Tag: san francisco
When Chappelle Brings Musk Onstage, Massive Booing 'Withers' Mogul

When Chappelle Brings Musk Onstage, Massive Booing 'Withers' Mogul

Why Dave Chappelle thought it was a good idea to bring Elon Musk on stage Sunday night is anyone’s guess, but the audience was not having it. According to Gizmodo, the infamously anti-trans comedian invited the notoriously racist conspiracy theorist billionaire on at the end of his set, and the boos from around 18,000 present in the Chase Center stadium were brutal.

“Ladies and gentlemen, make some noise for the richest man in the world,” Chappelle said while Musk strutted back and forth, looking deeply uncomfortable.

Chappelle tried desperately to save the moment, but every time Musk opened his mouth, he was drowned by a cacophony of jeers.

“It sounds like some of the people you fired are in the audience,” Chappelle jabbed as Musk chuckled. “All these people who are booing, and I’m just pointing out the obvious, you have terrible seats,” Chappelle said, taking cheap shots at those in the audience who couldn’t afford more expensive tickets.

And it hasn’t simply been communications staffers, engineers, and executives Musk has discarded like trash since he purchased Twitter; it has also been employees such as Julio Alvarado, a 10-year employee at Twitter on the cleaning staff. Alvarado told the BBC, “I can only tell you, I don’t have money to pay the rent. I'm not going to have medical insurance. I don't know what I'm going to do."

Peppering his jokes with the N-word ironically, even calling Musk “this N-word,” Chappelle was obviously oblivious to the unleashed racism on Twitter following Musk’s $44 billion purchase of the platform.

“One analysis [found] the use of a racial slur spiking nearly 500 percent in the 12 hours after his deal was finalized, which is pretty shocking,” John Oliver said during his show, Last Week Tonight, in mid-November. “Even for a website where a regular trending topic is sometimes just ‘The Jews.’ That happens constantly. You’ll log in and see 30,000 people tweeting about ‘The Jews’ on a Tuesday afternoon, and you do not want to click to find out why.”

Chappelle tried everything he could think of Sunday night to save the failure of bringing Musk on stage and giving him a microphone, but all of his praise of Musk’s money and success couldn’t salvage the moment.

“Dave, what should I say?” Musk said, looking humiliated.

“Don’t say nothing. It’ll only spoil the moment,” Chappelle said. “Do you hear that sound, Elon? That’s the sound of pending civil unrest. I can’t wait to see what store you decimate next, motherfucker,” he added. Then he told a booing audience member to “shut the fuck up.”

Chappelle ended his set with, “I wish everyone in this auditorium peace and the joy of feeling free… And your pursuit of happiness. Amen.”

Elon Musk gets booed by the crowd at Dave Chappelle's San Francisco show (Part 1 of 4)youtu.be

Elon Musk gets booed by the crowd at Dave Chappelle's San Francisco show (Part 2 of 4)youtu.be

Just prior to his pathetic appearance with Chappelle, Musk spent his weekend cozying up to far-right conspiracists, attacking Dr. Anthony Fauci, and taking a cheap shot at those who’ve asked their pronoun choices to be respected.

As Daily Kos’ Hunter writes, “Musk has dabbled in COVID-19 denialism from the beginning of the pandemic, but the notion of prosecuting public health officials for doing their damn jobs even when pandemic deniers would rather they didn't is, again, something scraped up from the deepest bowels of the fascist far-right.”

And as Hunter writes, Musk neglects to say anything about why Fauci should be prosecuted but then blows the racist Republican whistle about being “woke.”

Musk is a loathsome rich boy, the South African child of an apartheid-era emerald mine owner, clueless about real work, and he’s friends with folks like billionaire Republican MAGA donor, Peter Thiel. So, in some ways, it only makes sense that Chappelle, who in recent years has become as clueless about his biases as Musk has always been about his own.

There’s a point in celebrity when a person becomes so out of touch with reality that they really don’t see racism or homophobia or anti-trans prejudice, they only see wealth. That’s where Chappelle is today—indifferent and oblivious.

Why did Democrats do so surprisingly well in the midterms? It turns out they ran really good campaigns, as strategist Josh Wolf tells us on this week's episode of The Downballot. That means they defined their opponents aggressively, spent efficiently, and stayed the course despite endless second-guessing in the press. Wolf gives us an inside picture of how exactly these factors played out in the Arizona governor's race, one of the most important Democratic wins of the year. He also shines a light on an unsexy but crucial aspect of every campaign: how to manage a multi-million budget for an enterprise designed to spend down to zero by Election Day.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Danziger: I Found My Heart

Danziger: I Found My Heart

Jeff Danziger lives in New York City. He is represented by CWS Syndicate and the Washington Post Writers Group. He is the recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons and one novel. Visit him at DanzigerCartoons.com.

What Are Sanctuary Cities, Anyway?

What Are Sanctuary Cities, Anyway?

At Donald Trump’s immigration-themed rally Wednesday night, after he pledged to assemble a deportation force to eject two million people from the country within the first hour of his presidency, the Republican nominee said that in a Trump administration, he administration would move to “block funding for sanctuary cities… We will end the sanctuary cities that have resulted in so many needless deaths.”

So what is a sanctuary city, and are sanctuary cities less safe because of how they treat undocumented immigrants?

“Sanctuary city” generally refers to any locality which does not honor — or provides leeway to local law enforcement not to cooperate with — I-247s, or “requests for notification,” which notify the feds that there is an undocumented person in custody. Before that, sanctuary cities ignored federal detention orders, or “detainers,” to hand undocumented immigrants targeted for detention or deportation over to the federal government. There are other definitions of the term, and there are considerations of prior felonies and other things on a city-by-city basis, but this generally covers how Trump is using it.

There are around 200 towns, cities, and counties around the country that, if they arrest an undocumented immigrant, either do not investigate their immigration status, or do not cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement efforts to deport an individual they know to be here without proper documentation.

Advocates for allowing localities this leeway say that it makes cities safer. They reason that undocumented immigrants are valuable members of their community, and to threaten them with deportation every time they are in contract with local police would have a harmful overall impact on crime, if people are discouraged from calling the police to report crimes and tips. They also say federal procedures regarding undocumented immigrants implicitly encourage racial profiling and restricted access to due process protections.

“A detainer is not a legal instrument,” then-San Francisco Police Chief Ross Mirkarimi said in an interview, soon after the shooting death of Kate Steinle by an undocumented immigrant in July 2015. “From a law enforcement perspective, we want to build trust with that population, and our sanctuary city and other attendant laws have allowed us to do that.”

Yesterday, responding to Donald Trump’s speech, Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine said much the same. “I trust police chiefs in terms of knowing what should be done to keep their communities safer and police departments and mayors a lot more than I trust Donald Trump,” he told CNN’s New Day Thursday morning.

Are sanctuary cities more dangerous? There’s no proof of that — though there’s no proof of the opposite, either. As a Mother Jones‘ Josh Harkinson wrote last year, in the state of California, in which the state legislature and all but a few counties have enacted sanctuary city laws, 2014 homicide numbers were in line with decades-low crime numbers across the country. And first-generation immigrants in general are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans.

The term itself is a bit misleading, as well: Undocumented immigrants still serve time in custody in localities deemed sanctuary cities. They just aren’t handed over to the feds to be deported afterwards. And given the relatively small portion of the U.S. living here illegally — one third of one percent of the total population — and the fact that immigrants are less criminal on average, perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that stories on sanctuary cities focus more on the outrage that term provokes than on crime statistics themselves.

Photo: A worker labors on a housing project on Mission Street in the South of Market neighborhood in San Francisco, California April 29, 2014. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith  

NFL’s 49ers Support Quarterback After He Refused To Stand For Anthem

NFL’s 49ers Support Quarterback After He Refused To Stand For Anthem

(Reuters) – National League quarterback Colin Kaepernick of San Francisco 49ers refused to stand for the national anthem before a preseason game on Friday, drawing boos from some fans and criticism on social media, but his team said it backed his right to protest.

Kaepernick, a former starter who led San Francisco to the 2013 Super Bowl but has since been demoted to backup, said he sat on the bench during the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” to make a statement about racial injustice in the United States.

“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” Kaepernick later told NFL Media in an article posted on Saturday. “To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way.”

Kaepernick appeared to be referring to police use of deadly force, which has come under increased criticism in recent years as incidents have been captured on cellphone video.

He said he was prepared for rejection by the public and did not warn anyone of his plans.

“If they take football away, my endorsements from me, I know that I stood up for what is right,” Kaepernick said.

When Kaepernick came into the game at the team’s home stadium in Santa Clara, California, fans greeted him with boos and cheers.

The team, which has unsuccessfully tried to trade Kaepernick to another team since his demotion, issued a statement of support after the game.

“The national anthem is and always will be a special part of the pre-game ceremony,” the team said. “In respecting such American principles as freedom of religion and freedom of expression, we recognize the right of an individual to choose and participate, or not, in our celebration of the national anthem.”

Social media was less forgiving. While some Twitter users supported his right to free speech, the feed of sports website Busted Coverage, which has 70,000 followers, called him “an idiot.”

“Colin Kaepernick can get the hell out of our country. No respect for this guy,” said Tyler Nelson, who calls himself a Carolina Panthers fan with 134 followers.

Athletes have long used their fame to make political statements, as typified by the Olympic sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos holding up their fists in a black power salute during a medals ceremony in 1968.

Two seasons ago, players on the NFL’s St. Louis Rams entered the stadium for a home game with their hands raised, a reference to the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” slogan adopted by protesters in demonstrations against the shooting of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)