Lee Heidhues 7.24.2022

Our daughter and I were exchanging messages earlier today and she cued me into ‘The Old Man’.  I need some well produced exciting escapist entertainment to get my mind out of the San Francisco political swamp in the dog days of summer.

When I think of Jeff Bridges I first think of the 2016 film ‘Hell or High Water’. In that film Bridges portrays a Texas lawman working his last assignment. That film is deep. When I saw ‘Hell or High Water’ six years ago I thought it a precursor to what the soon to be Trump era would become.

Taking time to watch both the film and the FX seven part series makes for interesting viewing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_or_High_Water_(film)

Excerpted from The New York Times 6.15.2022

With the advent of peak TV, and its bidding wars for talent, came a rush of film legends to smaller screens. Within the last decade, performers at the level of Al Pacino, Jane Fonda, Julia Roberts and Christopher Walken suddenly discovered that it wasn’t beneath their dignity to star in a regular old television series.

It may seem as if nearly everyone who matters had already made the move, but this week TV snares another big name: 72-year-old Jeff Bridges, a true member of the aristocracy of American acting.

He has made a few guest appearances over the years, including with his father on “Sea Hunt” and “The Lloyd Bridges Show” 60 years ago. But “The Old Man,” a moody, deliberate, seven-episode thriller premiering Thursday on FX, is the first series he can call his own.

Bridges plays Dan Chase, a former C.I.A. agent who got involved in bad business in Afghanistan during that country’s war with the Soviet Union and had to go underground; he is flushed out of hiding when the series begins, and we watch as he goes on the run and tries to figure out who is after him, so many years down the road.

Chase is a Cold War true believer who went beyond the bounds of his assignment in Afghanistan, and there are elements of Graham Greene’s Vietnam-era quiet American in his character — the warrior whose naïve idealism and certainty (combined with a weakness for a local woman) makes him dangerous.

He also has an artless arrogance that can be charming right up until it turns frightening, a quality showcased in his accidental relationship with Zoe McDonald (Amy Brenneman), a lonely woman he encounters during his flight.

Bridges, the most natural and authentically human actor around, navigates the currents of Chase’s character with ease; he’s absolutely convincing at every moment, even when the writing gets a little too ornate and preachy, which it does with some regularity. And physically, he does a brilliant job of conveying Chase’s combination of lethality and frailty, a condition that is played more for poignancy than action-movie triumphalism.

Top Photo:  Jeff Bridges and Amy Brenneman in ‘The Old Man’

 

Lee Heidhues 7.20.2022

Every person has a human right to have food. It’s a basic human right.

It’s regrettable that the AP refers to people who need food to survive as receiving “handouts”.

It’s a sign of disrespect towards the millions of Americans who are overwhelmed by the Capitalist system which rewards the wealthy and denigrates the vast majority less fortunate.

San Francisco is no stranger to the Food Bank. The San Francisco-Marin Food Bank serves thousands of residents each week. The citizens of all ages who are participants in the program would take exception to being labeled a recipient of “handouts”.

https://www.feedingamerica.org/find-your-local-foodbank/sf-marin-food-banks

Excerpted from AP via The People’s World 7.18.2022

Long lines are back at food banks around the U.S. as working Americans overwhelmed by inflation turn to handouts to help feed their families.

With gas prices soaring along with grocery costs, many people are seeking charitable food for the first time, and more are arriving on foot.

Distribution by the Alameda County Community Food Bank in Northern California has ticked up since hitting a pandemic low at the beginning of this year, increasing from 890 households served on the third Friday in January to 1,410 households on the third Friday in June, said marketing director Michael Altfest.

Inflation in the U.S. is at a 40-year high and gas prices have been surging since April 2020, with the average cost nationwide briefly hitting $5 a gallon in June. Rapidly rising rents and an end to federal COVID-19 relief have also taken a financial toll.

The surge in food prices comes after state governments ended COVID-19 disaster declarations that temporarily allowed increased benefits under SNAP, the federal food stamp program covering some 40 million Americans.

The food banks, which had started to see some relief as people returned to work after pandemic shutdowns, are struggling to meet the latest need even as federal programs provide less food to distribute, grocery store donations wane and cash gifts don’t go nearly as far.

Tomasina John was among hundreds of families lined up in several lanes of cars that went around the block one recent day outside St. Mary’s Food Bank in Phoenix. John said her family had never visited a food bank before because her husband had easily supported her and their four children with his construction work.

“But it’s really impossible to get by now without some help,” said John, who traveled with a neighbor to share gas costs as they idled under a scorching desert sun. “The prices are way too high.”

Jesus Pascual was also in the queue.

“It’s a real struggle,” said Pascual, a janitor who estimated he spends several hundred dollars a month on groceries for him, his wife, and their five children aged 11 to 19.

Long lines return at U.S. food banks as inflation hits high

The Presidency of Donald Trump and his continuing influence in America is the most visible warning sign that the Neo Nazi extremist threat to America is real.

 Far Right Nazi sympathizers continue to rise up and increase their power in America with such groups as Proud Boys, Q’Anon, Oath Keepers, Storm Front, and others. A link to extremist groups compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center is attached.

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/groups

In Germany The People have been pushing back for decades against Far Right Nazi extremism.

The Far Right has always represented a Clear and Present Danger in the United States BEGINNING with the rise of the Ku Klux Klan after the American Civil War (1861-1865).

Deutsche Welle 7.16.2022

Mainz, Germany

Anti-racism groups and political parties on Saturday broke up a planned gathering of a German neo-Nazi group.

Mayor warns of dangers from extreme right

Earlier Saturday, Mainz Mayor Michael Ebling led a gathering of some counter protesters at the city’s main railway station and used a speech to denounce the planned Nazi meeting.

“They should take their brown backpacks, pack them up and start their journeys back home,” Ebling said.

He also warned against underestimating the danger from the extreme right.

The Interior Ministry of the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate said the group was “obviously neo-Nazi.”

According to police, about 3,000 people — made up of church groups, labor unions and antiglobalization activists — helped to push back the extreme-right march through the western city of Mainz.

About 50 members of the hard-right New Strong Party (NSP) had gathered for a protest, around half of the number the party said would show up.

NSP members shouted such slogans as “Nazi city Mainz” and “Revolution now” before being prevented from moving forward, police said.

Clashes then erupted between officers and NSP members, and police said they responded with pepper spray.

The neo-Nazi group then relocated to another part of the city, according to the EPD news agency.

Academy Award nominated documentary of American Nazi rally in New York City – 1939

German local media reported scuffles between police and counter protesters.

Authorities clamp down on Neo-Nazi groups

In April, German police raided around 50 premises in a nationwide crackdown on banned neo-Nazi groups.

Four suspected right-wing extremists were arrested.

In February, members of neo-Nazi groups marred the remembrance ceremony of the World War II bombing of the city of Dresden.

The participants of the far-right march walked into the city center to the sound of Richard Wagner’s music.

 

The German composer, whose known antisemitic views have drawn widespread criticism, was Adolf Hitler’s favorite composer.

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-neo-nazi-march-blocked-by-opponents/a-62499602

Top photo:  American right wing extremists on the march

Lee Heidhues 7.15.2022

High and middle level attorneys and staff who worked with  Progressive DA Chesa Boudin were summarily fired in The Friday Morning Massacre.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed’s Puppet District Attorney Brooke Jenkins campaigned eight months as a leader in the political coup d’état  which ousted the democratically elected Progressive DA.

The Puppet DA was handsomely rewarded for her political treachery and dirty work. Jenkins sits in Chesa Boudin’s office without having to face the voters and earn the job.

The Puppet DA purged the office today.

The Puppet DA is bragging about the fact her top four deputies are women.  This is small consolation to the people who labored tirelessly with Chesa Boudin for 30 months to bring Progressive and fair Justice to the DA’s office.

It’s all being swept away in the aftermath of the 7.2MM MAGA funded Coup d’état which overthrew Chesa Boudin on June 7, 2022.

Kudos to SF Gate reporter Eric Ting who is the one scribe telling the World what is REALLY going on in The Puppet DA’s office.

Excerpted from SF Gate – Eric Ting – 7.15.2022

New San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins fired 15 people in her office on Friday, with one in particular prompting an outcry. It comes in the first week after Jenkins was appointed to her role by Mayor London Breed following the recall of Chesa Boudin.

“I want to commend @BrookeJenkinsSF for firing me today,” wrote Dylan Yep, who was previously in the data department. “I had every intention to continue working to fight the obscene racial disparities that permeate the San Francisco criminal legal system — a goal she only has interest in paying lip service to. She was wise to hang up before I could get a single word in — otherwise she would’ve been forced to answer for her racist, carceral, and data-free policy plans. Or explain why I was fired.”

 

Managing Attorney Arcelia Hurtado was the first member of the office to lose her job. She had served as the DA Office’s representative on the city’s Innocence Commission, which investigates potential wrongful convictions in the city. The commission was established by Boudin in 2020, and Jenkins signaled support for allowing it to continue in a KQED interview on Thursday.

“The decision by Brooke Jenkins to fire Arcelia Hurtado is deeply concerning, especially given the promise she made just yesterday to allow the Innocence Commission to continue to function,” said University of San Francisco law professor Lara Bazelon, the chair of the commission. “Arcelia was critical to the commission’s function. It is also concerning because Arcelia was the head of the DA’s post-conviction review unit, which, among other things, is currently considering the petition by Mayor London Breed’s brother Napoleon Brown to be granted leniency and released from prison following his conviction for carjacking and manslaughter. I can see no legitimate reason for firing an attorney as rigorous, competent and ethical as Arcelia.”

Other notable staffers fired included Kate Chatfield, Boudin’s chief of staff; Tal Klement, assistant chief of general crimes; Rachel Marshall, Boudin’s communications director and policy advisor; Mikaela Rabinowitz, director of data, analytics and research; and Lateef Gray, managing attorney of the independent investigations bureau, the department that oversees investigations into police officers.

“I came to DA Boudin’s office to fight for criminal justice reform; that battle has never felt more urgent,” Marshall said in a statement. “There is no question that DA Jenkins’ approach differs dramatically from my values. My passion for the mission to reform our legal system is stronger than ever and I am eager for the next opportunity to effect change.”

“San Francisco has taken 10 giant steps backwards,” Rachel Marshall said. “Jenkins was dangled in front of us because she’s a Black woman, which was supposed to make us feel better, but the firings are terrifying. I hope this raises the ire of the left, and makes us realize we must fight or we will lose. We always say a shift to the right can’t happen in California, but it is happening right here in San Francisco.”

On Twitter, Kate Chatfield  blasted the firings.

“The resentencing/innocence commission unit: gone. Police accountability: gone. Data and transparency: gone. Political corruption investigation: gone. Champion for victims and children: demoted,” she wrote.

Kate Chatfield also sharply criticized framing from news outlets that Jenkins’ first wave of senior staff hires were all women. “We’re seeing Girl Bosses for mass incarceration,” she wrote.

Several fired staffers other than Chatfield also left Jenkins pithy notes on Twitter on their way out.

“While en route to Santa Barbara for a wedding with fam, new SF DA Brooke Jenkins called and fired me on spot,” wrote Ryan Khojasteh, a felony prosecutor who worked on juvenile reforms. “Odd choice to fire a non-management felony prosecutor in the courtrooms every day that never lost a case.”

https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Brooke-Jenkins-makes-wave-of-firings-17308456.php

Top photo:  Puppet master Mayor London Breed and her Puppet DA announce her appointment at San Francisco City Hall – 7.7.2022

 

Lee Heidhues 7.15.2022

Today will go down in San Francisco history as The Friday Morning Massacre.

Mayor London Breed, who led the political Coup d’etat against Progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin, is now seeing her vengeful law ‘n order political agenda carried out.

Puppet District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, ex-Assistant District Attorney working for Chesa Boudin, quit last October and spent eight months as the Recall spokeswoman.

Breed  handsomely rewarded her for performing these dirty political chores.

After just a week  being sworn in as Puppet DA she is carrying out her benefactor’s wishes. This is the stuff of corrupt dictatorships.

Chesa Boudin’s top staff was summarily sacked.  Replaced by hard core law ‘n order prosecutors whose Mission will be to undo all the reforms put in place in the past 30 months. 

Most disturbing is the selection of Nancy Tung as the new boss of Special Investigations. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that one of Tung’s responsibilities will be to investigate “police misconduct”. This is reprehensible.

Nancy Tung ran against Boudin in 2019.  She finished third in the four person race. During the campaign Tung was the only candidate who said she would not prosecute  SFPD cops who murdered Mario Woods in 2015.

Tung is on the Board of Directors of the virulent law ‘ order NGO StopCrimeSF. Tung, like her new boss the Puppet DA, spent the last several months campaigning to Recall the Man who beat her in a democratic election.

Now, without having to face the voters, Tung has been rewarded a place at the Table. A Table at which the voters emphatically rejected giving her a Seat in 2019

https://missionlocal.org/2020/09/officers-who-killed-mario-woods-used-unnecessary-force-but-will-face-no-discipline/

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 7.15.2022

In among her first significant moves as San Francisco’s district attorney, Brooke Jenkins on Friday began a massive overhaul of her office’s personnel, firing several employees and announcing the posts of four new lieutenants who will help lead her management and transition teams.

Rachel Marshall, Boudin’s director of communications and a policy adviser, was among the first to be fired.

Jenkins’ new top hires, Ana Gonzalez, Nancy Tung, Tiffany Sutton and Rani Singh, have all spent several years as prosecutors in the Bay Area, and some of them sparred publicly with Boudin in the past.

Tung, an Alameda County Assistant District Attorney, will be the chief of special prosecutions, taking on sensitive cases that could range from domestic violence to police misconduct to fraud. She will also serve as the lead liaison for the the office’s community partnerships across San Francisco.

Like Jenkins, Tung also has a history of conflict with Boudin. She ran against him for District Attorney in 2019, coming in third in the city’s ranked-choice voting contest and was cast as the candidate most in favor of stricter penalties for people accused of crimes.

Tung also publicly supported Boudin’s recall, and was rumored to be Breed’s second-choice pick for District Attorney. This year, prior to Boudin’s recall, Tung told the San Francisco NAACP that she would seek the office again if Boudin was ousted.

“I promised the public that I would restore accountability and consequences to the criminal justice system while advancing smart reforms responsibly,” Jenkins said in a statement Friday.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/S-F-D-A-Brooke-Jenkins-has-picked-an-all-female-17307823.php

Lee Heidhues 7.14.2022

I need to step away from the cauldron of political life in San Francisco.  

Recalls of democratically elected “Progressives”;  District Attorney Chesa Boudin and three School Board members this year.  An upcoming ballot measure to take away hard fought car free spaces in San Francisco  

All of this negativity in so called Progressive San Francisco sends me scurrying for solace.  

Katie Kitamura’s novel is in a place so far removed from my current reality.

I am totally lost in the story which takes place in The Hague, Netherlands.  Reading the book also takes me back to my youth when I spent nearly a year living in Amsterdam.

It’s so nice to be able to dive into the pages of this story and momentarily forget about vicious San Francisco.

Excerpted from NPR 7.22.2021

The unnamed heroine of Intimacies, Katie Kitamura’s fascinating and mysterious new novel, observes that “none of us are able to see the world we are living in — the world, occupying as it does the contradiction between its banality … and its extremity.”

She’s a new interpreter at The Hague, responsible for the banal function of translating legal proceedings for extremely evil defendants: genocidal former heads of state.

We know only that the narrator came to The Hague by way of New York, her father has just died after a long illness, and her mother has returned to Singapore. Even her age and ethnicity are murky and, strangely, rarely commented upon. Kitamura seems to intentionally test the boundaries of how little biographical information an author can reveal about a protagonist while still making the reader feel intimately connected to them.

Readers will get a sense of both the importance and the futility of the International Criminal Court. The narrator points out that the Court primarily prosecutes crimes against humanity in African nations, becoming an “ineffectual” instrument of “Western imperialism.”

Of the building that the Court is housed in, the narrator observes “the modern architecture still seemed incongruous, perhaps even lacking the authority I had expected.”

I couldn’t help but crave a more open, incautious narrator, someone who is more than, as the accused puts it, “part of the institution that [she] serve[s].” The novel effectively comments on the elusiveness of intimacy, but perhaps at the cost of the reader’s emotional connection to the narrator. How much of what is factually revealed helps one understand a situation — or a person — more intimately?

Even the journalists covering the International Criminal Court “had merely fragments of the narrative and yet they would assemble those fragments into a story like any other story, a story with the appearance of unity.”

Kitamura’s novel has its own appearance of unity, but ultimately illustrates how one’s interpretations can fail to help them see the world in which they live.

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

https://www.npr.org/2021/07/22/1018978359/fascinating-mysterious-intimacies-doesnt-let-readers-get-close-enough

Lee Heidhues 7.9.2022

Mayor London Breed, in her quest for law ‘n order, is responsible for the incipient political Civil War raging in San Francisco. The City is now riven over a political Coup d’etat, whose backers spent 7.2MM to oust Chesa Boudin, the democratically elected District Attorney.

At least one media outlet described choice of a Puppet District Attorney as an Academy Award style slap in the face to Chesa Boudin.  Breed could have been a diplomat and tried to cool the political heat.  Instead, she turned it to a boil.

Chesa Boudin’s supporters have taken notice.  Just today Chesa issued a cryptic “Good Morning” on his Twitter site. As of this evening nearly 1100 people have “Liked” it. The pressure on Chesa to run in the November 8, 2022 election is intense. By her action Breed has laid down a marker.

She did it intentionally.

On July 7, 2022 London Breed named Brooke Jenkins as Puppet District Attorney to replace Chesa Boudin.  The same Chesa Boudin she campaigned against for eight months as the most visible leader in the Recall campaign. Jenkins has now been handed the job by a Mayor who values loyalty over ethics. A Mayor who holds grudges. A Mayor who willfully ignores what common sense dictates.

London Breed could have selected an interim DA who did not participate in the Coup d’etat and would have assumed the office without the questions which now hang over the Puppet DA Brooke Jenkins.

Breed’s leadership, or abdication of it,  in the Coup d’etat resulted in the Recall of Progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin.

This willful incendiary decision is the most blatant manifestation of her willingness to spare no political expense to lay waste to her opponents.

It is important to step back to 2019 when Chesa Boudin was running for District Attorney.  In early October that year then DA George Gascon resigned.  One month before the November 5 election.  Rather than let an Assistant District Attorney administer the office until a new DA was elected, Breed appointed Suzy Loftus as Interim DA.  Loftus was a Breed favorite, who also happened to be running for the job.

This crass political decision may well have turned the election in Chesa’s favor. A number of voters recognized this as an act of odious nepotism.  In fact I told a reporter the day Loftus was appointed interim DA, that Breed had just handed the election to Chesa.

Unfortunately, Breed didn’t learn any lessons from this debacle.

From the moment Chesa Boudin took office she has been one of his harshest critics.  It must have grated on her to sit in on Chesa’s Inaugural at the Marines Memorial Auditorium as a packed house cheered his ascension to the DA’s office. Adding insult to injury Breed swore DA Chesa Boudin into office.

We fast forward to 2021 when the Recall movement began in earnest. Extremist Republican Richie Greenberg launched the first Recall effort. Seeing this was not going to make the Ballot, Breed’s allies swung into action.  Her cronies Andrea Shorter and Mary Jung launched a second effort which spent $1,400,000 in a mercenary signature gathering campaign.  Through it all Breed remained silent.  The Recall measure qualified for the ballot in October 2021.  The election was put on the calendar for June 7, 2022.

It was at this same time that Brooke Jenkins, an Assistant District Attorney in DA Boudin’s office, quit.  Why? She had a dispute with Chesa over sending a man to prison who was deemed to be insane.  Jenkins wanted him in prison. Chesa wanted him incarcerated in an instiution where his illness could be treated.  She quit and immediately began campaigning against her former boss.

Ironically in 2020 Jenkins made several public comments praising Boudin’s stewardship of the DA’s office, in which she was an Assistant District Attorney.

Breed said nothing during the entire Recall campaign even though everyone in San Francisco knew she supported the Coup d’etat.  A public statement reminding voters Chesa was the democratically elected DA and there is a regularly scheduled election in November 2023 may have changed the result.

Instead, Breed remained silent.

On election night, Brooke Jenkins was proudly celebrating her victory in the Coup d’etat against her former boss.

Top photo – Mayor London Breed speaks at University of San Francisco Law School graduation – May 2021

 

Lee Heidhues with editorial assistance from Liz Heidhues 7.8.2022

Mayor London Breed, who was behind-the-scenes leader in the political Coup d’etat, has rewarded Brooke Jenkins by anointing her the chief Law Enforcement official in San Francisco.

July 8, 2022 will go down as one of the most abhorrent and desultory days in San Francisco’s political history.  

It is a vile and disgusting travesty seeing City Hall hacks and hangers-on cheer on a Puppet District Attorney who was a shameless agent in the ousting of Progressive DA Chesa Boudin.

The swearing-in of Puppet District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, a leader in the political coup d’etat ousting Progressive DA Chesa Boudin, ranks right up with the worst travesties in the City’s history.

• 1934 – Longshoremen’s Union workers shot by the San Francisco Police Department during an 83-day Strike, peaking with killing of two Strikers on “Bloody Thursday” July 5 
• 1960 – San Francisco Police Department officers brutally dragging protesters down City Hall stairs during notorious House unAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings 
• 1968 – Beatings of students by SFPD Tac Squad during the student Strike at San Francisco State 
• 1978 – Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk assassinated at City Hall by ex-cop Dan White 

Puppet DA Jenkins quit her job as an Assistant District Attorney in October 2021 after a dispute with DA Chesa Boudin over her insistence on sending a mentally handicapped man to prison.

Jenkins then spent the next eight months attacking DA Boudin she had previously praised on the record.

On June 7, 2022 her treachery was rewarded when 55 percent of the voters in San Francisco, following a vicious 7.2MM campaign funded with money from America’s most reactionary financiers, ousted Progressive DA Chesa Boudin.

Now the apostasy continues.

Will a lazy and compliant Media, aggressive agents in the destruction of a Progressive District Attorney, step away from their gaslighting and attack Puppet DA Brooke Jenkins with similar harsh scrutiny?

Will the portion of the public that brought into play Law ‘n Order rants, lies and half truths to destroy Chesa Boudin, cast a similar jaded eye at the Puppet DA?

Top photo – Puppet DA Brooke Jenkins being sworn in by San Francisco Superior Court Presiding Judge Samuel Feng 7.8.2022

Every Picture Tells a Story – Post Roe v Wade in San Francisco

Lee Heidhues – 7.5.2022

Street art at the Walgreens Store in the Outer Richmond District

Clip from documentary Gimme Shelter – Interview with Sonny Barger following Altamont concert