rangelife

And Ralph Nader Takes the San Francisco Single White Female Vote

Nader Picks Matt Gonzalez as Veep

For those who aren't familiar with recent SF politics (or those who have quite understandably chosen to forget), Gonzalez was the Green who challenged Gavin Newsom for mayor in 2003, resulting in the most savage example of leftist-vs.-liberal tribal warfare ever seen outside Northern Europe.

So now we know who'll be complaining about being excluded from the Vice Presidential debate between Gary Hart and Charlie Crist this fall.

And we also now have to consider for whom the ladies of the Mission District are going to turn out this November. Let's revisit a Matt Smith SF Weekly column from Gonzalez's mayoral insurgency. Headline: "The Chick Factor."

Of the 20 or so people at the cafe signing up to canvass for Gonzalez, about a quarter were better-than-average-looking women in their 20s and 30s. I don't mean beads 'n' patchouli good-looking, mind you; this core Gonzalez constituency wouldn't have been out of place in a liquor ad. Several of them stood around looking mildly nervous until the candidate approached, whereupon they lit up, talked enthusiastically, and gestured emphatically as if on a first date, until Gonzalez excused himself and moved on to someone else, whereupon they went back to looking downcast.

It appears that by accident the city's political left wing has happened upon a gold mine: single, straight, disenfranchised San Francisco women.

Will their Obama crush survive the return of a past love? Ladies and gentlemen, San Francisco is now in play.

Gail Neira Proves That Not All Republicans are (d)emocrats

If you ever serve jury duty or go to a public meeting in San Francisco, have a look around, and try to estimate what percentage of the people in the room are utterly batshit. I have, and I'm going with an average of 41% crazy.

Sure, every city in the world has its share of crackhead gadflies, paranoid shut-ins, and Dragonmasters, but what really sets San Francisco's crazies apart is their sense of political entitlement. Our insane, druggy liberal-Democrat-vs.-progressive-Green rancor pretty much keeps Fox "News" in business; woe to News Corp shareholders when Bill O'Reilly's prayed-for WMD attack actually wipes us off the map. He'll have to pick on poor, defenseless Portland.

But if you think that our political nutjobbery ends with naked mayoral candidates, you are sadly mistaken, my friend. The great irony of San Francisco's lefty political landscape is that its shiniest crackpot is a Republican leader, Gail Neira.

I've shared the great gifts that Ms. Neira shares with the San Francisco citizenry before every election, her majestic, jingoist, world-going-to-hell-in-a-yukbucket arguments against ballot initiatives. Well, this week Ms. Neira, in full Santa regalia, hosted a call-it-Christmas GOP dinner which was supposed to culminate with a non-binding, utterly meaningless San Francisco presidential straw poll.

But things didn't work out exactly as Ms. Neira planned, or her apparent candidate of choice, Fred Thompson.

That's right -- Gail unilaterally canceled the straw poll because too many Ron Paul supporters showed up after dinner and paid the required $5 to vote. Allowing them to vote would obviously be unfair to those who paid the full $33 for the delicious meal. And if the Paulers threw in another $28 each? Nope, still unfair. There must have been something in the food that purified their votes.

Naturally, the Paul people are pissed about how their insurgent is being treated by the Establishment. Hell, Chris Matthews is literally removing Paul from his network's poll results.

***

I was hella wrong about McCain, but I called Huckabee a year ago. I ranked him the #2 GOP candidate, behind Sen. McCain, who's looking more and more like this year's Morry Taylor (Anyone? Anyone?). I said:

Watch this guy -- The thundering Evangelicals on the right who think McCain is the Devil will flock to Huckabee. Ordained Baptist minister who also commutes more death sentences than you might expect. Health nut and marathoner who lost 100 pounds. Marriage nut. And he is -- seriously -- from a place called Hope, Arkansas.

And how are you going to compete with God?

STUDENT: Recent polls show you surging... What do you attribute this surge to?

HUCKABEE: There's only one explanation for it, and it's not a human one. It's the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of five thousand people. (Applause) That's the only way that our campaign can be doing what it's doing. And I'm not being facetious nor am I trying to be trite. There literally are thousands of people across this country who are praying that a little will become much, and it has. And it defies all explanation, it has confounded the pundits. And I'm enjoying every minute of them trying to figure it out, and until they look at it, from a, just experience beyond human, they'll never figure it out. And it's probably just as well. That's honestly why it's happening.

In other words, God is working against the cross-dressing adulterer Giuliani and the blasphemer cultist Romney.

And I'm still pissed that Wes Clark is ho'ing for Hillary.

***

WaPo editorial on Romney's religion speech: So, no room for atheists in America?

***

Finally, in trying to find Wes Clark's site, I stumbled upon the site for Ron Moss for mayor of Buffalo. His platform is perfectly brilliant and brilliantly perfect.

2. I won't change anything that will affect anyone.

3. It is imperative that we preserve our past, because Buffalo's best days are behind us. 

Ron Moss, I doubt you'll ever tire of life on the lake. But if you do, you've got a home in San Francisco.

Anybody Want 49ers Tickets? Any Republicans Heard of Global Warming?

My neighbor handed me two tickets to yesterday's 49ers game. Killer seats: 40-yard-line, lower deck, row 3. But he and his wife were as ill as everyone else in this town, and they couldn't find any friends to take the seats.

Well, it was my birthday, and I'd be damned if I was going to spend it watching punts at the 'Stick. So I sent out some messages -- no takers. Anybody want free goddamned 49ers seats? Third row?

Finally, I posted them on Craigslist for $5 each (a 93% discount off face value). Curtis from San Jose called 30 minutes later. Plugged my address into the GPS, and said he was on his way.

He never showed. I couldn't blame him.

***

For some mysterious reason, I enjoy killing valuable time on Polling Point polls. Today's poll featured an interesting thought exercise about the presidential race.

I had to rank eight of the candidates on whether I thought they embodied the following qualities: Competent, Religious, Bold, Mature, Intelligent, Shows good judgment, Moral, A strong leader, Says what he [sic] believes, Reliable, Honest. Basically 11 qualities you really want in the ever-diminishing role of Leader of the Free World (although "Religious" isn't a slam dunk for everyone).

Hillary's name popped first. After ruminating upon the past 16 years, I could only check Competent, Mature, Intelligent, and Reliable. Some of them -- Bold, Says what [s]he believes -- even seemed anathema to her.

Naturally, a simple tally of personal qualities isn't any better way to work out your voting tactics than one of those silly candidate calculators. (They keep telling me I'm a Romneyite or a Gravelista.) But at this point in the campaign, I still have to wonder what the phuck people find appealing about Hillary Clinton, the candidate for president. It's was mysterious to me even 18 months ago when I projected trouble for the inevitable Hillary campaign, because I couldn't find anybody who was particularly enthusiastic about her.

At this point, I have actually met a few Hillary backers and money harvesters, and they're invariably business big-hitters trying to get behind a winner, or middle-aged women in senior management who are thrilled about the prospect of shattering the ultimate glass ceiling. And Republicans are so depressed and freaked out about the prospect of her taking the Oval Office, that "I can beat Hillary" has surpassed "I will protect America from Iran" or "I will convert gays and deport Muslims" as their candidates' primary selling point.

If you go back and look at how I projected the 2008 presidential race 18 months ago, you'll notice that I'm no better at predicting politics than anyone on The McLaughlin Group. But this I know: since 1960, the dawn of the television age, the more charismatic and authentic candidate has won** every single election.

Hillary's persona is forced and measured, more like the last two Democratic candidates than the prior winning one. So, which of the running Republicans does she beat on authenticity and charisma?

***

If you're an air-breathing, land-living, food-eating, live human, the environment has to be your number one issue for 2008. So here are how the Republican candidates for president are addressing the issue of "The Environment" on their websites during primary season:

• McCain: Mostly focused on conservation. At least mentions global warming.
• Giuliani: No mention of the environment among his 12 issues. Seriously, 12 issues, and not one of them is the preservation of life on Earth.
• Thompson: Mild support of more research into reducing CO2 emissions as part of "Energy Security" issue, but also states that nobody really knows why global warming occurs. Right.
• Romney: No mention among his 10 issues. But he does want to open ANWR for drilling.
• Paul: Wants to deregulate his way to a cleaner environment. No mention of climate change or emissions.
• Tancredo: No mention among his 15 issues.
• Huckabee: No mention among his 16 issues.
• Hunter: No mention among his 33 issues.

OK, I'll shut up now. Hillary in '08!

** 2000 election requires technical definition of "won."

Who Stole the Armenian Genocide Plaque?

Mt. Davidson is SF's highest peak, which is one of those facts that many San Franciscans smack themselves for not knowing.

Unlike the deservedly touristed Twin Peaks, you can't drive to the peak of Mt. Davidson, and you don't get any transcendent views of the Golden Gate and the Pacific Ocean.  But you do get to enjoy a nice, subtle religious symbol. See if you can spot it below.

Three smaller crosses previously stood at the site, two of which were burned down by arsonists, all of whom are now burning in Hell with Pol Pot and Leona Helmsley. Although most of Mt. Davidson is owned by the city, the current cross and its surrounding land is owned by a coalition of Armenian-American groups, which deemed to place at the base a plaque commemorating their people's WWI-era genocide at the hands of the Turkish government.

And now somebody stole the plaque. Schlepped what must be an extraordinarily heavy hunk of concrete and bronze down the mountain's twisty dirt paths. Pol Pot, straighten up a bit for company.

***

In other city madness, supe Tom Ammiano has raised national hackles with his plan to issue city ID cards to anyone who needs one "regardless of their immigration status," which is code for "IDs for illegal immigrants."

Ammiano explained himself in the Chron yesterday. At least he tried to.

Ammiano uses the word "immigrant(s)" five times in his op-ed, but never distinguishes those who are here legally from those who are here illegally, which is the point. In fact, he doesn't seem to acknowledge that federal immigration laws exist at all. For example:

Without ID, people are afraid to report crimes, meaning that perpetrators are free to strike again. This is compounded when these same community members lack the ID needed to access bank accounts. By keeping cash on their person and in their homes, they are further targets of crime.

Of course, immigrants do have ID -- for example, their passports, green cards, or even drivers licenses. They can report jaywalkers, and they can open a new 0.3% APR savings account at Bank of America every Tuesday.

If they sneaked across a border or through a port, they may not have any ID. But they're not even supposed to have been here to have witnessed the crime in the first place, and they're certainly not working legally or properly paying taxes.

We cannot escape the fact that immigrants are our neighbors, our friends, our partners and our co-workers... This diversity makes this city what it is. It is what drives legislation like this...

And that is why San Francisco needs to issue a municipal ID card. In a time when "terrorist" is synonymous with "immigrant," San Francisco needs to be one of the first to say enough is enough.

Look, everybody understands the failing of the current system. Porous borders make those who follow the law look like suckers, and our economy has developed an unsustainable dependence on cheap underground labor. These people then have no recourse to the law when employers or criminals exploit them.

And now I want to say to Ammiano, enough is enough. Illegal immigration is not just another source of diversity. And the insistence that America recognize and document those who enter from abroad is not anti-immigrant, not nativist, and absolutely not racist. It's pretty much the practice of every country on the planet.

We should absolutely lower the barriers to legal entry. Make it cheap and simple! Then we won't need that atrocious border fence. But why legitimize America's policy and enforcement failures?

In the meantime, Ammiano's plan is pointless. If we were concerned about the underreporting of crime, then the city could just ban the police from asking about a crime victim's or witness's immigration status. Guess what! The city already did that.

Does Tom Ammiano really believe that illegal immigrants are going to line up at City Hall for a municipal ID? Yes, he does. That's because he's fucking crazy. He'll be a great state legislator.

Step Into the Light

Now that the Barroid era is behind us like a peyote dream, we can focus on the only interesting parts of Giants games: Sheboygan brats and the view from the ballpark. (Ladies: please refocus your worship of those soggy and flaccid garlic fries. They're only good if you're not really paying attention while you're consuming them. They're the Grey's Anatomy of junk food.)

This is from the right field line, upper deck view box, Tuesday night.

I'm sorry, was there a ballgame?

Meanwhile, a few blocks west of the Phone Company Park, SFMOMA is running a number of installations by Olafur Eliasson, including a Beemer encased in steel and ice, and rooms that wash all the color from the world. It's a trip, y'all.

Great pics of the exhibit here.

Get Your Sick Ass Back to Idaho

Spotted in the Safeway men's room in Diamond Heights:

Mr. Senator, I don't know what you've heard about the good families of San Francisco, but we don't go for your particular brand of perversion here. This isn't some public gay sex haven like Couer D'Alene or Pocatello. Our Safeways are not your personal bordellos.

***

Last weekend (Sept. 14), it was the Xmas display at Macy's. Yesterday (Sept. 23) during NFL action, it was the first ad for an Xmas movie, Fred Claus. It's Vince Vaughn as Santa's older brother. Wacka dacka doo!

Fred Claus arrives November 9th, marking the second consecutive year that the Xmas movie season starts mid-fall. And somebody is very pleased about this.

Yes, I once knew a delusional Xmas-All-Year type. It was 1996, and she was a middle-aged neighbor of my then-girlfriend's parents. All year, her house was littered with ceramic snowmen and mini-Santas, and her CD changer was loaded with nothing but children's carols and Bing Crosby. Monstrously disappointed with her life, this poor woman had retreated entirely to her childhood memories and locked the door on the rest of reality. She had willfully transformed her life into a ever-looping rerun of those magical four weeks after Thanksgiving.

I imagine that a huge chunk of this Christian Nation must mindfully suppress urges to become this woman, the way that Republican senators suppress urges to become Ian McKellen. Hollywood could shit out another Xmas movie in May, and millions of grownups would go and bring the kids. (Come to think of it, Gremlins was a summer Xmas movie, sort of.)

I would thus like to repeat my suggestion that we Americans call bullshit on referring to any part of the year as "the Holiday Season." First of all, the other holidays are big nothings, and as a former Jewish child, I can safely report that all the non-Christians are just faking it out of jealousy. At this point, the only defense for calling it "the Holiday Season" is so that Bill O'Reilly can't claim credit for victory over the Al Qaeda-aligned secular progressives.

So let's not call the latter part of the year anything. Instead, let's refer to Jan. 15-March 18 as "the Pre-Xmas Season." Then Xmas can occupy the other 10 months, just like Hollywood, retailers, consumer goods producers, and credit card companies want.

I'm Suing the San Francisco Zoo

They never told me it was for breeding. And I'm not paying for those kids.

(Photo courtesy the unsinkable Chris Null.)

***

The limits of targeting web advertising. This ad-article combo is as unfortunate as the people in the picture.

Jury Selection, or 50 Ways to Say You're Racist

"I gotta miss work tomorrow."

"Sure thing. Everything okay?"

"I hope so. I have jury duty."

"Yeesh! Sorry to hear that."

"I mean, I understand my responsibility as a voting citizen to serve the justice system, but getting on a long-ass case would really mess up my life, you know what I mean?"

"Hey, I'll tell what you should do. Tell them you're racist! Ha ha ha."

***

It's the universal half-joke that hardly needs to be told anymore, a gag that was worn out years before Homer Simpson shared it as heartfelt advice. Plus, judges have caught on to the racist-come-lately gambit. Just last month in Cape Cod, prospective juror Daniel Ellis was referred for perjury charges for getting a aggro with his claims of hating gays and minorities. Sadly, his mother was forced to defend his truth-in-redneckery.

So after I sat through three days of jury selection for a three-week rape-murder trial with a black defendant and a white victim, I can report that the citizens of San Francisco -- this broadly diverse and madly tolerant metropolis -- are not afraid to let their racist parts dangle freely in the pursuit of getting the hell out of there.

The Hall of Justice is an exciting place. For example, as I approached the building on day one of service, I found myself surrounded TV crews and people holding handmade Chinese signs. That could only mean one thing: Ed Jew sighting! And there he was on my elevator, chatting in Japanese (!) with KTVU's Kraig Debro. But that's not the only excitement that occurs at the courthouse. The jury assembly room, which sits 10 yards from I-80, features a lovely bullethole (pictured above) right at head level. Ouch.

Sadly, I was situated far from the Jew fireworks, and instead assigned to the aforementioned interracial alleged burglary-rape-murder, along with 100 other lucky San Franciscans. Double sadly, the gentleman pictured to the left, who never removed his sunglasses during our three days in court and earned our nickname "The Rural Juror," was never called into the jury box.

The pre-selection questionnaire posed this brain-twister: "The victim in this case is white. The defendant is black. Do you feel that these facts will impact your ability to judge this case fairly on your merits?" In other words, do you exist in a time before or after the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird? Surprisingly, many of the jurors gave answers that ranged from vague to overtly prejudiced, so one at a time the prospective jurors were called into the box and asked to clarify their responses.

Here's a sample of what got people dismissed after the judge asked why they weren't capable of deciding a case on the evidence instead of the defendant's race:

* Asian immigrant truck dispatcher: "I work with drivers, and some of them are Asian, and some of them are... um... uh... blacks. And they... need different things."

* Blonde woman from the Marina: "Well, I just know that as a single woman in the city, I have to be careful. I guess I just worry, is all"

* Young Asian man from the Richmond: "My house was broken into last week."

Yes, for some people, fear of crime still means fear of blacks.

But if you're not the type who likes to brag about your inability to separate fantasy from reality, George Carlin has a far, far better approach to get sent home: "Tell 'em you'd be perfect for the jury because you can spot a guilty man like that [snap]."

Southsi-eed!

This week, all eyez are on our Fair City. Usually this means bad news: our mayor must be sniffing strange orifices again, or coke-addled activists must be demanding human rights for transgendered squirrels.

But this time the attention is because the MLB All-Star Game is attracting thousands of nerdy baseball fans in their adorable metal-pin-spangled caps and autographed throwback Steve Garvey jerseys.

If we accidentally watch any of the festivities on the TV box, between commercial breaks we'll see many shots of sea lions eating sourdough bread bowls on the cable car ride to Alcatraz. We'll see high-def throngs of Koreans and Buffaloans watching hippie street clowns juggle Rice-a-Roni boxes on the Golden Gate Bridge while the Journey remix of "The Humpty Dance" thumps over a tie-dye boombox. We'll see Robin Williams making silly noises and pimping his drecky new movie Father Stanky or whatever it's called.

What we won't see is anything south of the ballpark, where hundreds of thousands of San Franciscans live and sleep and schlepp and smoke and breed and occasionally die. The neighborhoods on the south side of the city aren't special like the Frommer's Guide neighborhoods. Once you get past the Mission and Noe Valley, you won't find any of the city's great restaurants or attractions, just rows and rows of peeling houses and divey drink-holes. And most people who have lived years and years in SF's sunny Happyvilles have never had occasion to experience Portola, Excelsior, Sunnyside, Lakeside, Ingleside, Visitacion Valley, Bayview, or Crocker-Amazon. Hell, even Google Maps Street View stuck to the freeways.

Here's a tiny sample of what these deprived folks are missin'.


(click on the pic for detail)

1. The Madhouse. I chronicled this house of wacks a couple years ago, and the proprietor of this mess seems to have taken a turn for the worse. On the upside, if you check the lower right corner, it looks like they've been doing some painting. Honestly, I would pay anything to take a tour of the inside of the house, preferably in the type of hazmat suit you'd use to clean Whitney Houston's bathroom.

***

2. Giant graffiti in the CCSF parking lot. Tragically, City College will be replacing its stadium-sized parking lot with some fancy arts center. Tragically, because the public will lose the monstrous graffiti which can be seen from space. The Moose is loose, baby!

***
(click below for more)

Sippy Cups for Satan

These days in our fair city by the Bay, it's impossible not to notice the One Rincon Hill tower, a gigantic condo skyscraper arising next to the freeway south of Market. (It's the 500-foot-tall construction project on the right above.) SOMA has been a ghost town for years, dominated by the elevated approach from 101 and the Bay Bridge. But soon it will house thousands of new residents. After One goes up, next will be a second Rincon tower, followed by a skyscraper at the Transbay Terminal a few blocks away that promises to be the tallest residential building on the west coast.

Wow! More housing supply! High density planning! Easy access to public transit! This is every San Francisco urban evangelist's wet dream, right?

Local writer Mary McFadden would beg to differ, in the most batshit possible manner:

Scary Monsters Looming Above City

A huge, scary monster is growing in San Francisco's South of Market area. Like an atomically deranged creature from a 1950s horror movie, the first of the Rincon Towers is oozing upward, sucking light from sky and street. Its three-block shadow chills the hearts of all who pass under it, even for a moment.

You see, in McFadden's odd world, skyscrapers are evil creations by mad scientists. And the result is the most entertaining Chron op-ed in memory.

Bred for expensive, high-density housing... the black blob makes it obvious that urban planning in San Francisco is run by the Boys from Brazil and architects who used to design sippy cups for Satan.

At least once every six months, San Franciscans, Angelenos and New Yorkers need to leave town for a week and visit "America," that odd, normal place where most Americans live. Because you forget.

In McFadden's memory of non-SF-World, Manhattan is the hellhole of skyscrapers, and the tall buildings going up in SOMA -- a part of the world where almost no one lives now -- are the harbingers of destruction for SF's other 48 square miles of neighborhoods. It's sort of like, if gay people marry in Massachusetts, my straight marriage in Dallas doesn't stand a chance.

***

Following the recent attempted terrorist attacks in the UK, Rudy Giuliani alerted the press that he was available for comment.

Rudy Giuliani : Terrorism :: Steve Forbes : Flat Tax

I guess "Trump nuzzled my rack" won't win over South Carolina primary voters.

***

I've never gotten behind the whole "impeach Bush" thing, because I think if you make incompetence impeachable, you get permanent political instability. The Constitution is designed so that the fools in each branch check and balance the other fools.

But after Dick Cheney's whole "I'm not in the executive branch" argument against sunshine and accountability, I believe the American people have a responsibility to remove him from office. If the Vice President takes actions to subvert checks and balances, which is the very prime basis of the Constitution, then he has committed a crime against the American citizenry. Time for Dick to go.