It could be that Colin Kaepernick doesn’t want to play in the NFL anymore, or at least doesn’t care whether airing his opinions on race in America scares team owners away.
That’s the most logical conclusion to be drawn from the former 49er quarterback’s Fourth of July social media postings from Ghana, the nation from which his ancestors hailed.
There were already strong suspicions that Kaepernick was being shunned by NFL teams for his take-a-knee approach to the national anthem that he adopted through the 2016 season. Kaepernick is clearly better than some of the other free agents who have been signed for the coming season, but he’s barely gotten a sniff.
In pro football, after all, odd conduct equals odd man out. I suspect Kaepernick is finding that out. The question is whether he gives a hoot.
The commission President Trump created to look into his allegation that millions of bogus votes were cast in November, all of them apparently for Hillary Clinton, is running into real trouble in the states — including California, which might have a surprise for Trump.
Our secretary of state, Alex Padilla, was one of the first to tell the Trump commission what it could do with its request for all sorts of data on voters that would keep privacy experts up at night, including their driver’s license numbers and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers.
The Trump commission wants to see whether it can use the data to sniff out waves of illegal voters. I hear that Padilla is thinking of asking high-powered California Republicans, like former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and some of her colleagues at the Hoover Institution, to take a peek at the files in the hopes of a public proclamation from them that there’s nothing there for Trump to trouble himself with.
Privacy should be of paramount concern even for a man like Trump, who lived all those years in the celebrity spotlight. Maybe his fellow Republicans can help him see that.
So now we’re well into the sixth month of the Trump administration, and the installation of apparent true-blue conservative Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court aside, there’s not a lot our president can point to in the way of achievements.
There’s still hope, however: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s musings that the Republicans might just have to talk to the Democrats if the GOP can’t get its act together on wrecking the Affordable Care Act may be a sign that something could actually happen on the health front.
You know it doesn’t matter to Trump exactly what emerges, just as long as he can stand in the Rose Garden in celebration right after he hits the post button on his tweet.
Movie time: “Baby Driver.” A terrible title, but a good movie.
It’s a crime comedy. Ansel Elgort plays the lead, Kevin Spacey backs him, and Jamie Foxx backs Spacey. Well worth your time and money, especially when there’s a Morgan Freeman look-alike in the cast.
This look-alike doesn’t have a speaking line, however, so you know it’s not Morgan — the man with the million-dollar voice.
Anyway, for an action film, it’s surprisingly tender. But don’t worry, there are plenty of explosive moments. It’s clearly a standout in a cluster of poor summer movies.
For Independence Day, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee presided over a celebration in the Crown Room of the Fairmont Hotel for 73 consul generals and their guests. The guests were in a fine mood, the food was great, and I’m sure the fireworks were, too — it’s just that you couldn’t see them through the fog.
But it would hardly be a San Francisco Fourth otherwise.