Lee Heidhues 12.27.2021

The media has been trashing 49ers QB for his poor performance in the 20-17 loss to the Tennessee Titans last Thursday.

It appears there is  definitely a legtimate reason that Jimmy G did not have a standout performance. The Niners QB suffered a serious thumb injury during the second quarter.

Garoppolo may be done for the season. This means the 49ers top draft choice Trey Lance, who has warmed the bench all season, will be thrown into the spotlight against the Houston Texans this Sunday and the season finale against the Los Angeles Rams on January 9.

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 12.27.2021

Quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo suffered an injury to his right thumb in Thursday’s loss to the Titans that has clouded his status for the rest of the 49ers’ season.

Though the team characterized the injury as a sprain, ESPN reported Garoppolo suffered a torn ulnar collateral ligament (located in the lower thumb) and a fracture. Dr. Nirav Pandya, the associate professor of UCSF orthopedic surgery, said that surgery to repair such an injury involves a recovery timeline of four to six weeks.

Pandya was skeptical Garoppolo could play effectively through the injury if a brace was used to support his thumb. The UCL is key for stability and grip strength.

Asked if Garoppolo’s season is likely over, barring an unforeseen development, Pandya paints a picture in which fans should expect Trey Lance will be the 49ers’ starting QB on Sunday and beyond.

“That would be my guess based on what’s being reported,” Pandya said. “I think it would be very hard for a quarterback to either play at all, or play effectively, with this injury. That would be my educated guess.”

Rookie Trey Lance, the third overall pick of the 2021 NFL draft, will make his second career start if Garoppolo is unable to play against Houston on Sunday at Levi’s Stadium. Lance hasn’t thrown a pass in a game since he started in a 17-10 loss at Arizona on Oct. 10, when Garoppolo was sidelined with a strained calf.

The 49ers (8-7), currently the No. 6 seed in the NFC playoff chase, could need to beat Houston and the Rams in their regular-season finale to secure a postseason berth.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/49ers/article/49ers-Jimmy-Garoppolo-has-sprained-right-16732585.php

Lee Heidhues 12.26.2021

The San Francisco Chronicle published a lead editorial vigorously calling for JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park to be designated permanently car free. The predicatable push back from the spoiled Entitled motorists. I refuse to be cowed by these people who seemingly know no other way of life than a Car. Pathetic. The following is posted in the Chronicle reader comments section.

I am beyond fed up with Seniors who believe because of their age that the rest of the World owes “us” a favor. “Us”? My wife and I are setuagenarians Our modes of transit are bicycles, our feet and public transit. It has been that way for our entire relationship.

We raised a family in San Francisco and traveled to the Fine Arts Museum with no problems. The two of us still cycle on car free JFK Drive to attend the de Young as long time members.

For seniors to make their spurious claim they have a right and need to drive and park on JFK Drive is a total non starter. It is selfishness in the extreme. There are thousands upon thousands of others who are enjoying JFK Drive without the need to park their cars on this thoroughfare.

The Seniors, by this unrelenting wailing and faux sense of entitlement, are destroying the future happiness of current and future generations. Life is finite. Think about it and stop the complaining. This comment is directed specifically at never stop kvetching Seniors and their Entitled cheerleaders.

Glad to read the Chronicle is standing up to the Fine Arts Museum aristocracy’s and their camp followers wailing to have cars be permitted on JFK Drive to assist their corporate benefactors. To read The maudlin non stop Entitled motorists kvetch about 1.5 miles of road being car free in a City with 1200 miles of road to drive on. Nobody has a lifetime Permit to drive anywhere anytime irrespective of the faux message being pitched about inconvenience.

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 12.26.2021

Urban theorist Jane Jacobs wrote in her seminal book “Death and Life of Great American Cities” that “the destructive effect of automobiles are much less a cause than a symptom of our incompetence at city building.”

It would be difficult to find a better illustration of this point than San Francisco’s John F. Kennedy Drive prior to its closure to vehicle traffic in April 2020.

Before the pandemic, JFK was one of the most dangerous and deadliest streets in San Francisco. There were 91 crashes on it from 2014 through its 2020 closure. That’s mostly because 75% of people traveling on JFK had no intention of visiting the park; they were simply using it as a cut-through.

This would be a policy failure for any city; for a supposedly transit-first city like San Francisco, however, it was an inexcusable display of incompetence.

Few would object to a gentle street through Golden Gate Park that enables slow, but convenient vehicle access, especially for the mobility impaired, to the park’s amenities. But allowing the main thoroughfare of the city’s marquee park to become a high-speed commuter freeway — as it once was — was a gross and too-often deadly civic failure that can never again be allowed to repeat itself.

To ensure JFK remains a safe and enjoyable space, worthy of one of the most stunning urban parks in the world, it should remain closed to cars in 2022 and beyond.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Editorial-Keep-JFK-Drive-closed-to-cars-in-2022-16726845.php

Lee Heidhues 12.25.2021

Sad Surprises never stop. Even on Christmas Day.

I always believed Bambi to be a benign story about kind animals which was brought to life on the big screen by Walt Disney in the classic cartoon.

Now this fantasy story line has gone a glimmering and the story of Bambi will be put before the world in its originally intended fashion. A novel published nearly 100 years ago portrayed the Bambi tale in a more sobering dark light.

Excerpted from The Guardian 12.25.2021

A new translation of Felix Salten’s 1923 novel reasserts its original message that warns of Jewish persecution

It’s a saccharine sweet story about a young deer who finds love and friendship in a forest. But the original tale of Bambi, adapted by Disney in 1942, has much darker beginnings as an existential novel about persecution and antisemitism in 1920s Austria.

Now, a new translation seeks to reassert the rightful place of Felix Salten’s 1923 masterpiece in adult literature and shine a light on how Salten was trying to warn the world that Jews would be terrorised, dehumanised and murdered in the years to come.

“Bambi does not survive well, at the end. He is alone, totally alone … It is a tragic story about the loneliness and solitude of Jews and other minority groups,” said Jack Zipes, professor emeritus of German and comparative literature at the University of Minnesota and translator of the forthcoming book.

Far from being a children’s story, Bambi was actually a parable about the inhumane treatment and dangerous precariousness of Jews and other minorities in what was then an increasingly fascist world, the new translation will show.

In 1935, the book was banned by the Nazis, who saw it as a political allegory on the treatment of Jews in Europe and burned it as Jewish propaganda. “The darker side of Bambi has always been there,” said Professor Zipes.

“But what happens to Bambi at the end of the novel has been concealed, to a certain extent, by the Disney corporation taking over the book and making it into a pathetic, almost stupid film about a prince and a bourgeois family.”

Salten’s novel, Bambi, a Life in the Woods, is completely different he said. “It is a book about survival in your own home.” From the moment he is born, Bambi is under constant threat from hunters who invade the forest and attack indiscriminately. “They kill whatever animal they want.”

It soon becomes apparent that the forest animals are living out their lives in fear and that puts the reader constantly “on edge”: “All the animals have been persecuted. And I think what shakes the reader is that there are also some animals who are traitors, who help the hunters kill.”

After Bambi’s mother is murdered, so is his beloved cousin Gobo, who had been led to believe he was special and the hunters would be “kind” to him. Bambi is shot too, but survives thanks to the old prince, a majestic stag who treats him like a son (and may well be his father). But then, sadly, the old prince also dies, leaving Bambi utterly bereft.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/dec/25/bambi-cute-lovable-vulnerable-or-a-dark-parable-of-antisemitic-terror

The average American pays scant attention to the volatile and dangerous Middle East.  Or anywhere else in the world for that matter.

The typical American, an isolationist at heart, is too wrapped up in his own concerns about the Pandemic, trying to pay the bills and looking forward to the next football game.

This leaves little time to ponder what happens across the globe allowing the average American to  go blithely on believing events abroad have  no consequence or could have any impact on them.

Admittedly there is a sizable minority of Americans who keep informed about global events. Sadly these people are the exception to what should be the rule.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 12.24.2021

An Iranian military chief said that the military exercises were a response to “massive but pointless threats” from Israel. The British government sharply condemned the missile launches.

Iran has previously said that it’s short and medium-range missiles can reach Israel, as well as US bases in the region.

Military drills conducted this week by Iran were intended to send a warning to Israel, the country’s top military commanders said on Friday.

Iran conducted these drills in the Persian Gulf amid concerns over possible plans by Israel to attack Iranian nuclear sites.

The war games included firing ballistic and cruise missiles. State television showed missiles flattening a target which resembled Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor.

Why did Iran conduct the military drills?

Iranian Revolutionary Guards chief General Hossein Salami said this week’s drills were intended to send “a very clear message” and a “serious warning” to regional rival Israel.

“We will cut off their hands if they make a wrong move,” Salami said on state TV.

Armed Forces Chief of Staff Major General Mohammed Bagheri said 16 ballistic missiles of different classes had been fired.

Bagheri said that the drill was an answer to Israel’s recent “massive but pointless threats” to Iran.

https://www.dw.com/en/iran-fires-missiles-during-drills-in-warning-to-israel/a-60253795

Lee Heidhues 12.21.2021

Most people don’t know or want to forget that the early 1950’s was a horrific paranoid era in America.

It was the time of the Red Scare when paranoia ran amok. The careers of people regardless of their status or income were being destroyed. Why? Because of their political beliefs genuine and imagined by the Red hunters of the day.

The just released film “Being the Ricardos” tells one such story. Lucille Ball was America’s sweetheart through her television role in the “I Love Lucy” show. Her career was nearly derailed because of the allegation promoted by a gossip columnist of the day that Lucy was a “Communist”. She was able to quickly fend off this allegation and move on with her professional life.

Many others were not so fortunate. The film is now availabe on Amazon Prime and in selected theaters.

Excerpted from The Chronicle – Mick LaSalle 12.21.2021

The bottom line on “Being the Ricardos” is that it’s irresistible. It’s an invitation to go behind the scenes of the “I Love Lucy” show and to see what Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were really like. It’s also an invitation to travel back to the 1950s, with writer-director Aaron Sorkin as your guide.

To succeed here, Sorkin first had to solve one big challenge before all the other elements would fall into place. He had to come up with a story. Fortunately for Sorkin, he knows something that other screenwriters and would-be screenwriters don’t know: the difference between what’s a story and what’s merely interesting.

It’s the week that began with gossip columnist and red-baiter Walter Winchell obliquely accusing Ball — the most popular TV personality in America — of being a communist. That charge was untrue, but not baseless.

When she was very young, Ball checked a box to join the Communist Party as a favor to a leftist relative. Beyond that, she never did anything — no meetings, no secret handshakes, no speeches extolling the U.S.S.R. as a worker’s paradise. But in the early 1950s, the era of Joe McCarthy, careers were being destroyed for less.

Sorkin uses this crisis as the spine for “Being the Ricardos,” and with that in place, he can go anywhere he wants to go. He can do a flashback to show Lucy and Desi’s courtship. He can introduce the network’s reaction to Lucy’s pregnancy. He can concentrate on the stress point of the Lucy-Desi marriage, namely Desi’s infidelity.

For example, it’s interesting that William Frawley and Vivian Vance, who played Fred and Ethel Mertz on the sitcom, detested each other. It’s interesting that Ball insisted that Vance remain slightly overweight and never look glamorous. It’s interesting how Lucy and Desi met, and how her movie career was only so-so, and how radio became her launching pad for a career in television.

Sorkin finds ways to include and dramatize all those interesting elements. But he doesn’t try to locate his story in any of them, either because they’re not consequential enough, or they’re not compressed enough (that is, they take place over too long a stretch of time). Instead, Sorkin finds his story in a series of events that took place over the course of about a week, in which the futures of Lucy, Desi and “I Love Lucy” hung in the balance.

Javier Bardem captures Desi’s macho aura and magnetism, but he lacks his humor. When he sings “Babaloo” and “Cuban Pete,” it’s impossible not to miss Arnaz’s distinct tenor voice. Still, acting isn’t impersonation, and Bardem functions well as Desi within the world that Sorkin creates.

As for Sorkin, he is establishing himself as a major filmmaker of Americana. He did the 1990s with “The American President” and “West Wing,” the Vietnam era with “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” and now he’s done the ’50s. I’d like to see what he could do with the ’30s or ’40s.

Review: ‘Being the Ricardos’ is an irresistible film about Lucy and Desi

Liz and Lee Heidhues 12.20.2021 (UPDATED)

DA Chesa Boudin ran on a campaign platform to use the office of chief prosecutor in a different manner than the traditional law and order approach to crime. 

Now he faces a recall, calling into question the very fiber of San Francisco’s “progressive” reputation.  To DA Boudin’s credit he is standing by the platform on which he ran and was elected two years ago.

During his two years in office DA Boudin has brought about a humane system of dealing with criminal defendants.  He has worked empirically, epistemically to transform the ‘lock ’em up’ approach to criminal justice.  He has worked to implement his reform policies amidst the obstacles of the now two year long Pandemic.

DA Boudin has successfully managed within the constraints of the Pandemic to decrease the jail population and to perform his job within the severely truncated Court system.

Excerpted from The San Francisco Chronicle and SF Gate 12.20.2021

District Attorney Chesa Boudin, along with other elected officials and activists, protested Monday against Mayor London Breed’s public safety push meant to flood the Tenderloin with police and crackdown on drug dealers and people who use drugs.

“If arrests and prosecutions alone could solve the drug crisis in this country or in this city, it would have been solved long ago,” Boudin said. “We’ve invested over a trillion dollars in fighting the so-called war on drugs, and where has it gotten us?”

Boudin’s presence at an afternoon news conference held by opponents of the plan calls into question whether the mayor can succeed in this push and pits Breed against the city’s top prosecutor.

Boudin’s decision to join the protest comes as he faces a recall election next year. It underscores the debate in San Francisco about how to deal not just with crime, but with the homelessness and addiction crises.

The news conference comes as Boudin, whose 2019 election was not supported by Breed, faces a recall election in June put on the ballot by detractors who say he is soft on criminals. Boudin’s office has countered the criticism with examples of successful crackdowns on retail theft and other criminal operations. But his remarks Monday made clear his position on going after people who have substance use problems or mental health issues.

Boudin said the “raw human suffering” he sees in the neighborhood outrages him. But using outdated methods won’t make people any safer, and the city has other options, said Boudin, who worked in the public defender’s office before becoming DA.

Last week, Breed said that she hoped the district attorney would prosecute people arrested under her plan. But it appears that progressive Boudin may not cooperate.

Judges also play a role, since they have discretion beyond the district attorney to release someone from custody before their trial, which could influence whether that person returns to the streets.

It didn’t appear as of last week that the Mayor had met with either Boudin or the head of the courts.

At the news conference held at addiction treatment center HealthRight360 in SoMa, leaders including Board of Supervisors President Shamann Walton called for the Mayor to instead quickly ramp up “evidence-based” alternatives to policing for people who use drugs, including more treatment and housing. The city has been chronically short of drug and mental health treatment beds and housing for the homeless.

While city leaders and residents are divided about the best way forward, some Tenderloin families and business owners have been pleading for safer and cleaner streets for months in the face of shootings and open-air drug use.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/D-A-Chesa-Boudin-joins-critics-of-Breed-s-16717418.php

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/San-Francisco-DA-others-denounce-mayor-s-plan-16718160.php

It was a happy day a week before Christmas on car free JFK Drive as a large group of people of all ages gathered on a cold December day to celebrate The First Annual JFK Promenade Holiday Party.

Musicians entertained the crowd. There was artwork being created by the kids and a Bubble Lady added to the joyous occasion.

Photos – Liz and Lee Heidhues – 12.19.2021

It’s a new day in Chile as the country’s voters have elected a true Progressive as President. The emphatic victory by Gabriel Boric over an unrepentant remnant whose father served in the dictatorial Augusto Pinochet regime is a signal victory for progressives worldwide.

The spirit of Salvador Allende is smiling. The Socialist President was deposed in a violent coup by General Pinochet with the backing of the American government on September 11, 1973 ushering in 17 years of dictatorship.

Excerpted from The Wall Street Journal 12.19.2021

SANTIAGO, Chile— Gabriel Boric, a congressman and former student protest leader, was elected president Sunday, auguring a shift far to the left in a nation that has long been a stalwart of centrist, market-friendly policies in Latin America.

Mr. Boric’s ascent to La Moneda presidential palace comes a decade after he gained national prominence as the shaggy-haired leader of protests that paralyzed Santiago in 2011. Thousands of students demanding tuition-free universities had blocked streets with burning barricades.

Mr. Boric received 56% of the votes, defeating conservative rival José Antonio Kast, who conceded and congratulated the president-elect on Twitter.

Mr. Boric will take office in March.

His election was assured by the strong support of young, urban voters seeking greater public spending despite the most polarizing campaign in a generation. At 35 years old, the tattooed lawmaker will become Chile’s youngest leader in modern times after meeting the minimum age to run for the presidency this year.

Mr. Boric, pronounced BO-rich, represents what analysts say is a new generation of leftists in Latin America. In addition to promising a greater welfare state, politicians such as Mr. Boric pledge to fight climate change while expanding rights to native peoples and gay and transgender people. Mr. Boric, who has publicly said he has obsessive compulsive disorder, has also called for more support for people with mental health problems.

“His program is a very 21st century vision of the left. It’s not the traditional left,” said Jennifer Pribble, a political scientist and Latin America expert at the University of Richmond. “He personifies a challenge to the older hierarchy.”

A descendant of Croatian immigrants, Mr. Boric grew up in Punta Arenas, a small city in Chile’s southern Patagonia region. His father, an oil company engineer, was a member of the center-left Christian Democratic party. The younger Mr. Boric moved to Santiago to study law at the University of Chile, a degree he didn’t complete.

In 2013, at age 27, he was elected to Congress, leading a younger generation of leftist politicians and social activists who were sharply critical of their center-left predecessors, including former Chilean presidents. He accused them of selling out by applying neoliberal policies that saddled Chile’s middle class with debt and poor pensions.

“If Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism, it will also be its grave,” Mr. Boric said earlier this year. “Don’t be afraid of the youth who want to change Chile.”

Mr. Boric’s election marks the end of three decades of centrist rule that made this country of 19 million a global model for free trade and a magnet for foreign investments in Latin America. The country had slashed poverty following the end of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship.

Support for the traditional center-left and center-right parties that governed since the return to democracy in 1990 collapsed following protests in 2019 amid anger over the high cost of living and demands for better public services.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chiles-presidential-election-pits-young-versus-old-in-key-vote-for-economy-11639908003

 

The  Greens are now part of the governing coalition in Germany. Its presence is immediately being felt in the area of foreign policy.

The new Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock who turned 41 on December 15 is off to a quick start putting her own stamp as the Green Party leader on Germany’s foreign policy.

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

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 12.18.2021

Whichever way you look at, German foreign policy is about to get more exciting than it has been for a while — a welcome development.

You certainly can’t accuse Annalena Baerbock of lacking drive and determination. Barely in office, she has completed a whirlwind tour abroad, with visits to Brussels, Paris and Warsaw. Then it was off to the G7 foreign ministers’ meeting in Liverpool, followed by a disarmament conference in Sweden.

And she’s not afraid to get her hands dirty. After the verdict in the Berlin Tiergarten murder, which explicitly states that the murderer, a Russian national, acted on behalf of Russian authorities, Baerbock declared two employees of the Russian embassy persona non grata and summoned the ambassador.

In a smart move, Baerbock has taken over responsibility for international climate negotiations, which until now has always been part of the Environment Ministry’s remit. It signals an upgrade for the Foreign Office and a logical step for a Green minister.

Change versus continuity

Still, foreign policy is likely to become a constant bone of contention within the coalition made up of the Social Democrats (SPD), Baerbock’s Greens, and the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP).

Essentially, the lines of conflict run like this: Baerbock wants to throw out previous foreign policy strategies with the bath water and give human rights policy and climate protection a new status in her remit. Chancellor Olaf Scholz of the SPD, on the other hand, is s stickler for the continuity of Angela Merkel’s policies. Sooner or later, they will clash. 

Government members were quick to laud Baerbock for her swift and decisive action following the verdict in the Berlin Tiergarten murder. However, whether she can count on them to support her quest to prevent the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from becoming operational is another matter. If Russia were to attack Ukraine, the EU would certainly consider it. But only then.

The Social Democrats have always been and still are in favor of the gas deal with Russia. Chancellor Scholz laid it out quite succinctly recently, saying the pipeline was now no longer a political problem — it would be up to the authorities to approve it or not. He knows full well that Germany will need the gas once the last German nuclear power plants go off the grid next year, and even more so if the expansion of renewable energies fails to pick up as quickly as the Greens would like.

On nuclear disarmament, Baerbock is pushing for fewer stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

Yet there are still US nuclear weapons stored in Germany that could be dropped from German aircraft in the event of a crisis. That’s known as the nuclear sharing policy which will continue under the new government — not least because Germany is planning to procure new aircraft for that purpose. As it stands, Baerbock’s campaign is nothing more than an appeal.

https://www.dw.com/en/opinion-who-is-in-charge-of-german-foreign-policy/a-60174353

We all wish Donald Trump would disappear forever. Sadly that doesn’t seem likely as the ex President continues to spout off his unedited obscene commentary.

Here’s the latest target of his unceasing wrath which comes after he excoricated his thought to be friend ex-Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu with a “Fuck you” for making nice with President Biden.

Daily Beast 12.17.2021

The comments with journalist Barak Ravid were in relation to how Jewish people feel toward Israel, and according to Trump, they don’t seem to care about the Jewish nation.

“The Jewish people, in the United States, either don’t like Israel or don’t care about Israel,” he said before fully blowing the dog-whistle. “I mean, you look at The New York Times—The New York Times hates Israel, hates it. And they’re Jewish people that run The New York Times. I mean, the Sulzberger family.”

Never one to understand a filter, former President Donald Trump veered into antisemitism in a recent interview . “It used to be that Israel had absolute power over Congress,” he said. “Today, I think it’s the exact opposite, and I think Obama and Biden did that.”

The release of Trump’s diatribe comes a day after his on-and-off favorite network, Fox News, got in trouble for posting an antisemitic cartoon featuring billionaire George Soros, who is Jewish, as a “puppet master” controlling Democratic prosecutors.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-says-jewish-people-had-absolute-control-of-congress-in-antisemitic-interview-with-barak-ravid