Sad and typical boorish behavior from America’s top diplomat and Trump apologist. Mike Pompeo is the typical loser clown, all too typical of the sycophants who work for this unhinged fool in the White House.
Mike Pompeo is an embarrasment. But in Trump’s world view he only wants slavish obedience. He gets it with this clown.
The Guardian 1.24.2020
Secretary of state used the F-word and demanded host Mary Louise Kelly find Ukraine on a map, journalist says
Mike Pompeo is said to have unleashed a foul-mouth tirade at a well known US radio host after she asked him questions about Ukraine in an interview.
Most of the interviews Pompeo gives are to conservative or evangelical Christian media or outlets from his home state of Kansas, where the tone of questioning tends towards the reverential and supportive. He has a history of attacking his interviewer when faced with challenging questions, often dismissing those questions as absurd.
Mary Louise Kelly, a respected broadcaster on National Public Radio (NPR), sat down for a pre-arranged interview with the secretary of state on Friday, whose wrath was apparently triggered by a string of questions about Marie Yovanovitch, the former US ambassador to Ukraine. Kelly asked Pompeo whether he owed Yovanovitch an apology for not defending her in the face of a smear campaign orchestrated by Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani and his associates.
Kelly said an aide to Pompeo then abruptly ended the interview, before Pompeo summoned her to his private living room at the state department and began berating her, asking her :“do you think Americans care about Ukraine?”
“He used the F-word in that sentence and many others,” Kelly said, describing a rant in the room where the notoriously thin-skinned former Republican congressman had called her.
Pompeo “shouted at me for about the same amount of time as the interview” Kelly recalled. “He was not happy to have been questioned about Ukraine.” Pompeo is due to travel to Ukraine next week.
In what appeared to be a bizarre attempt to browbeat her, he asked the host of the NPR programme All Things Considered if she could find Ukraine on a map, and when she said she could (she was a foreign correspondent and has covered intelligence and national security) he called for aides to bring a map of the world with no country or place names on it.
Kelly pointed to Ukraine, Pompeo put the map away and said: “People will hear about this”.
That is what happened. Kelly went on NPR after her interview aired, and gave her account of the encounter.
Yovanovitch was removed in May as the Trump camp was trying to put pressure on the Ukraine government to produce compromising material on Joe Biden and his son – the issue at the heart of the impeachment trial underway in the Senate.
Kelly’s questions were particularly topical as a new recording surfaced on Friday in which Giuliani’s associates denigrated Yovanovitch and a voice that appears to the president’s can be heard saying: “Take her out”.
Pompeo told Kelly he had agreed to the interview to talk about Iran. But Kelly pointed out that she had confirmed with his staff that she would ask about both Iran and Ukraine.
“I just don’t have anything else to say about that this morning,” Pompeo said. According to Kelly, he leaned towards her and glared as the interview was wound up.
In June 2018, when asked whether the statement about denuclearisation signed by Trump and Kim Jong-un at a summit in Singapore would be verified by weapons inspectors, Pompeo became angry telling a reporter: “I find that question insulting and ridiculous and, frankly, ludicrous.”
In the face of further questioning he said: “It’s not productive to do that, to say silly things. It’s just – it’s unhelpful.”
It soon became apparent that the North Korean leader had not made the disarmament pledges Trump and Pompeo had claimed.
America and Germany have a lot in common when it comes to scourge of Neo-Nazi movements.
It’s shocking and disturbing that 87 years after Hitler came to power in Germany so many folks advocate twisted Nazi doctrine.
Germany is much more aggressive in hunting down these Nazis. The German government actually bans their existence as a danger to the State.
Deutsche Welle 1.23.2020
Authorities banned a neo-Nazi group that saw itself as “Adolf Hitler’s task force” and had links to the murder of a German politician. Police also conducted raids against the group in six states.
German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer banned a right-wing extremist group on Thursday that referred to itself as “Adolf Hitler’s task force.”
The German branch of Combat 18 “is a neo-Nazi, racist and xenophobic association whose purpose is similar to that of national socialism,” the ministry said in a statement announcing the ban.
“Today’s ban is a clear message: right-wing extremism and anti-Semitism have no place in our society,” Interior Minister Seehofer said.
The ban came as 210 officers on Thursday morning carried out raids across Germany, searching through apartments in the states of Hesse, Thuringia and North Rhine-Westphalia as well as in three other states.
“Mobile phones, computers and right-wing extremist symbols were confiscated,” a spokesman for the Rhineland-Palatinate Interior Ministry said.
Calls to ban the group had been growing since the murder of German politician Walter Lübcke near Kassel in June 2019. His suspected murderer is thought to have had contact with members of Combat 18. Europol, the EU-wide police agency, also warned that Combat 18 posed a threat throughout Europe.
Under the ban, the group will not be able to meet and it will be illegal to write or use the group’s logo.
What is Combat 18?
Combat 18 is a militant neo-Nazi organization formed in Britain in 1992. They are believed to be the armed wing of another another neo-Nazi network, Blood & Honour, that has spread to several European countries.
The number 18 in the name corresponds with the first and eighth letters in the alphabet —A and H— the first letters of Adolf Hitler’s first and last names.
The group was classified as a right-wing extremist group in Germany at the start of the 2000s and there are thought to be around 20 members in the German organization. The group’s motto is “whatever it takes.”
Leaders of the German faction are reported to be Stanley Röske, 43, from near Kassel, and Robin Schmiemann, 35, from Dortmund. Schmiemann spent time in prison for shooting a Tunisian during a supermarket raid.
The group is particularly known in Germany for spreading right-wing extremist music and organizing neo-Nazi concerts.
Another sad indicator of the changing scene in San Francisco
San Francisco Chronicle 1.22.2020
The warm white-on-red neon blade and marquee at the Clay Theatre, one of the oldest movie theaters in San Francisco and a signpost on Fillmore Street in Pacific Heights since around 1910, will flicker off after one last picture show as the shoebox-shaped room is scheduled to close Sunday, Jan. 26.
With the 325-seat Clay going dark, that leaves San Francisco with the Vogue Theatre on Sacramento Street as the only neighborhood first-run single screen in the city. The Clay is part of a chain of art houses across the country owned by Landmark Theatres, including venues in Berkeley, Albany, Oakland, Palo Alto and Santa Cruz in addition to the Embarcadero Center Cinema and Opera Plaza Cinema in San Francisco.
Landmark President Paul Serwitz, reached by phone in Los Angeles on Wednesday, Jan. 22, confirmed the closure and said the Clay had been losing money for six consecutive years.
“Much of Landmark’s DNA is in older theaters like the Clay, but we’ve put many efforts into making the Clay work and are unable to operate it viably,” he said.
Serwitz added that the Opera Plaza Cinema on Van Ness, which also had been rumored to face closure, will remain open and is scheduled for refurbishing.
The Clay’s fate “came as a shock to me,” the Clay’s landlord, Balgobind Jaiswal, said Tuesday, Jan. 21. Jaiswal, who also owns Cielo Boutique on the same block of Fillmore as the theater, said he has been exploring the concept of combining the movie theater with a restaurant to make it viable but has not yet found a food partner for that venture.
Despite the pending closure, Alfonso Felder of the San Francisco Neighborhood Theater Foundation sounded hopeful for the future of the historic building.
“There is a level of interest in the community for it staying a theater that I’m optimistic will result in another chapter,” said Felder, whose organization bought and saved the Vogue. “The Clay has been around since 1910, so it has some fortitude.”
The darkening of the Clay Theatre follows the recent closure of the Guild in Menlo Park as the last two single screens in Landmark’s Bay Area portfolio.
The chain was launched in 1975 by San Franciscans Gary Meyer and Steve Gilula. Landmark took over the Clay in 1991 and throughout that decade was a major force in the indie film craze that was fed constant product by studios like Miramax and Orion Classics.
Meyer sold the chain to Samuel Goldwyn Jr. in the late ’90s, starting the long, slow whittling of the chain through sales and a bankruptcy before Landmark was purchased by Cohen Media Group in late 2018.
By then the Bridge Theatre, another beloved Landmark single screen off Geary Boulevard, had already folded and it was rumored that the Clay would be next to fall.
In 2010, the Clay looked as if it was going to be saved by the San Francisco Film Society (now SFFilm), which had been in talks to take it over from Landmark. But that deal fell through, compelling Jaiswal to reduce rent for Landmark to keep the theater running.
This time around, Jaiswal said he was not offered any terms by Landmark, which is on a month-to-month rent. He expects to be served notice that Landmark will vacate any day now and suspects it is closing to give the operator ample time to remove its equipment.
But in a post on the Facebook page “Save The Clay Theatre San Francisco” on Tuesday, Clay floor staffer and in-house historian Michael Blythe blamed the impending closure of the Clay on the landlord Jaiswal, not the operator Landmark. He implored moviegoers to contact Jaiswal by email and come to the theater to demand it remain open.
“Ask that he work with Landmark to make the improvements needed to the facility without destroying its simple charms,” Blythe stated. “Tell them how much you adore this building before it is too late.”
Netta Fedor, who lives a short walk from the theater, came to the Clay on Monday as soon as she heard the rumors to commiserate with Blythe, who took time away from popping corn to comfort her.
“I’m sick. I see every film that comes here,” said Fedor, who said she had seen 670 movies in San Francisco theaters in 2019 — many of them at the Clay.
“It’s a shame to lose all the local theaters,” said Rachel Reynard, who took the 22-Fillmore from her home in the Mission to watch “Honeyland” on Monday. “It’s a lovely thing to have in a neighborhood, and it’s going to be a loss.”
Unlike many of the early theaters in San Francisco that were either converted storefronts or built for vaudeville and other live performances, the Clay was built as a movie theater, with no backstage, said Blythe.
While historians like Blythe contend the theater opened in 1910, there is no documentation that it is the oldest theater in the city. Bill Counter, who runs the Facebook page Bay Area Historic Theaters, said old telephone directories date the Regent, the Vogue and the Roxie Theater to 1913 but no earlier.
The Clay will close Sunday after three screenings of “Honeyland.”Photo: Sam Whiting, The Chronicle
Originally called the Regent, and briefly the Avalon, the theater’s exterior was altered once — in the 1950s when an archway was removed and the name was changed to the Clay, with a new blade and marquee. The ticket booth was also moved from the center of the foyer to the side.
Early advertisements show it as “The Clay International,” and it has held steady as a home for first-run independent foreign cinema. The Clay serves the broader Bay Area at midnight on Saturdays when it screens campy cult films, a concept it launched in 1972 with the premiere of John Waters’ “Pink Flamingos.”
The Clay became part of the Surf chain of theaters before Landmark took it over in the mid-1990s. At one point 500 seats were crammed into the narrow room, but that was reduced as people got wider and taller, Blythe said. The chairs were last replaced in the 1990s.
That is right about the time a rat took up residence in the rafters. It became part of the show, scampering along the ceiling and dangling its long tail so the audience could see it.
“The Clay is part of San Francisco history and means a lot to people who love art films,” said Meyer, the Landmark co-founder. “On the other hand, operating a single screen is difficult and the Clay has not been updated in a long time.”
Among the Bay Area single-screen theaters to close in recent decades are the Northpoint (2007), the Metro (2006), the Coronet (2005), the Alhambra and the Royal (both 1998), the Pagoda Palace (1994) and the Cannery (1993). The Alexandria on Geary Boulevard was converted to a triplex before closing in 2004. The Four Star in the Richmond and both the Presidio and Cinema 21 in the Marina were single screens converted to duplexes or fourplexes by Lee Family Theaters.
The Roxie, off 16th Street in the Mission, is now a nonprofit that relies heavily on revivals and repertory programming. And while the Castro Theatre, opened in 1922, is also single-screen, it is a movie palace at a major intersection and serves the broader Bay Area mainly as a repertory house and festival venue.
“I’m sad, of course, to lose the Clay,” said Counter. “What can you say? It’s another one that bites the dust, and San Francisco is poorer because of it.”
Final movie screenings: “Honeyland.” 5:20 and 7:25 p.m. through Sunday, Jan. 26; “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” 11:55 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 25. $11. Landmark’s Clay Theatre, 2261 Fillmore St., S.F. 415-561-9921. landmarktheatres.com
This observation in the Guardian says it all about The Impeachment Trial, Trump and the Republicans led by Senator Mitch McConnell.
The Guardian 1.22.2020
When Richard Nixon resigned before he could be impeached, his successor Gerald Ford declared “our long national nightmare is over”. This time, the Republican party refuses to wake up.
Hillary is going to be trashed for saying what she believes about Bernie. I don’t think she cares. Why should she? Having won the 2016 election by 3 million votes.
Only in America.
The Guardian 1.21.2020
Hillary Clinton has criticized Bernie Sanders, insisting “nobody likes” and “nobody wants to work with” him.
The Hollywood Reporter on Tuesday published the comments, which Clinton made in a four-part Hulu documentary, Hillary, to premiere at the Sundance film festival in March.
Clinton beat Sanders in a bitter 2016 primary, before losing the presidential election to Donald Trump.
“He was in Congress for years [and] had one senator support him,” Clinton said, going on to call Sanders “a career politician” and to dismiss his claim to represent the everyday American worker as “just baloney”.
“I feel so bad that people got sucked into it,” Clinton said.
She also pointed to a “culture around” Sanders that she said perpetuated sexism, racism and misogyny within the senator’s campaign staff.
“It’s his leadership team,” she said. “It’s his prominent supporters. It’s his online Bernie bros and their relentless attacks on lots of his competitors, particularly the women.”
Asked by the Hollywood Reporter if she would endorse Sanders should he win the primary this year, Clinton refused to commit, saying: “I’m not going to go there yet.” But in a tweet on Tuesday evening, she appeared to clarify her position.
“I thought everyone wanted my authentic, unvarnished views!” she wrote. “But to be serious, the number one priority for our country and world is retiring Trump, and, as I always have, I will do whatever I can to support our nominee.”
On Tuesday, Sanders issued a statement in response to Clinton’s comments. He did not address them head-on.
Sanders has attracted attacks as he has risen in the polls. With the Iowa caucuses two weeks away, he is racking up high-profile endorsements and leading in some polls of likely Iowa voters.
Earlier in January, Elizabeth Warren, a competitor for the Democratic nomination, accused Sanders of telling her in a private meeting in 2018 a woman could not beat Trump at the polls.
Sanders has strongly denied making the comment. Both held their ground when asked to clarify their remarks on the debate stage, leading to a confrontation after the debate had ended. CNN published audio, in which Warren accused Sanders of calling her “a liar on national TV”.
If incumbent Tony Montoya is the “reasonable”POA leader who seeks better relations with City Hall I cringe at the thought of his potential successor.
Most abhorrent was the public trashing of Jeff Adachi by a former POA President shortly after the Public Defender’s untimely passing in February 2019.
Under Montoya’s leadership the POA unleashed its vicious campaign and unsuccessful smear candidate against candidate Chesa Boudin. When Supervisor Sandy Fewer called out the POA on election night with its spot on “Fuck you” chant the POA went into the full over the top attack mode.
The potential Rich Cibotti incumbency can only promise more of the same. More POA bombast.
San Francisco Chronicle 1.20.2020
San Francisco Police Officer’s Association president Tony Montoya led by a scant 15 votes in last week’s election to be the new head of the police union, sending the race into a runoff in the coming weeks.
Montoya received 836 votes from union members, while Rich Cibotti, a San Francisco police sergeant at Tenderloin Station and attorney who defends officers in police discipline cases, received 821 votes. A third candidate, Joe Valdez, the union’s former treasurer who works in the Airport Bureau, received 46 votes, according to an internal message to union members obtained by The Chronicle.
Because no candidate received more than 50% of votes, the election heads to a runoff between Montoya and Cibotti in the coming weeks.
Montoya and Cibotti would likely take similar positions on issues concerning union members, but are expected to differ in their style and approach.
“The votes tell you all you need to know,” said Gary Delagnes, the union’s brash former president who supports Cibotti. “There’s a tremendous difference in opinion in the way the POA should move forward. Tony’s style has been ‘Let’s get along. Let’s extend our hand and see if we can make things better.’ But I believe in aggressive leadership. You have to fight and scratch and claw for everything you get.”
The union has become increasingly isolated in city politics under Delagnes and his successor, Martin Halloran, who fought police reform and defended officers in high-profile scandals — including revelations of racist text messages between cops. Where an endorsement from the city’s rank-and-file is a boon to candidates in other major city’s, many candidates in San Francisco don’t even seek the union’s backing.
Since taking over as president in May 2018, Montoya has tried to bring some prestige back to the union and pushed a more diplomatic and calculating approach to city politics than his bombastic predecessors.
He’s met with city officials he openly disagrees with politically, including Boudin and progressive supervisor Hillary Ronen, quietly advocating for the union’s 2,000 members.
“Delivering results to improve wages, benefits and working conditions is what our current board has done,” Montoya wrote in a message to The Chronicle on Monday. “There is a time to demonstrate our disgust and opposition with politicians as we did with Supervisor Fewer over her unhinged rant, and there is a time to work with other politicians who want a safer and cleaner San Francisco. I have demonstrated that I can do both and I believe the membership wants leadership that can do more than be angry, they want results.”
Cibotti could not be reached for comment.
After retiring as an officer, Delagnes stayed on as a consultant for the union and remained a major figure in the organization under Halloran. Montoya fired Delagnes last year over an inflammatory Facebook post attacking Public Defender Jeff Adachi just days after his death. Delagnes said he’s not interested in coming back if Cibotti is elected.
While Montoya has been more diplomatic behind the scenes, he hasn’t shied away from public fights when it concerns his members.
He took a parting shot at former District Attorney George Gascón, who left officer in October, and blasted voters’ decision to elect Boudin after spending hundreds of thousands in attack ads against him. He called on Police Chief Bill Scott to resign following a famously bungled investigation into a leaked police report to a journalist. He also blasted the chief over his decision to promote officers over others who scored higher on their exams.
Perspective from the East Coast. The San Francisco media is too awash in its wine and cheese to make such a bodacious statement about the Red and Gold Super Bowl bound 49ers. Bullies in San Francisco????
Washington Post – Jerry Brewer 1.20.2020
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — There was the thought, as nostalgia drifted into minds, that maybe Aaron Rodgers had some vintage greatness under his sleeve. Maybe he could do something magical. Maybe he could avenge his worst performance of the regular season, find a way to hogtie the San Francisco 49ers’ mammoth defense and transform this NFC championship game into a triumphant homecoming.
It was a cute, fleeting thought.
The San Francisco 49ers are the NFC’s greatest force, and they are just getting started. It leaves Aaron Rodgers in a place familiar to many who persist in this game: as an aging legend in need of help.
On Sunday, with a Super Bowl berth at stake, the 49ers bludgeoned all quarterbacking fairy tales with their brand of harsh reality. They pounded Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers, 37-20. They led 27-0 at halftime and needed only eight total pass attempts from their quarterback, Jimmy Garoppolo, to be so dominant. There are blowouts, and then there are completely demoralizing beatdowns that make you reexamine everything you know about the game. This was definitely the latter.
Given that San Francisco stomped Green Bay, 37-8, in the regular season, it’s no great surprise that the 49ers proved to be superior again. Nevertheless, it was stunning to witness Rodgers — that baaaaad man for so long, the NFL’s most feared something-out-of-nothing genius — yield to a greater force without the least bit of adjustment. Rodgers and the Packers had seen the 49ers at their mightiest, underestimated them, gotten embarrassed and taken the time to reflect and revise their approach. But the rematch wasn’t much different from their November meeting, when Rodgers threw for just 104 yards on 33 pass attempts.
In fact, this humiliation felt worse because they knew what was coming, and not even the league’s improvisational master could come up with a better way to combat the ferocious defensive pressure.
San Francisco didn’t just want to win. It wanted to pound Green Bay into submission, something that hardly ever happens with Rodgers under center making miracles happen. But the Packers lost their spirit early in this game. Rodgers could not extend plays; when he tried, he looked foolish and helpless as he took sacks. He muffed a snap and gave little effort as 49ers defensive tackle DeForest Buckner fell on the fumble. Later in the second quarter, he threw an interception to Emmanuel Moseley that led to the third touchdown of the first half for 49ers running back Raheem Mostert, who finished his career day with 220 of San Francisco’s 285 rushing yards and four touchdowns.
Rodgers improved in the second half and finished with respectable statistics: 31 for 39 for 326 yards, two touchdowns, two interceptions. He did not quit. But those numbers were deceiving because they were accumulated mostly against a defense that had turned conservative.
The first half was more indicative of the kind of game Rodgers had. He went into halftime having completed 9 of 12 passes for just 64 yards. He had those two turnovers and posted a 52.1 passer rating. He was sacked twice, so the Packers had only 41 net passing yards at the break.
And that should be the largest feather in the 49ers’ conference championship cap. They ruined one of the last good chances Rodgers had to win a second Super Bowl. They may have also sent him officially into a new existence as an old quarterback.
“It definitely hurts, I’d say, a little more than early in the career,” Rodgers said. “It’s just because you realize how difficult it is to get to this spot.”
John Lennon sang “Happiness is a warm gun.” He was cut down by an assassin’s bullet.
It’s a fitting commentary that on Martin Luther King Day, an advocate of non-violence, who was assassinated 52 years ago the gun toting crazies strut their warped view of civil rights for all the world to see.
Washington Post 1.20.2020
Thousands of gun rights supporters from Virginia and across the country are coming to Richmond for a rally in opposition to gun-control laws being advanced by the General Assembly’s new Democratic majority. After threats and indications of potential violence, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) ordered a state of emergency and banned guns from Capitol Square; gun-control groups and advocates for other causes are staying away from what in the past has been a day of citizen lobbying on a wide range of issues. Gun rights activists and militias are dividing into two groups: those who will shed their weapons and enter the secured area, and those who will remain armed and in the streets outside the capitol complex.
Has the Chronicle no decency? It’s fitting the Chronicle would print this Red baiting Opinion piece just after the American Experience Documentary on Joseph McCarthy. The Kimberly Guilfoyle hit piece is a 2020 version of McCarthyism. The Chronicle is continuing its crusade to undermine DA Chesa Boudin. The Chronicle has become the forum for the Police Officers Association and others who look unfavorably on the criminal justice reforms DA Boudin will be implementing. These attacks will only serve to strengthen the resolve of the San Franciscans who voted Chesa into office.
The San Francisco 49ers are headed to the Super Bowl after a dominating win over the Green Bay Packers in the NFC championship game. They will face off against the AFC champion Kansas City Chiefs and star quarterback Patrick Mahomes in Miami on February 2.
San Francisco is Super Bowl-bound
The game effectively ended with just under two minutes left, when 49ers cornerback Richard Sherman picked off Aaron Rodgers on a deep throw. San Francisco was able to kneel out the clock and make plans for the Super Bowl against the Kansas City Chiefs. The 49ers become just the third team to make the Super Bowl following a season with at least 12 losses, following the 1988 Cincinnati Bengals and the 1999 St. Louis Rams. (49ers 37 -Packers 20 )
Lee's Perspective 