The San Francisco Citizen

According to the airlines, via that lapdog of the Air Transport Association of America known as Stop Oil Speculation Now, there is a:

…force at work that, like gravity, is invisible yet powerful. This force is rampant speculation. Every time you buy products such as food or gas, you are impacted by unregulated, secretive and often foreign commodities futures markets. Speculators in these markets are increasingly buying and selling commodities such as oil even though they have no intention of using the product.

First of all, who wrote this copy? Bob Shrum? Second of all, Hillary Clinton didn’t intend to use all that sugar and eat those cows when she speculated in the commodities markets and nobody complained about that, right? Speculation is now supposed to be a bad thing?

Our corporate overlords are worried:

Could there be a more likely explanation for high prices for avgas? CBS News offers a few. Is it possible Bill O’Reilly might be wrong? Or, maybe all this talk of speculation being the cause of high fuel prices is just a Nixonian Fallacy.

Check it out and decide for yourself. Maybe you’ll agree that both you and the airlines are being victimized by those invisible, powerful, secretive, foreign forces.

The airlines have to come up with something to explain all those fees and surcharges, right?

I shift the blame
To the worm in the bottle
I shift the blame
To anyone standing before me

In honor of Flag Day, a huge American flag on California Street in the Financial District of San Francisco. It’s safe from being burned by the locals thanks to the Flag Desecration Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Oops, scratch that. This particular idea for an amendment isn’t actually in effect right now. Yet somehow, people have refrained from burning the flag pictured below.

Amazing.

Cindy Sheehan and one of her intrepid supporters at the main entrance of City Hall during today’s primary election:  

(She had at least two other boosters in the area talking with potential voters at this very moment.)

Cindy has been running against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the past eleven months, to the consternation of some. Back in the day, one wag called pushing for impeachment of George W. Bush the “Dumbest Move the Dems Could Make.” Shirley Golub and Cindy Sheehan obviously disagree with that.

But Nancy seems to be weathering this storm well:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in her 10th term, easily beat back local Democratic activist Shirley Golub in San Francisco’s 8th Congressional District. With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Pelosi had 89 percent of the vote and Golub had 11 percent. Peace activist Cindy Sheehan is making plans to challenge Pelosi as an independent in November but was not on Tuesday’s primary ballot.  

Check out yesterday’s march and protest at the headquarters of United Statess Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) in San Francisco.

Senator Carole Migden dropped by to call these federal raids “improper invasions.” Read about it here and see a video here.

(more…)

Consider this a more-reliable-than-average rumour about the recent ICE raids  on the Balazos in the San Francisco Bay Area:

We are planning to hold a protest outside the ICE office at 630 Sansome St. in SF this Monday, May 5th at 12:00 PM to condemn the raids and call for justice for immigrant workers.   

It continues…

The one at 1654 Haight was open yesterday, for what it’s worth: