Results tagged “congress”

Call it what you will, but hometown gal Nancy Pelosi's push to get the President's health care initiative through Congress before their August recess appears to be failing, and among those stalling it is another hometown gal, Senator Dianne Feinstein, who still doesn't know how we're going to pay for any of this shit. Her actual words relate more to creating new health care entitlements that the country's budget can't afford. To wit: "Entitlements are well over 50 percent of every dollar the federal government spends this year and are going straight up. If you add more entitlements, it's a problem." We would agree that a feasible plan for covering the costs of this plan should be laid out, but President Obama promises it won't add to the deficit. DiFi calls bullshit. Who to believe?

During opening remarks by Sen. Dianne Feinstein in the Supreme Court confirmation hearing of Judge Sonia Sotomayor this morning, an anti-abortion protester stood up, shouted something about genocide and the unborn, and was promptly dragged out of the room. Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who's presiding over the hearing and therefore in charge of the gavel, was having none of it. The man's name is Robert James, and he's been charged with unlawful conduct and disruption of Congress. No word on whether the God Hates Fags-famed Phelpses -- who never met an event that they couldn't relate back to homosexuality and God's wrath -- have shown up.

What will journalists do after newspapers finally fold? Many things. Starting their own PR companies will be big. Writing for online internt weblog sites will tempt many. (Most, however, will fail to grasp the simple difference between the two mediums.) And some, well, will have to start small business ventures.

While we convert our money into gold, porn, and cocaine, check out how local California house members voted on the bailout, which was defeated (29 in favor, 24 opposed) today. In favor: Nancy Pelosi (San Francisco), Jerry McNerney (Pleasanton), Jackie Speier (Hillsborough), Anna Eshoo (Menlo Park), Mike Honda (San Jose), and Zoe Lofgren (San Jose). Opposed: Barbara Lee (Oakland) and Pete Stark (Fremont). The bailout, ideally, would have rescued for the nation's dying financial industry. Oh, and be sure to read about the biggest point drop ever, which happened today, here.

Offices in Capitol Hill received a manila envelope with a letter claiming responsibility for today's bombing of a landmark military recruiting station in Times Square, NYC. Our parent site, Gothamist, tells us that "WNBC reports that the letters, which arrived today, included a photo of the Army recruiting center 'before it was bombed and...the words 'We did it.'" Which group is claiming responsibility, exactly, remains to be known.

Jackie Speier runs for Congress again, after a 29-year break.

Congressman Tom Lantos died this morning from esophageal cancer at the age of 80. He represented most of the Sunset, as well as a big chunk of San Mateo County. He was the only survivor of the Holocaust to be elected to Congress, and worked for years on human rights issues. That said, he ticked off quite a few people locally by supporting the Iraq war, although he had recently been pretty critical of the way things were going Over There. Before he died, he endorsed State Sen. Jackie Speier as his successor - no word yet on whether the Governator will decide to hold a special election (that would be our fourth of the year if he does) to replace him.

In terms of propositions this year, especially SF propositions, it's a pretty lean year. Both A and B, in fact, seem to be so non-controversial that neither the SF Republicans nor Starchild appear to object. Then there's Proposition C.

Net Neutrality Symposium at USF

Dispatches from TJICistan points out a delightful fact about General Frederick N. Funston--the apparently sensitivity-free Medal of Honor recipient known for his manliness in both the Spanish-American War and the Philippine-American War, and the current namesake for Fort Funston--who once boasted the following. Ahem:

After reading this, we were fit to be tied.

Image: EFF

Queer rights groups freaked out, threw a tizzy (understandably), and nixed their support for a workplace discrimination civil rights bill "after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., pulled transgender people from the legislation that would protect gays and lesbians from workplace discrimination." And since nothing says action like an angry missive or online petition, a letter signed by gay groups was sent to Congress yesterday demanding them to rebuff legislation excluding transgender folk, according to the NGLTF.

--Another shooting in District 5. And a man robbed at gunpoint in the Sunset.

We mentioned a few weeks ago that the funding for California's oft-proposed bullet train system is suspect. Things are looking up in a way, as the High Speed Rail Authority approved the project's first phase. However, the Fresno Bee recently reported another wrinkle: Since the management for San Diego, the Southern California Association of Governments, is pushing for "magnetic levitation trains," rather than steel-wheeled ones, that city may get left on the boarding platform.

With all that went down this week, we thought we thought we'd cheer everyone up by giving everyone a double dose of dogs.

-Barbara Lee, Lynn Woolsey and Maxine Waters get standing ovation from Congress for not voting for House resolution against the war. It'll make sense if you read it.

-There was a protest in the Mission over the the latest bit of immigration raids. -Flaks o' Gavin on gay porn proclamation: we did what? Oopsie.

Hey, folks, your Trimethyldioxypurist is back with a quick follow-up to the review of Meth Coffee we posted yesterday. We're tempted to just link to this press release without comment.

A few photos of the MLK Breakfast at the S.F. Hilton, Monday morning, 1/15/07

We don't know about you, but it's friggin cold out there. Well, not for some of you. It seems as though places that are supposed to be cold are warm and places that are supposed to be warm are cold. Or maybe that's just us. Either way, we're freezing.

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

If hoops is a game of streaks, right now the Warriors are Frank the Tank. They're flying so high, they're looking down on the Democrats. They're looking so good, Gavin Newsom is jealous. They're buzzing so hard, they're getting calls from Courtney Love (and Mel Gibson?).

We know this is completely wrong to admit, but voting here in San Francisco, the bluest of blue states, is always a bit unexciting. While the rest of the country is taking part in what we're always told is the Most Important Election Ever, we are once again left out of the thrills. Our gubernatorial race never took off and the race for Senate and Congress was such a no contest that one ran commercials featuring her grandchild and the other gave more speeches in Pennsylvania than here in her home city. It's kind of like rooting for the local Division AAA basketball team make their way through the Division AAA tourney while everyone else is obsessed with the NCAA Tourney. And while you want the local guys to win, you can't but help care more about schools you never attended in the Big Dance. What we're trying to say is that for whatever reason we seem more emotionally invested in the Virginia Senate Race than whatever is going on here.

As fall settles in and another calendar page gets turned, thoughts turn from bbq's and vacations to holidays and the realization that '06 is coming to an end. With all that going on, with change in the air, we wonder what is it that made that makes the -ists ponder?

Here we were, worried that this whole Congressman Mark "NAMBLA" Foley story wouldn't have any sort of Bay Area connection so we wouldn't be able to comment on it, but we were wrong. When your representative to Congress is the House Minority Leader, there's a connection to anything in politics. And there is a connection indeed to this story.

This HP story is getting crazier and crazier. Today, the NY Times is reporting that HP was thinking about planting spies in at least two publications to figure out what was going on. The idea was to either place undercover admin temps or cleaning crews at CNet and the SF office of the Wall Street Journal who would then do a bit of snooping and eavesdropping. Another memo uncovered mentioned planting HP spies next to certain people to tag along and investigate them. Wasn't there an episode of "Alias" like that where Sydney Bristow dressed up like an Office Temp complete with iPod and back tattoo to shadow some reporter only to discover they were really their long lost second cousin removed who supposedly died in a fiery motorcycle accident but really used it as a ruse to escape the Chinese?

--Former HP board chair Patricia Dunn and leading Palo Alto attorney Larry Sonsini will testify before Congress about that whole leak thing.

A flat fee for BART? -- And speaking of BART, a new BART stop is about to be built, the first one since the SFO extension in 2003. It'll be called the West Dublin/Pleasanton stop and will be built between the ten minute gap in stops between Dublin/Pleasanton and Castro Valley

Otherwise known as stories we missed while we were on vacation... -The last time we heard from Krissy Keefer, the Green candidate for Congress, she and some of her gal-pals were banging the Taiko drum and handing out cookies to celebrate her official entrance into the race. We maybe a little fuzzy on our American history, but we think Lincoln started that way too. Anyways, we hadn't heard from her since then but last week, she and her Merry Band of Dancers took part in a celebration of Fidel Castro's 80th birthday, which the San Francisco Sentinel described as a "spectacular evening ensemble of music, song, dance and poetry." Keefer's dance troupe performed and Keefer performed the monologue during the performance. You know, nothing says "striving for mainstream political acceptance" like staging dance performances to celebrate Fidel Castro. While it's not official, word has it that Keefer is in talks to take part in a new VH-1 reality show "Dancing With Dictators." It's not know yet who'll she be dancing with, but we here the Stacey Keibler/Mahmoud Ahmadinejad team will be pretty hard to beat.