There’s no substitute for experience. I am no USA flag waver. There has been plenty to criticize about American policy in the past 70 years. Cold War, Vietnam, Chile, Iraq for starters. Quite a list.

Nonetheless, American policy has brought a certain degree of stability to a fractured planet.

After four years of Trump, whose only goal was what benefited him, it will be refreshing to see experienced, educated, knowledgable people looking after American foreign policy.

Deutsche Welle 11.24.2020

President-elect Joe Biden said Tuesday that the United States under his leadership will reaffirm its commitments to its allies.

At a ceremony in Wilmington, Delaware, Biden unveiled his national security team, including Antony Blinken as secretary of state (pictured above) and John Kerry as climate envoy. The president-elect said his team embodied his core belief “that America is strongest when it works with its allies.”

“It’s a team that reflects the fact that America is back, ready to lead the world, not retreat from it,” he said on stage, with his administration staff selections wearing masks and standing six feet apart.

The foreign policy strategy marks a stark contrast from the more antagonistic “America First” approach taken by Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, who was often at odds with traditional allies across the world, particularly in Europe. 

“I want to say to you: America is back. Multilateralism is back. Diplomacy is back,” Thomas-Greenfield said.

UN Ambassador designee – Linda Thomas-Greenfield

Read more: Europe hails Biden Cabinet as a chance to ‘restore’ trans-Atlantic ties

Biden noted that in his calls with foreign leaders, they expressed “how much they’re looking forward to the United States reasserting its historic role as a global leader over the Pacific, as well as the Atlantic, across the world.”

Joe Biden has said his administration will strengthen the US role as a leader “across the world.” At an event unveiling his national security team, the president-elect also stressed his commitment to global cooperation.

Blinken, a longtime Biden confidante and former deputy secretary of state in the Obama administration, vowed the US would seek global cooperation in its foreign policy.

“We have to proceed with equal measures of humility and confidence,” Blinken said. “As the president-elect said, we can’t solve all the world’s problems alone.”

Vice President-elect Kamala Harris said that in addition to repairing diplomatic relationships that suffered under the Trump administration, the US was committed to tackling climate change.

“We will need to reassemble and renew America’s alliances, rebuild and strengthen the national security and foreign policy institutions that keep us safe, and advance our nation’s interests, and confront and combat the existential threat of climate change that endangers us all,” she said.

Avril Haines – Director of National Intelligence designee

John Kerry, who served as secretary of state under Barack Obama, praised Biden’s commitment to rejoin the Paris Climate agreement on the first day of his presidency, and also called for a UN conference in Glasgow to raise ambitions for curbing global warming.

“You’re right to rejoin Paris on day one. And you’re right to recognize that Paris alone is not enough,” Kerry said.

In addition to Blinken and Kerry, Biden also named Obama White House alum Jake Sullivan as national security adviser, veteran diplomat Linda Thomas-Greenfield as UN ambassador and lawyer Alejandro Mayorkas as secretary of homeland security. Avril Haines, a former deputy director of the CIA, was tapped to be director of national intelligence.

Hillary Clinton and incoming National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan

Biden is due to take office on January 20. Aside from Kerry and Sullivan, his national security team picks unveiled on Tuesday will require Senate confirmation.

https://www.dw.com/en/joe-biden-lays-out-foreign-policy-vision-america-is-back/a-55715379

San Francisco Chronicle 11.23.2020

San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin announced Monday that he has filed manslaughter charges against the police officer who fatally shot 42-year-old Keita O’Neil during a 2017 chase — the first time in modern history that the city’s top prosecutor has charged a police officer with homicide in a use-of-force case.

San Francisco Police Department Officer Christopher Samayoa had just graduated from the police academy and started field training when he shot O’Neil on Dec. 1, 2017. Boudin said that while he seeks to hold law enforcement officers just as accountable as civilian defendants, his commitment to “not overcharge” extends to the police.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/In-a-first-for-San-Francisco-DA-Chesa-Boudin-15748619.php

Attached below is a link to the November 23, 2020 San Francisco Examiner article on the indictment.  The article shows footing of the actual police shooting captured on an SFPD body vid cam.

https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/da-boudin-charges-fired-sfpd-officer-with-manslaughter-over-fatal-shooting/

Following is the original story which appeared in the SF Chronicle following the police shooting.

San Francisco Chronicle archive 12.1.2017

A San Francisco police officer shot and killed a suspected carjacker who had injured a state lottery worker, stole her minivan and led police on a chase into a public housing complex in the city’s Bayview neighborhood on Friday, officials said.

The chase came to its deadly end inside the Alice Griffith Housing Development Double Rock, near the Gilman Playground and the Bret Harte Elementary School, police said.

The episode began about 10:30 a.m. when police responded to reports that the driver of a California State Lottery van was carjacked in the 1800 block of 23rd Street in Potrero Hill, said Sgt. Michael Andraychak, a San Francisco police spokesman.

The woman driving the van suffered “non-life-threatening injuries,” he said.

Police officers stopped the gold-colored SUV at Gilman Avenue and Ingalls Street. The men in the vehicle were detained without incident.

The driver hit a fence and got out of the van, at which point at least one officer opened fire, police said. It was not immediately clear whether the man was armed.

A patrol car stopped behind the lottery van had a shattered front passenger-side window, but police did not say how it was broken.

The suspected carjacker, identified by the city medical examiner’s office as 42-year-old Keita O’Neil, was taken to San Francisco General Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Back at the scene, police examined bloody clothes and other evidence scattered between the patrol car and van.

The van, which was filled with boxes, was surrounded by crime scene tape and its rear hatch was raised.

The names of those arrested were not released.

State lottery officials declined to say what the van was transporting and referred questions to the San Francisco Police Department.

Russ Lopez, a lottery spokesman, said that the driver was not seriously injured in the carjacking.

“She’s shaken up, but we’re glad she’s OK,” Lopez said.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/SFPD-investigating-officer-involved-shooting-in-12398743.php

Study the media carefully. Slowly. Inexorably. Inevitably. Trump is being given the “lame duck” or “loser” treatment. 

The attention his Twitter rants receive in the media is receding day by day as time passes and January 20 grows closer. That is what really bothers Mr. Audience of One. 

The Trump Show has been cancelled. The expiration date is in 59 days. Good riddance.

Excerpted from Wall Street Journal 11.22.2020

WASHINGTON—A defiant President Trump continued efforts to contest the outcome of the election, as his legal options narrowed and a number of Republicans expressed frustration with his refusal to acknowledge defeat.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Mr. Trump’s efforts to pressure state legislators in Michigan to overturn the election results were “completely outrageous.”

“We’re beginning to look like we’re a banana republic,” Mr. Hogan said. “It’s time for them to stop the nonsense.”

Despite pressure to concede, Mr. Trump’s team over the weekend sought fresh avenues to reverse his loss to President-elect Joe Biden. They pledged to appeal a federal ruling in Pennsylvania that dismissed one of their lawsuits and filed a recount petition in Georgia after the election results were certified with Mr. Biden the winner.

What is that old definition about insanity?  

Doing the same stupid thing over and over, again, and expecting a different result.

Would you expect much else in this country where over 70,000,000 people voted for the Moron Trump. Many of whom still believe he won the election.

Figures that millions of Americans will  ignore science and health warnings and just continue to party on down.  

Amazing.

Excerpted from Washington Post 11.21.2020

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday recommended against traveling and gathering for Thanksgiving, using its first news briefing in months to sound alarms over the massive case rise reported in the past week. The United States has surpassed a quarter-million deaths related to covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

Life Imitates Art – Story of the Week

This sordid tale of the US Justice Department suddenly dropping an indictment against Mexico’s former Defense Minister is shocking. Perhaps not.  This is what the War on Drugs which began in 1969 in the Nixon Administration has been all about.  Politics.

One only needs to watch the terrific Steven Soderbergh movie Traffic released in 2000 to get a spot on cinematic look at the failed War on Drugs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_(2000_film)

Excerpted from New York Times 11.18.2020

Emotions reached a peak in recent days, as Mexico City issued an unheard-of warning to its counterparts in Washington: If the United States did not rethink its pursuit of Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, Mexico would consider expelling American federal drug agents from the country, jeopardizing a decades-long partnership that has helped bring several top drug lords to justice, according to three people in the United States who are familiar with the case.

Mexican officials made the threat after weeks of anger at the surprise arrest of a former defense minister. Their gambit appears to have worked — the charges were dropped.

That threat appeared to work. On Wednesday, at the request of Attorney General William P. Barr himself, a federal judge in Brooklyn said she would formally dismiss the charges against Mr. Cienfuegos, a former army general.

From the moment U.S. federal agents arrested a former Mexican defense minister last month on drug trafficking charges, the highest levels of the Mexican government were outraged at being kept in the dark about the case, seeing it as an egregious breach of trust between allies.

The pandemic is spiraling out of control, the death toll is rising, the economy – at least for the 99 percent portion – is collapsing.

Does any of this matter to soon to be tossed out Trump, our version of King George III (read your history books)?

Not for a second. This lame duck loser Trump just continues to spin the The Big Lie that he won the election.

And his enabler, clueless Treasury boss and big time lackey Steve Mnuchin is making sure the incoming Administration will inherit a complete pandemic and health disaster.

Vanity Fair 11.20.2020

Ask Steve Mnuchin about the whole thing, though, and he swears nothing nefarious is going on. “We’re not trying to hinder anything,” he said on CNBC Friday.

Something you’re probably aware of by now, unless you live in a cave or exclusively get your news from @realDonaldTrump and his big boy sons, is that there’s a very contagious disease ravaging the globe that is not just killing more than a million people but jobs and businesses as well.

Jobs, for the lazy rich who are unaware, are how people buy stuff like food and pay for things like shelter. So losing them is bad; less bad if you live in a society where the government actually cares about people and doesn’t just say, “tough shit, them’s the breaks,” when you lose one, and more bad if you live in, for example, the United States of America.

The current Treasury secretary presumably knows this and, yet, he’s apparently hoping to make a bad situation even worse!

On Thursday, Steven Mnuchin said that he doesn’t plan to extend a number of key emergency lending programs beyond the end of the year, asking the Federal Reserve to return the money supporting them to the Treasury. While the programs expire at the end of 2020, investors had expected them to continue without interruption, given that COVID-19 is spiraling out of control and continues to pose major economic risks.

As The New York Times reports, “the pandemic-era programs…have provided an important backstop that has calmed critical markets since the coronavirus took hold in March,” and “removing them could leave significant corners of the financial world vulnerable to the type of volatility that cascaded through the system as virus fears mounted in the spring.”

And while any Joe Biden–appointed Treasury secretary would likely restart them immediately, Mnuchin’s move would significantly delay doing so. In a rare critical statement, the Federal Reserve said it “would prefer that the full suite of emergency facilities established during the coronavirus pandemic continue to serve their important role as a backstop for our still-strained and vulnerable economy,” which is Fed-speak for “Bitch, the fuck is wrong with you? The economy is hanging on by a thread here!”

Per the Times:

With coronavirus cases on the rise, the economy may sour again, making the programs more necessary. As recently as Tuesday, [Fed chair Jerome] Powell warned of the potential for economic scarring and said that the economic recovery had “a long way to go.”

Mnuchin, of course, is one of Donald Trump’s most devoted lackeys and Trump would obviously love nothing more than to choke the economy to death right before his successor takes over. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce denounced the move, with Neil Bradley, the group’s executive vice president, saying, “a surprise termination of the Federal Reserve’s emergency liquidity program, including the Main Street Lending Program, prematurely and unnecessarily ties the hands of the incoming administration and closes the door on important liquidity options for businesses at a time when they need them most.”

As the Associated Press notes, “many progressive economists have argued that,” with the election of Biden, “a Democratic-led Treasury could support the Fed taking on more risk and making more loans to small and mid-sized businesses and cash-strapped cities under these programs. That would provide at least one avenue for the Biden administration to provide stimulus without going through Congress.” Stimulus that, for some reason, Mitch McConnell is in no hurry to get out to struggling Americans.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/11/steven-mnuchin-joe-biden-economy

11.19.2020

The following Letter to the Editor was published in the San Francisco Chronicle

Lee Heidhues – San Francisco

Regarding “Traffic puts Great Highway closure at risk” (Nov. 17): I applaud Heather Knight for reporting on the fight by cyclists and pedestrians to gain increased mobility.

The past seven months has seen the Great Highway, astride the Pacific Ocean, turn into a thoroughfare for cyclists, runners and pedestrians of all ages.

It is one of the best things that has happened to San Francisco in this cataclysmic 2020. I am shocked and disappointed that Supervisor Gordon Mar could think of reopening the Great Highway to cars, again. Particularly since he was the one who advocated for this move which sent a clear message to car owners.

They don’t rule the world. Let car owners engage in some new behaviors and stop complaining about having to go a bit out of their way.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/letterstoeditor/article/Letters-to-the-Editor-Keep-Great-Highway-free-of-15737632.php
Late unlamented Embarcadero Freeway.

When the Embarcadero Freeway in the eastern shore of San Francisco was irrevocably damaged in the October 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake it was torn down.

The Embarcadero – Then and now.

https://www.cnu.org/what-we-do/build-great-places/embarcadero-freeway

The blight on the beauty of San Francisco was built during the freeway craze of the 1950’s. It ran like a cancer along the waterfront.

When the demolition was proposed the uproar from certain constitutents, car owners and neighborhood groups, was fierce.

The fearsome howls that loss of the freeway would ruin businesses, impact neighborhoods and make the streets more congested was all bloviating rhetoric.

The Embarcadero Freeway was demolished. The San Francisco waterfront is now a beautfiul place. The neighborhoods are doing just fine. Car owners have adapted.

Similiar gloom and doom talk is now being heard from those who are inconvenienced by car owners and nearby neighbors who feel inconveniced. The car free Great Highway has been a marvelous improvement to San Francisco life and needs to be made permanent.

Contact management at the San Francisco Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Supervisor Gordon Mar whose district abuts the Great Highway. Let them know you want an environmentally clean Great Highway for cyclists, runners and pedestrians of all ages.

jeffrey.tumlin@sfmta.org Director of Transportation San Francisco MTA

kristen.holland@sfmta.org Acting Media Relations & Customer Communications Manager San Francisco MTA

gordon.mar@sfgov.org Gordon Mar – District 4 Supervisor

Americans sense of history is virtually non-existent. Most probably can’t even tell you where Germany is located. That makes sense in a nation which foisted Trump onto the world scene.

Citizens in the USA country don’t pay much attention to anything but what is going on any further than the drivel coming out of their television.

In Germany, which has been hit hard by the Pandemic the government is proposing a law imposing restrictions which many are comparing to the draconian laws Hitler’s rubber stamp Reichstag imposed in 1933.

The soon to be tossed out wannabe despot Trump probably longed for the opportunity to impose his fascist mentality on the American public. Fortunately he is being rebuffed.

The scary reality is that 72,000,000 Americans, many of whom live on a 24/7 diet of Fox junk News, went to the polls this year and supported this thug. It’s a sad commentary on the USA and leaves many people who treasure democracy feeling adrift and forlorn.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 11.18.2020

Anti-lockdown protesters have compared the Infection Protection Law, proposed by Angela Merkel’s government, to the law that paved the way for Adolf Hitler’s dictatorship in 1933. But the two laws are hardly comparable.

“It is a very unusual day”, said Social Democrat MP Helge Lindh as he approached the German Bundestag by foot Wednesday morning. He was referring to crowds of protesters gathering outside the parliament building.

Their goal was to stop the new infection protection law, intended to make it easier for the government to swiftly introduce lockdown measures in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.

Several hundred demonstrators defied bans to protest outside the parliament buildings and in the surrounding government district. Some protesters even tried to block access to the building, before the protests were dissolved by police.

“It must be possible to demonstrate and to criticize,” Lindh told DW by telephone. “But tolerance can not go so far to accept that the infection protection law is being equated with the beginning of the Nazi dictatorship, with the Enabling Act of 1933.”

On March 23, 1933, Adolf Hitler placed before the parliament a “Law to Remedy the Distress of People and the Reich” — the law that came to be known as the “Enabling Act.”

Some protesters, as well as the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), have repeatedly drawn this analogy. They claim the new law will give the government dictatorial powers, drawing a parallel to events in 1933. “This is blindness towards the lessons of history,” said Lindh. “And it is a complete trivialization of National Socialism.”

It amended the constitution, giving sweeping legislative powers to the government: “Laws of the Reich may also be enacted by the government of the Reich…Laws enacted by the government of the Reich may deviate from the constitution…”

The law passed through both chambers of parliament and gave Hitler and his National Socialist party absolute power over the German state.

“Parliamentarism was dead after that,” Andreas Wirsching, director of the Institute of Contemporary History in Munich, told DW. “It was the self-abolition of parliament. And most members of parliament realized this when they voted for the law.”

Almost 100 communist members of parliament had already been imprisoned, were in hiding, or had fled the country when the Reichstag convened to pass the “Enabling Act.” Nazi paramilitary storm troopers were positioned at the parliament’s entrance, putting pressure on the remaining members of parliament.

To compare today’s Infection Protection Law to the legislation pushed through back then is “purely demagogical,” Wirsching said. “The ‘Enabling Act’ had one goal: dictatorship. That’s why the analogy is nonsense.”

https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-can-germanys-infection-protectionlaw-be-compared-to-the-nazis-enabling-act/a-55649748

Fortunately there remain a few level headed Republicans who have refused to drink the Trump kool-aid.

In Wayne County, Michigan President-elect Biden received approximately 72 percent of the votes. 412,000 to Trump’s 143,000. Republicans are upset. Trump got clobbered in a county with a predominantly black population. In the 2010 census the county’s black population was over 40 percent.

The effort to discredit the vote is nothing more than thinly veiled racism.

After two Republicans refused to certify the presidential vote in Wayne County a wellspring of outrage and protest erupted.  

The two Republicans had the good sense to realize they were flouting the will of the voters and, once again, bowing to the soon to be exiled, disgraced and former President.

These officials know there’s more to life than Trump.

Excerpted from Washington Post 11.17.2020

People have predicted that freed from any constraints anything is possible with Donald Trump. His advisors may have prevailed upon this despot to call off the dogs of war.

For Now.

There are still 65 days left until Trump disappears into ashbin of history.

Let’s hope he doesn’t take us with him.

Excerpted from New York Times 11.16.2020

The president was dissuaded from moving ahead with a strike by advisers who warned that it could escalate into a broader conflict in his last weeks in office.

WASHINGTON — President Trump asked senior advisers in an Oval Office meeting on Thursday whether he had options to take action against Iran’s main nuclear site in the coming weeks. The meeting occurred a day after international inspectors reported a significant increase in the country’s stockpile of nuclear material, four current and former U.S. officials said on Monday.

A range of senior advisers dissuaded the president from moving ahead with a military strike. The advisers — including Vice President Mike Pence; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; Christopher C. Miller, the acting defense secretary; and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — warned that a strike against Iran’s facilities could easily escalate into a broader conflict in the last weeks of Mr. Trump’s presidency.

Any strike — whether by missile or cyber — would almost certainly be focused on Natanz, where the International Atomic Energy Agency reported on Wednesday that Iran’s uranium stockpile was now 12 times larger than permitted under the nuclear accord that Mr. Trump abandoned in 2018. The agency also noted that Iran had not allowed it access to another suspected site where there was evidence of past nuclear activity.

Mr. Trump asked his top national security aides what options were available and how to respond, officials said.

After Mr. Pompeo and General Milley described the potential risks of military escalation, officials left the meeting believing a missile attack inside Iran was off the table, according to administration officials with knowledge of the meeting.

Mr. Trump might still be looking at ways to strike Iranian assets and allies, including militias in Iraq, officials said. A smaller group of national security aides had met late Wednesday to discuss Iran, the day before the meeting with the president.

White House officials did not respond to requests for comment.