Well, it's about time! As the progressives run around in a circle waving their hands around in terror for another week or two until June 2, the more right-leaning folks have decisively made their move! Former supervisor and sometimes lounge singer Tony Hall has filed his paperwork to run for mayor. more ›

-Oakland is ready to party, Ron Dellums style. -Over 1,000 people go to the beach to say impeach, put Cheney in reach. more ›

It's being reported that everyone's favorite whipping girl, Annemarie Conroy, has resigned as of this morning. Conroy was the Executive Director of Emergency Services but was recently demoted mainly for the sin of having no real experience doing anything emergency service related. After being demoted, the Board of Supes then pulled the financing for her recently created position. She was so popular that Aaron Peskin couldn't even say anything nice about her leaving; saying instead "there was no resignation. Her job was evaporated." Ouch. more ›

It's another installment of.... Who's! Attacking! Newsom! Now! Where we compile all the negative things people are saying about the San Francisco mayor and report it in bullet form! We'll run a Who's Defending Newsom Now post next, as soon as we find someone defending Newsom, besides Peter Ragone. So here's the list! more ›

-The Board of Supervisors really don't like Annemarie Conroy. more ›

--SF Director of Emergency Services Annemarie Conroy has been demoted (but is keeping her salary). more ›

-Your next hi-tech company in a bit of legal trouble? Apple. -Board of Supes demote Annemarie Conroy. To move from Director of Emergency Services to Deputy Director for Emergency Services. more ›

We'll be straight with you -- we're having a hard time following the whole "is Annemarie Conroy qualified" debacle that's been afoot for the past few days -- something about a report being released and how the Office of Emergency Services isn't really prepared for an earthquake? C'mon, guys, all they need is enough water and power bars to get through the first 72 hours! more ›

Could it happen here? Could it happen here? On the theory of forewarned is forearmed, the news media from potential FEMA disaster spot number 3 (that's us!) are now frantically investigating the qualifications of SF's own Homeland Security liaison and City Dept. of Emergency Services head Annemarie Conroy -- who, like Michael Brown, is an attorney with no real experience in emergency management who, people charge, only got the job based on her political connections. Conroy seems better than ol' man Brownie in that she probably wouldn't refuse to talk to a woman governor and only talk to her husband instead (WTF?) -- but when your only qualification for emergency management is that, um, your father was in emergency management, perhaps KGO 7 is right to be a little concerned. Then again, given that she replaced Alex Fagan as the previous emergency guy, maybe we're actually better off. (At least we don't live in NJ -- where Gay-American governor Jim McGreevy appointed his clandestine boyfriend to Jersey's equivalent post). Part 2 of the KGO special airs tonight at 6:30, right after the president's speech. more ›

Was anyone else a little unnerved to see that "major earthquake in San Francisco" is listed as the number 2 scenario for FEMA practice, right below "terrorist attack on New York" and right above "major hurricane hits New Orleans?" And you know with all our gays and minorities and blue-state progressivism, ain't no one from the federal government coming to save our butts when the Big One hits here! And remember when we all thought there was a tsunami coming but no one in SF checked the emergency fax machine until an hour after the original warning? We're screwed! So we set out this weekend to buy us an earthquake preparedness kit. We know, we could put it together ourselves, but it'd be so much nicer just to buy a ready-to-go set. Do you know how hard it is to find an earthquake preparedness kit in this city? Costco had none. Safeway had none. REI was closed. We didn't go to Target because of the boycott for their Schwarzenegger donations, but they probably didn't have one either. Home Depot told us that they had five "a while ago" but haven't restocked since. Where else would we go for a pre-packaged kit? Rainbow Grocery? Cole Hardware? They don't have anything either. So here's our thought: why doesn't City Hall sell pre-packaged earthquake prep kits? Annemarie Conroy's Office of Emergency Service could get 'em at cost, have the kits emblazoned with a cute "San Francisco's Prepared!" logo of some sort, and sell 'em at community centers across the city. It would beat having to turn on the TV and see San Franciscans sitting on the roofs of their houses, waiting for someone at CNN to film our HELP US PLZ signs, as the SFPD struggles to find the right radio frequency for communications. After the jump, where we ended up getting our prep kit, plus everything your prep kit should have in it. more ›

Oy vey, we just got word from John over at the Legal Reader that there's yet another bomb scare in The City, this time at City Hall. Add it up with the bomb scares in the BART stations, and that makes, what, four in two weeks? Maybe somebody was late to a meeting and called it in, or just wanted to go home early. more ›

This is totally the setup to someone's historical mystery novel! The local chapter of the Freemasons has reported that $100,000 of their "gold regalia" has been stolen from inside their vault. The twenty-eight pieces of regalia are little gold charms of various freemason equipment (stone masonry equipment, quills, scrolls, pens) on chains, and are worn by the current grand master at the annual convention. They have replicas they can use but they're hoping someone finds the real ones soon. Meanwhile, someone's probably using them to open a portal to an alternate universe or something. Fingers are pointing all around about a weird glitch in the ballyhooed tsunami warning from the other day -- so it turns out SF didn't hear about the tsunami warning for an hour or so. There's two warning teletype (teletype?) systems, but for some reason, only the backup teletype was working. The backup is only checked once an hour. The state claims it called a bunch of people in the city, while the city claims that they don't remember getting any phone calls. And our emergency response head, Annemarie Conroy, found out about the warning not from the warning system but, like the rest of us, from the TV news. Good thing it wasn't a real tsunami, huh? And there's now a fight about whether or not the governor can join California in that multistate lottery, the MegaMillions. On the one hand, the jackpot could be $500 million. On the other, it might be against state law. Hey, why don't we have a special election about that too? more ›