Fascinating feature length article. Required reading for political afficianados.

Excerpted from The New Republic 3.21.2019

Mitch McConnell is just what he looks like: a man serenely unbothered by anything he’s done to get his power or anything he’s done with it, having few friends but many allies.

As Trump’s presidency has predictably proved to be a series of outrages and self-inflicted national crises, punctuated with periodic updates on all the crimes and should-be-crimes his friends, associates, and children have committed, McConnell has receded into the wallpaper. It’s another of his special political talents. During that historic shutdown, he simply vanished for days at a time, letting his louder, dimmer counterpart in the Democratic minority, New York Senator Chuck Schumer, make himself the face of the Senate side of the negotiations. And the thing is, with every other major player in Washington desperate to get in front of a camera, this strategy works astoundingly well at deflecting attention and blame for things that are absolutely your own fault.

Recounting McConnell’s handling of a prior crisis, Bloomberg Businessweek writer Joshua Green described his strategy well: “McConnell nevertheless manipulates the press masterfully, using methods that are head-smackingly obvious and yet still elude most politicians. He knows exactly what he wants to say, repeats it with emphasis, then stops.” For those wondering how he’ll react if the government shuts down again, or if Trump causes some constitutional crisis by firing everyone investigating him, or if John Bolton declares war on Sweden, there’s your answer.

McConnell and his first wife would be divorced. Sherrill Redmon (shown in photo below)  went on, improbably, to become the director of the Sophia Smith collection of Women’s History at Smith College, where she collaborated with Gloria Steinem on the Voices of Feminism Oral History Project. He does not bring her up often.

https://newrepublic.com/article/153275/mitch-mcconnell-profile-nihilist-chief

I am watching the gripping, intense and ultimately sad German film In the Fade.  The story of a young mother whose Turkish husband and six year old son are assassinated by Nazis in Hamburg.  The acting is very personal and effective. The courtroom scenes illuminating the German justice system are fascinating. The ferocity with which the main character seeks justice is intense.

In the Fade (German: Aus dem Nichts) is a 2017 German drama film written and directed by Fatih Akin. It stars Diane Kruger as a German woman whose husband and son are killed in a terrorist attack perpetrated by neo-Nazis. It was selected to compete for the Palme d’Or in the main competition section at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, where Kruger won the Best Actress award. It was selected as the German entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 90th Academy Awards, making the December shortlist,  but it was ultimately not nominated. It did, however, win the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Photo above – Two Neo Nazis accused of murder and their lawyers.

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

(UPDATE) One follower of this Blog post noted that White House adviser Stephen Miller is to Trump like Josef Goebbels was to Adolf Hitler.

Congressman Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) is being attacked  for calling racist, xenophobic Stephen Miller a “White Nationalist.”  The Congresswoman’s detractors are trying  once again to foist the “anti-semitic” label on Ms. Omar.  Correctly calling out someone for being a “White Nationalist” has nothing to do with Judaism. Rabid shameless Republicans and some misguided Democrats will go to any length to destroy the Muslim legislator.  Stephen Miller is the shadow image of Boss Trump. 

Excerpted from The Washington Post 4.9.2019

A familiar story line played out Monday night for Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who condemned one of President Trump’s most trusted advisers, only to end up being accused of anti-Semitism.

“Stephen Miller is a white nationalist,” she tweeted Monday afternoon. “The fact that he still has influence on policy and political appointments is an outrage.”

Because Miller, Trump’s senior policy adviser, is Jewish, Omar’s fervent detractors on the right viewed her comments not as incendiary criticism of Miller’s hard-line immigration policies but instead as part of a pattern of targeting Jews.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/04/09/rep-ilhan-omar-called-stephen-miller-white-nationalist-gop-critics-accused-her-anti-semitism/?utm_term=.f3e48fa31a0d

Politics, sports and money are Intertwined.

Excerpted from The Guardian 4.9.2019

There is no precedent in American pro sports for the relocation that the Golden State Warriors will make this summer from Oracle Arena, their unlovely yet beloved home in Oakland for the past 47 years, to the $1bn Chase Center, located across the bay near downtown San Francisco and stocked with all the amenities that 21^st century sports fans supposedly require (luxury suites, locally harvested avocado toast) and that 21^st century superstar athletes definitely require, like locker rooms that don’t flood.

What’s more, the story of the Warriors is inextricably linked to Oakland’s racial and political fabric at a key moment in post-civil rights USA, not to mention in the NBA’s evolution as a league, both on the court (Nellieball!) and off it, from a niche league with a primarily African American fanbase to what it is now: the most dynamic league in America, led by Steph Curry, a superstar whose mere physical appearance – light skin, boyish smile – reflects for many black NBA fans the gradual whitening of the league and the erosion of the game’s inner-city roots. And nothing – nothing – drives that feeling home for the city of Oakland like their Warriors leaving for upscale, IPO-inflated, impenetrably expensive, lily-white San Francisco.

For one thing, the Warriors are the first of two pro franchises that the city of Oakland will lose in the next 12 months. The Raiders will be right behind them, relocating to Las Vegas in 2020. And yet, even though the Raiders are leaving the state entirely, the Warriors’ departure for San Francisco – wealthy, impenetrable, white; everything Oakland isn’t – may be the more painful exit of the two.

Don’t say that in the presence of a Raiders fan unless you want your head split with a pole axe, but the fact is, the Raiders have already left once (for Los Angeles) and as long as Al Davis’s nitwit son owns the team there’s no reason to think they won’t be back. After all, this wouldn’t be the first shotgun marriage in Vegas to go wrong in a hurry.

What’s really unusual here is the combination of a team with a legendarily rabid fanbase at once staying close to home and moving to another world entirely. The Warriors are moving from a place (Oakland) where everyone is a Warriors fan to another place (San Francisco) where everyone is a Warriors fan – but something much more elemental about the team is going to change along with the zip code. In true Silicon Valley fashion, Golden State’s relocation – they played their final regular season game at the Oracle on Sunday night – is like gene therapy, a rewriting of the core DNA of a franchise that forged its identity in Oakland and in direct opposition to what its fancy new home represents.

The Guardian – Richard Wollfe 4.8.2019 (open the link and read it all)

In Trump’s ninth circle of hell, there may be more ideological hardliners than Kirstjen Nielsen and there certainly are more wingnut sociopaths.

Of all the charlatans, sycophants and moral sellouts surrounding Donald Trump, no one comes close to Kirstjen Nielsen.  

Not Steve Bannon, the neo-fascist strategist who glued a thin veneer of ideology on top of the particle board flakes that fill the cranium of a bankrupt property developer.

Not Paul Manafort, the ostrich jacket-loving former campaign chairman now serving seven years for being a liar and fraud after servicing a motley crew of tyrants.

Not even Mike Pence, the “evangelical Catholic” vice-president who set a new land-speed record for praising this genital-grabbing, porn star hush money president.

The move to “whitewash” the murals at George Washington High School  in San Francisco is symptomatic of America’s historical amnesia.  Whether it be slavery, genocide against Native Americans and continuing through the Vietnam War, America thinks it can just paint over its violent history.  

In Germany, the Nazi era will never be forgotten.  Museums, memorials, literature can be found throughout the country as a reminder of  the Nazi reign and its genocide against Jews, Communists, Gypsies, Gays and the opposition in general. Liz Heidhues and I spent time at The Topography of Terror in Berlin last September.  It is a graphic and depressing presentation of Hitler’s rise to power.

Photo above – Topography of Terror, Berlin September 2018

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 4.8.2019

It was 1936 when the Works Progress Administration commissioned Victor Arnautoff, a Russian artist, to paint the the Washington mural in the newly built school in the city’s Richmond neighborhood. It was one of many pieces of public art created in San Francisco as part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal employment projects.

Arnautoff painted the Washington scenes directly on wet plaster and in the social realist style of his mentor, Mexican artist Diego Rivera. At the time, “Life of Washington” was considered something of a subversive work, illustrating enslavement and slaughter, Golinger said.

Victor Arnautoff would later teach art at Stanford, where he survived calls to fire him in 1955 for a satirical caricature of Vice President Richard Nixon called “Dix McSmear,” which associated Nixon with McCarthyism and prompted Arnautoff’s interrogation by the House Un-American Activities Committee. A longtime member of the Communist Party, he returned to the Soviet Union in the mid-1960s and died in Leningrad in 1979.

For 84 years, San Francisco high school students have walked to class past the scenes of black slaves picking cotton and white settlers urged on by George Washington stepping over a dead American Indian.

This true, sad newsworthy story was sent to me by a Lee’s Perspective follower.

Pope Francis blamed Europe and the United States for the deaths of children in Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan, saying Saturday that wealthy Western countries fuel conflicts by selling weapons in war zones.

Speaking to students and teachers of Milan’s San Carlo Institute, Francis said the reason there are so many wars around the world is “the rich Europe and America sell weapons … used to kill children and kill people.”

Without such firepower, the pope added, there wouldn’t have been war in countries such as Afghanistan, Yemen and Syria. .

“A country that produces and sells weapons has on its conscience the death of every child and the destruction of each family,” Francis said.

The Bernistas continue to wage The Battle of 2016. It’s over. Time to move on and do what it takes to oust Trump.  This internecine Bernie bickering helps only one person. Trump.

Excerpted from Talking Points Memo 4.6.2019

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — It was hard to miss Cheri Pichone’s excitement about Bernie Sanders’ second presidential run. She showed up to a recent Iowa rally decked out in Sanders gear, complete with a figurine of the Vermont senator and progressive icon.

But underneath her exuberance, the 36-year-old was still mad about the last Democratic primary, when Sanders’ bid for the presidency fell short to Hillary Clinton.

Pichone voted for Green Party candidate Jill Stein in 2016 and said she may vote for a third party again if Sanders doesn’t clinch the nomination.

She’s emblematic of a persistent group of Sanders supporters who won’t let go of the slights — real and perceived — from the last campaign. The frustration is notable now that Sanders is a 2020 front-runner, raking in $18.2 million in the first quarter, downplaying concerns about DNC bias and highlighting his success in bringing the party around on liberal policies it once resisted.

Some establishment-aligned Democrats worry the party could lose in 2020 if lingering concerns about the last primary aren’t put to bed.

“It has the potential to escalate, and it has the potential to help re-elect Donald Trump,” said Mo Elleithee, a former spokesman for Clinton and the DNC.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/they-cheated-some-bernie-supporters-still-salty-clinton-nomination

The book “Strange Justice” by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson is required reading and is the only exhibit needed to illustrate why Joe Biden should never be President.

To really learn about the disgraceful manner in which Joe Biden treated Anita Hill during Clarence Thomas 1991 confirmation hearing the 1994 book provides in easy to understand language Biden’s role in foisting Clarence Thomas on the American public.

A position from which Clarence Thomas, the successor to iconic Justice Thurgood Marshall, has destroyed Civil Rights and American democracy for nearly 30 years.  

Excerpted from CNN 4.6.2019

American mainstream media is focused towards reporting the Israeli perspective. I will Post news from the Ma’an News Agency (MNA) site to ad some balance.

Launched in 2005, Ma’an News Agency (MNA) publishes news around the clock in Arabic and English, and is among the most browsed websites in the Palestinian territories, with over 3 million visits per month. Considered the main source of independent news from Palestine, MNA has become the first choice for online information for many Palestinians, and is also attracting a growing international readership and interest from prominent international news organizations and agencies.

Ma’an News Agency 4.5.2019

QALQILIYA (Ma’an) — One Palestinian was injured with a rubber-coated steel bullet as Israeli forces suppressed the weekly Kafr Qaddum march in the northern West Bank district of Qalqiliya, on Friday afternoon.

Coordinator of the local popular committee of Kafr Qaddum, Murad Ishteiwi, said that dozens of Israeli forces raided Kafr Qaddum and went up rooftops of local homes.Israeli soldiers fired rubber-coated steel bullets, tear-gas canisters and stun grenades to suppress protesters.Ishteiwi reported that one Palestinian youth was injured with a rubber-coated steel bullet and transferred to the Rafidiya Governmental Hospital in Nablus for treatment.Clashes erupted between Palestinian youths and Israeli soldiers, during which Palestinians responded to Israeli bullets with rocks and empty bottles.

No detentions were reported. Residents of Kafr Qaddum began staging weekly protests in 2011 against Israeli land confiscations, as well as the closure of the village’s southern road by Israeli forces. The road, which has been closed for 14 years, is the main route to the nearby city of Nablus, the nearest economic center.The Israeli army blocked off the road after expanding the illegal Israeli settlement of Kedumim in 2003, forcing village residents to take a bypass road in order to travel to Nablus, which has extended the travel time to Nablus from 15 minutes to 40 minutes, according to Israeli rights group B’Tselem.

http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=783117