I hate to be cynical here but I gotta say it, anyway. Take a win anytime you can.

The Supreme Court is so busy destroying a woman’s right to choose that it is staying away from destroying landmark laws.

This Supreme Court is threatening to damage the environment as much as a woman’s right to have an abortion as it reviews Federal laws and regulations protecting land, water, curbing development, endangered species. Stay tuned.

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 12.6.2021

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal Monday by a Bay Area developer who was fined $3.6 million and ordered to clean up landfill he deposited into Suisun Bay to make room for a duck-hunting club and a kite-surfing center on an island he owns.

John Sweeney bought the 39-acre island, Point Buckler, for $150,000 in 2011. The island, on the eastern edge of Grizzly Bay in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, had been a site for duck hunters until the 1990s.

Sweeney rebuilt levees around the island, opened a kite-surfing center and announced plans to re-establish the club for duck hunters, whose prey swim in ponds maintained by the levees and tidal gates. In the process, he deposited 8,500 cubic yards of soil from trenches into the waters.

In 2015, the Bay Conservation and Development Commission and the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board said Sweeney had acted without the required permits and damaged marsh and tidal water habitat for waterfowl and fish, including endangered species of salmon and the Delta smelt.

Sweeney won a reprieve in December 2017 when Solano County Superior Court Judge Harry Kinnicutt found that he had actually improved conditions on Point Buckler. In a decision overturning the fines and cleanup order, Kinnicutt said the dirt that Sweeney used to repair the levees and left in the water was not “waste” but actually a valuable building material. He also said the agencies had acted with “an appearance of vindictiveness” against the developer.

But the state’s First District Court of Appeal said in February that there was no evidence to support Kinnicutt’s ruling.

The landfill deposited in state and federal waters has harmed habitat for waterfowl, blocked access to habitat for fish and endangered species, interfered with tidal flows to the interior of the island, killed tidal marsh vegetation, and caused “excessive salinity, turbidity and discoloration of the (island’s) interior waterways,” Justice Peter Siggins wrote in the appeals court’s 3-0 ruling.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Supreme-Court-rejects-Bay-Area-developer-s-16680149.php

Lee Heidhues

I totally commend the restaurant Hilda & Jesse for asking fully loaded and uniformed cops to leave and return in civilian attire.

It is a sad commentary on the state of San Francisco when the owners are being pummeled for taking a principled stand and telling the cops, “Don’t bring your guns into my house.”

San Francisco Chronicle 12.5.2021

San Francisco restaurant Hilda and Jesse is facing criticism from police and online reviewers after it asked three armed, uniformed city officers who were dining there to leave because staffers “felt uncomfortable with the presence of their multiple weapons.”

At the restaurant on Union Street in North Beach, chef and co-owner Rachel Sillcocks said Sunday morning that the staff was busy preparing to open, and she would not be available to provide more information until later.

But after reports of the incident spread on social media Saturday, the restaurant late in the day made a statement on Instagram describing what happened.

Soon after the officers were seated on Friday, restaurant staffers “politely asked them to leave,” according to the Instagram post, because “the presence of their weapons in the restaurant made us uncomfortable.”

“The restaurant is a safe space,” the post said. “This is not a political statement, we did what we thought was best for our staff.”

“We respect the San Francisco police Department and are grateful for the work they do. We welcome them into the restaurant when they are off duty, out of uniform, and without their weapons.”

In response, the Police Department referred The Chronicle to a statement by Chief Bill Scott on Twitter. In it, he said, “The San Francisco Police Department stands for safety with respect, even when it means respecting wishes that our officers and I find discouraging and personally disappointing.”

Rachel Sillcocks and co-owner Kristina Compton opened Hilda and Jesse on Nov. 1 on Union Street after it got its start in 2019 as a popular pop-up in the Richmond District.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-restaurant-faces-backlash-after-asking-16676313.php

Lee Heidhues 12.4.2021

I was a Senior in the Journalism Department at San Francisco State in fall 1968.

1968 was a violent tumultuous  year in American history. The Vietnam war dragged on with no end in sight. Martin Luther King and Democrat presidential candidate Robert Kennedy were assassinated.

The Democrat convention in Chicago turned into what was later described as  “The Chicago Police Riot” by a Commission appointed to investigate the events of August 1968.

In early November 1968 Republican Richard Nixon was elected President.

The next day the Strike began at San Francisco State. The reasons for the Strike were many but the main goal of the strikers was creation of an Ethnic Studies Department. The Strike was spearheaded by a combination of black and white student activists. 

The Strike turned into the biggest student strike in American history. I was on campus during the entire nearly five month struggle.  Three years ago the Journalism Department at San Francisco State had an event to remember the event. I was the only person from the 1968  Journalism Department who was in attendance.

Given the opportunity to speak I disabused the young attendees who may have thought the Strike some romantic escapade to be viewed through history books.  It was not.

I told them it was very sad and depressing and was not enjoyable for a moment. It brought out the nascent fascism in America as exhibited by the brutal behavior of law enforcement.  It provided the most right wing reactionary politicians a forum to hammer progressives of the day.

The person who most benefited from the Strike was Ronald Reagan. The then Governor of California, former actor and General Electric Co. television pitchman used the Strike at San Francisco State and unrest at UC Berkeley to propel himself onto the National spotlight. The rest is sad history.

Following are a number of pictures taken by various San Francisco Chronicle photographers along with a couple of front pages.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/chronicle_vault/article/How-SF-State-s-bloody-strikes-changed-academia-13362709.php#photo-16432727

Lee Heidhues 12.3.2021

I only learned of the TV drama Yellowstone when I read about in New York Magazine – The Vulture. I am totally addicted.

The DVDs of the first three seasons are available at my neighborhood library in patchwork fashion. Meaning I pick them up when they’re available.

I am forced to watch Yellowstone in backwards fashion. Currently I am viewing Season Three with Season Two to follow. When Season One shows up I will watch it, too.

Watching the series in this awkward sequence is fine. The story lines are intriguing, fast paced and have fine acting and a beautiful setting in Montana.

This is the best American television series I have watched since The Wire.

Excerpted from Vanity Fair – Tracy Moore 11.5.2021

There’s a TV show called Yellowstone from Taylor Sheridan that’s so wildly popular, it was last year’s most-watched cable series, beating out The Walking Dead for the distinction.

It’s a sudsy contemporary Western about the Dutton family, the land they stole 150 years ago, their ruthless fight to fend off greedy developers, and the nearby Native Americans who intend to take it back. It stars Kevin Costner as patriarch John Dutton. It combines stunning cinematography with storylines reminiscent of Succession’s power grabs, The Godfather’s mob mentality, and Dallas’s bitchy in-fighting— except with cattle. Its first three seasons are streaming on Peacock; it launched its fourth season with a two-hour premiere last month on the Paramount Network.

It’s also entirely possible you haven’t heard of it.

It’s obvious that the show believes our history’s ideology and laws are deeply encoded with racism; it also thinks things won’t always stay this way. Watching the series, its conservative viewers are forced to face their biggest fears, whether they realize it or not.

As entertaining as it sounds, there’s more going on beneath Yellowstone’s surface. One fascinating through line is the insurmountable struggles of the Native Americans on the rez, who endure poverty, addiction, violence, and suicide, with the elders determined to change that by casino, lawsuit, or land grab. Another involves the hardscrabble existence of the cowboys (and occasional cowgirls) in the bunkhouse: the orphans, drifters and ex-cons Yellowstone Ranch hires, who keep the ranch going with their backbreaking labor and the muscling. In a place that makes its own rules, street justice must be served swiftly with brawn on both sides.

But the Duttons’ wrongheaded white ways are also undercut at every turn, with hypocritical callouts aplenty. “No man should own this much land,” scolds a trespassing Chinese tourist when confronted by Dutton with a shotgun. “This is America,” Dutton grumbles. “We don’t share land.”

The Native American characters are spared caricature (a condition insisted upon by AJ Not Afraid, the Crow Nation chairman whose reservation is featured on the show and who serves as a consultant on the show), but they still take each other to task about what constitutes proper reparations. In one scene, high-powered lawyer Angela Blue Thunder (Q’orianka Kilcher) accuses Rainwater of playing by the master’s rules, dreaming of casinos when he should be making war.

All this is why, by season three’s end, Yellowstone began to feel more like a trick than a fantasy: Give conservatives a pretty package that mirrors their dream, then spend the entirety of the series unraveling it. Sheridan claims to be apolitical, but the show feels built for a political fight.

That makes me wish more critics would take note of what Yellowstone is doing. Shows shouldn’t need to achieve attention from legacy media and awards when they can offer something arguably just as valid: captivating entertainment that provokes its own base. Although maybe the lack of coverage also serves a purpose. If Yellowstone’s biggest fans figure out the show’s true message, they might stop watching it.

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/11/yellowstone-season-4-paramount-plus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_(American_TV_series)

Racism is insidious and comes in many forms.

People must be willing to stand up for their rights whether it be police abuse, employment discrimination and bias in the cloistered real estate industry.

The couple, property owners, in Marin City in super wealthy Marin County, California are taking a strong stand to protect themselves and their land.

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 12.3.2021

When Paul Austin and Tenisha Tate-Austin set out to refinance their Marin City home last January, they were shocked when an appraiser said their house was worth $995,000 — nearly half-a-million dollars less than another appraisal less than a year earlier.

Marin City, an unincorporated area wedged between affluent Sausalito and Mill Valley, grew out of the pre-World War II migration of tens of thousands of Black workers seeking employment around the local shipyard. While Marin City has become more diverse, surrounding areas, some of which remain over 90% white, often employed exclusionary policies like racially restrictive covenants to keep Black residents out prior to the 1968 Fair Housing Act.

Attorneys for the couple argue in the lawsuit that “Marin City has a long history of undervaluation based on stereotypes, redlining, discriminatory appraisal standards, and actual or perceived racial demographics.”

By focusing only on the small number of homes sold in the immediate Marin City area, they wrote in the lawsuit, appraisers are overly reliant on past sale prices, “which were the direct product of racial discrimination.”

The plaintiffs are seeking a jury trial, financial damages and a court order directing the appraisers to take action to ensure the issues in the complaint are not repeated.

The couple, who is Black, set out to get a second opinion last February. This time, they “white-washed” their home by hiding away family photos and asking a white friend to stand in for them. That appraiser valued their home at $1,482,500.

The $487,500 discrepancy between the two 2020 appraisals pushed the couple to filed a fair housing lawsuit in federal district court this week against appraiser Janette Miller, her appraisal firm Miller and Perotti Real Estate Appraisers, Inc. and national appraisal company AMC Links, LLC. It’s the latest escalation in a series of similar cases of alleged racial bias in the home appraisal process as California property owners move to reap financial gains from record home prices.

“We believe that Ms. Miller valued our house at a lower rate because of our race and because of the current and historical racial demographics of where our house is located,” Austin said in a press release. “The sales comps that the appraiser chose to use were unsuitable and were guaranteed to lower the value of our house.”

Miller’s firm and AMC Links, LLC could not be reached for comment.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Black-Marin-City-couple-sues-appraiser-for-16672840.php

Here is a more detailed look at Angela Merkel’s musical selections for her Berlin farewell event.  Deutsche Welle included graphics, magazine covers and videos in its presentation.

Deutsche Welle 12.2.2021

Angela Merkel is finally bidding farewell to the office of German chancellor after 16 years in the top job.

Although she will remain in office on an interim basis until the next chancellor is confirmed, Thursday evening will see her attend a military tattoo in her honour.

The so-called “Großer Zapfenstreich” is the highest military ceremony in Germany and comes complete with a torchlight procession, soldiers performing music and marching with clockwork precision.

Like her predecessors, Merkel was allowed to request three songs for the military marching band to play.

Two are unlikely to raise eyebrows: The 18th-century Christian hymn “Großer Gott, wir loben dich” (“Holy God, We Praise Thy Name”) — likely a nod to her political party’s Christian roots and her upbringing with a Protestant pastor for a father.

The other is the popular song by German singer Hildegard Knef “Für mich, soll’s rote Rosen regnen” (“It should rain red roses for me”). It’s a wistful tune about teenage dreams and ambition, with lyrics such as “I want all or nothing.”

Anthem by punk legend Nina Hagen

Yet one song chosen by the chancellor may come as a surprise to many — the 1974 East German hit sung by punk rocker Nina Hagen, “Du hast den Farbfilm vergessen” (“You forgot the color film”).

An iconoclastic pop star back in the German Democratic Republic, Nina Hagen became the punk icon of West Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

https://www.dw.com/en/angela-merkels-surprising-choice-of-farewell-music/a-59980297

Angela Merkel has other interests beyond those political. In her sendoff after 16 years as Germany’s Chancellor the military band trotted out one of the favorite songs of her youth.

“Du Hast den Farbfilm Vergessen,” or “You Forgot the Color Film,”

Washington Post 12.2.2021

BERLIN — After Angela Merkel’s 16 years as chancellor, Germans are starting to wonder how well they knew her after all.

On Thursday, among the three songs played by a military band at her request was a 1974 hit from East Germany by a singer who fled to the West and went on to become a flamboyantly coifed leader of the punk scene before German reunification.

“Du Hast den Farbfilm Vergessen,” or “You Forgot the Color Film,” was made famous by Nina Hagen as it recounts her frustration after returning from vacation at Hiddensee — a popular tourist spot in the former East — only to realize that her boyfriend, Michi, had taken black-and-white film for the camera.

Known as much for her eccentric hair and makeup as for her hits, Hagen was already an pop star in the former East Germany before leaving for the West in the mid-1970s. She rose through the pop ranks to become a punk icon in the 1980s.

For decades, the singer also has been part of animal and human rights campaigns. In 2010 she performed at a Christmas dinner for the homeless.

The song has long been interpreted as a criticism of the gray and dreary German Democratic Republic, where color film was hard to come by. Over the years, one line in particular has remained ingrained in the memory of former East Germans: “No one will believe how beautiful it was here.”

That Merkel chose a song from the former East caught many Germans by surprise. Merkel seldom made reference to her East German upbringing.

After 16 years, Germany’s Merkel is stepping down. Here’s how she built her legacy.

“Merkel outs herself in the end as an East German,” said a headline in Berlin’s Tagesspiegel newspaper after the announcement of the song choices by Merkel, who formally leaves office next week as her successor, Olaf Scholz, takes over.

The unexpected song choice left some people speculating whether Merkel had interpreted the song’s lament about forgetting color film as a jab at the male-dominated old guard of German politics that still holds sway.

Merkel has said nothing public about the choice. But she is known for getting in some shots of her own, including a reputation for wisecracks and uncanny impersonations of other politicians.

In a Facebook post, Hagen said she was “just as amazed by the surprising music news from the chancellery as probably all other bon vivants in this country.” The singer said she initially thought the reports were fake as the lyrics were written by Kurt Demmler, who was charged with child sexual abuse and hanged himself in prison in 2009 the night before his trial.

Like chancellors before her, she could request three songs to be played by the Bundeswehr marching band. Besides the Hagen tune, her others were an 18th-century Christian hymn and Hildegard Knef’s “Für Mich Soll’s Rote Rosen Regen,” or “It Should Rain Red Roses for Me,” a melancholic song from 1968 about teenage hopes and dreams.

In 1992, Merkel and Hagen famously crossed paths. Merkel — who headed the Women and Youth Ministry at the time — sat next to the singer on a televised talk show about drug addiction. In a heated moment, Hagen shouted at Merkel: “I’m fed up with your lying, with your hypocrisy.”

  

Merkel’s military send-off fell exactly 31 years since the first elections in united Germany on Dec. 2, 1990.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/merkel-military-punk-hagen/2021/12/02/440f64d0-52c3-11ec-83d2-d9dab0e23b7e_story.html

Lee Heidhues 12.1.2021

People who spread the lie about The Pandemic are due for a reckoning.

These ignorant Luddites with a huge audience are able to convince their followers that the Pandemic is all fake news and no precautions are necessary.

Never mind that over 5,000,000 people have perished in the past two years. These dangerous fools keep spewing out their nonsense.

Some  are now paying the ultimate price for their reckless behavior which is puttng their ignorant minions at risk.

The Guardian 12.1.2021

Marcus Lamb, the co-founder of the leading Christian TV network Daystar who railed against Covid-19 vaccines, has died of Covid-19. He was 64 years old.

Lamb, who was the chief executive of the conservative network that reaches an estimated 2 billion viewers worldwide, died on Tuesday, weeks after contracting the coronavirus.

“It’s with a heavy heart we announce that Marcus Lamb, president and founder of Daystar Television Network, went home to be with the Lord this morning,” the network announced in a tweet on Tuesday. “The family asks that their privacy be respected as they grieve this difficult loss. Please continue to lift them up in prayer.”

Under his leadership, Daystar aired repeated baseless anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and claims that vaccines were being used to take freedoms away from Christians. In July 2020, the network spent an hour of air time complaining about “censorship” around the pandemic and also gave an hour’s slot to Robert F Kennedy Jr, who has spread misinformation about the Covid vaccine.

Covid vaccines have been repeatedly found to be safe and effective at preventing severe illness from the virus. Evangelical Christians have been getting the vaccines at lower rates than the general US population, however, and several prominent Christian broadcasters have died of the virus in recent months.

Last month Lamb’s son Jonathan said that his father’s illness was due to sinister outside forces.“There’s no doubt in my mind that this is a spiritual attack from the enemy,” he said, adding that Lamb has pushed alternative therapies and that “there’s no doubt that the enemy is not happy about that. And he’s doing everything he can to take down my Dad.”

Daystar was founded in 1998 and has more than 100 TV stations around the world. Lamb’s wife Joni, appearing on the daily Ministry Show on Tuesday, said that he had “got the Covid pneumonia”.

“He 100% believed in everything we talk about here on Daystar, things that help so many people around the world with early protocol treatments for Covid,” she said. “We still stand by those obviously.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/01/marcus-lamb-covid-19-daystar-christian-tv-network-dies

San Francisco has been a world leader in keeping track of the Covid-19 and keeping its nearly 900,000 citizens safe and healthy.

Unfortunate as it is the first U.S. Omicron case was found here, the City’s residents can be assured that local government authorities are zealous, vigilant and unrelenting in their actions to protect the public from the ravages of the Pandemic.

San Francisco Chronicle 12.1.2021

A case of the omicron coronavirus variant has been identified in a San Francisco resident — the first in the country, officials said Wednesday.

The case was detected in someone who traveled to the U.S. from South Africa the week of Thanksgiving and tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday, according to San Francisco public health director Grant Colfax.

“They did the right thing and got tested,” Colfax said at a chaotic press briefing on Wednesday outside San Francisco’s City Hall.

That person, who had been healthy, was fully vaccinated with the Moderna vaccine — but not a booster — and developed mild symptoms upon their return, he said.

The person quarantined and close contacts — people who were within 6 feet of the individual for more than 15 minutes — are being contacted and tested.

The variant was discovered through genomic sequencing at UCSF.

“This is not a surprise. We knew that omicron was going to be here,” Colfax said. “We thought it was already here. This is cause for concern. It’s not cause for us to panic. We are prepared in the city for this.”

Colfax said he does not anticipate changing public health orders at this time or implementing new restrictions.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/First-U-S-omicron-case-found-in-San-Francisco-16666493.php#photo-21775752

Lee Heidhues 11.30.2021

Unlike the United States where the judicial system is consistently turning away attempts to mandate compliance with strict Covid-19 regulatons, the German high court is taking the only correct stand.

Strict laws mandating compliance with Covid-19 rules are the only way to fight the Pandemic.

Regrettably the Courts in the United States have many willing handmaidens in the media. Most prominent amongst the Covid-19 deniers are the Wall Street Journal and Fox News whose editorial stances can be described in one word.

LUDDITE. a person opposed to new technology or ways of working.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 11.30.2021

The German government’s “emergency brake” measures have been deemed constitutional by a top court. The restrictions, imposed automatically if infection rates passed certain levels, included school closures and curfews.

While conceding that the measures did infringe on some fundamental rights, they were in line with the constitution “amid the extremely dangerous situation of the pandemic,” the court said.

The “emergency brake” agreed by the federal government in April proved controversial, as under the current version of the Infection Protection Act, Germany’s 16 states usually enjoy a considerable degree of autonomy with regard to enacting and enforcing pandemic protection measures.

The Constitutional Court is to hand down a ruling at a later date on some 100 individual complaints regarding restrictions on the retail sector, cultural events and hotel industry, among other things.

Restrictions imposed by the German government on the populations of individual federal states to curb the spread of the coronavirus were fundamentally in line with the constitution, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled on Tuesday.

The so-called emergency brake, which was in force in Germany from April to the end of June, obliged states or districts to put in place curfews and other restrictive measures if the seven-day incidence rate per 100,000 people rose above 100 on three consecutive days. The measures included school closures if the rate surpassed 165 on three consecutive days.

The court handed down two rulings on Tuesday, one regarding curfews and contact restrictions, the other regarding school closures. Both rulings dismissed complaints against the measures that had been lodged with the court.

Several of the complaints were made by parliamentarians from the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP), one of the three parties in the incoming coalition government. FDP leader Christian Lindner was among the complainants.

In its ruling, the court said the restrictions on the number of people allowed to meet up and the curfews from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. were proportionate to the situation.

It said the ban on in-person school attendance did not violate the right to schooling enshrined in the German constitution, with schools implementing online lessons when school closures were ordered. It also cited the fact that the closures were temporary in nature as being conducive to their compatibility with the constitution.

https://www.dw.com/en/covid-german-constitutional-court-rules-emergency-brake-measures-were-legal/a-59975212