on street design, speed reduction and increased enforcement.
Photo by Irving Penn at the current exhibit – De Young Museum, San Francisco
Stanford women’s basketball team react to not receiving a No. 1 seed in the NCAA March Madness tournament
But what indelibly stuck in our minds was a room whose only character was the most inert. Cigarette butts.When Irving Penn’s close friend and collaborator Alexey Brodovitch, a life long smoker, died of lung cancer the fashion photographer took to the streets. Cigarette butts were the subject of his unsubtle campaign to show what Big Tobacco really is. Ugly.
THESE FRAGILE REMNANTS OF MOMENTARY PLEASURES INTERNALIZE THE MISERIES OF THE AGECigarette butts in Irving Penn’s artistic bullseye
Lee's Perspective 