Sarah Palin -- who, let's face it, governs some useless mass of land in Canada -- thinks she's more qualified than God to help run the US. According to Ralph Nader, she's isn't, and even his running mate, Matt Gonzalez, has more skills than Palin. He says:

[VP candidate] Matt Gonzalez has more experience than Sarah Palin ...San Francisco is a lot bigger than Wasilla.

Nice one, Ralph.

That said, and we hate to have to point this out, Gonzalez never ran the city of San Francisco. Yeah. (Oh oh, dd Matt fudge his resume? Like, "Responsibilities: oversaw 30,000 city employees. Managed annual budget of over $5 billion. Charmed the panties off of 776,733 residents." Because: he did none of those things as city supe.)

Found on Battery Street yesterday afternoon. Charming.

God, we're going to have to deal with this Naderian shit until November, aren't we? (Hint: yes.)

Just a quick FYI: vice presidential eye candy Matt Gonzalez will be taking calls live today on with Angie Coiro. You can find them chatting away over at 960 AM, from 3 p.m.- 4 p.m., so give them a call with your most pressing questions. But be careful: with so much liberal thought packed into just one hour, your hemorrhaging heart may very well jump out of your chest and beat your penis to death. You've been warned.

Image credit: Capobianco Gallery

We overheard the following (drunk) remark at our corner store today:

He kicked Gavin's butt now, right? Hooooo!

Interesting. While Gonzalez has no chance of winning, at least not during this year's election, which is more important, ego-wise: Ralph Nader choosing Matt as his running mate, or Newsom still kicking it as mayor of SF? Can Gonzalez, who was defeated by Newsom many moons ago, now piss farther than Gavin?

Whenever a presidential candidate announces his VP choice this early in the game, it's either to try to help him win a state, or to strengthen a weakness. Take, for example, Bill Clinton who chose Al Gore to help him win the South. And in 2000, George Bush selected Dick Cheney to help alleviate his complete lack of experience. So with that, we announce that Ralph Nader's Vice President pick is our very own Matt Gonzalez. Yay!

Also: huh?

Obviously the choice makes sense. Nader has a well-deserved reputation as a bit of a boring drip, so Gonzalez will help him with the hipster/artist types who will instantly fall in love with our one-time mayoral candidate's dreamy eyes and foppish hair. Plus,it will also give Nader a chance to win the electorally-rich Mission and Haight hoods.

As for Gonzalez? Well, we're guessing this awesome VP opportunity will help him grab lingering Nader supporters across the country. As for the almost impossible odds the Nader/Gonzalez team face? Matt says that he "has never entered a political campaign without the idea that it could be won."

Making that splitting headache even worse, Farber was also formally presented with the paperwork for the second restraining order that Rahaim filed against him after Rahaim discovered the fire. (Farber violated the first restraining order when he tried to call Rahaim from jail.) Knox says it is an "accurate assessment" to describe this situation as a lovers' quarrel, and that Farber was having a hard time adjusting to life in a new city, having followed Rahaim from Seattle for Rahaim's new job.

In an attempt to keep the issues about our city and not just entertainingly-lurid soap opera blog fodder, the Chron also rushed out a piece about the city planning situation in SF (i.e., who wants more condos?). Also, the damages report show that the antique furniture that Farber toppled over is all okay, but the house will need about $30,000 of new carpeting and paint to repair the smoke damage. Guess that tomato stuff washes right off, huh?

At around 11:30 a.m. today at Digital Pre-Press International (DPI), located at Mariposa and Minnesota, a woman died while on the clock. It seems she "became enmeshed in the massive piece of equipment" at the San Francisco-based printing press. SFFD Lt. Ken Smith told CBS 5 that although his crew was successful "extricating her from the machine," she failed to recover from injuries sustained in the accident. As of now it is unclear as to what exact job the unidentified woman was performing just prior to her death.

This comes after yesterday's on-site fatality at an abandoned PG&E plant, where voluminous falling debris took the life of Luis Gonzalez, 43, of Ceres.

It appears that the Billy Beane Player Emporium is still open for business as Beane just traded Nick Swisher to the White Sox for a bunch of prospects. The house-cleaning continues.

Swisher batted .262 with 22 home runs and 78 RBIs, all career highs, and he appeared to be on the cusp of being one of the A's Big Dogs. More importantly to all those stat-heads, he had high numbers in things like walks, pitches seen per plate appearance and on-base percentage against left-handed pitchers. He was also wildly popular with A's fans for his laid-back demeanor and friendliness. The prospects the A's received in return were Gio Gonzalez, pitcher Fautino De Los Santos and outfielder Ryan Sweeney. All of the prospects the A's received were among the best in the Sox system but are all a very bright shade of green.

With this trade and the Haren trade, the A's seem to have restocked and retooled their farm system and added depth to the team. And Beane always seems to know what he's doing, but, as an A's fan and coworker just exclaimed when she heard about the trade "I hate this stupid team" and disavowed her fandom. We should also note that while reaction on Athletics Nation hasn't quite filtered through, one of the tags given on a post about it was "suicide." For what it’s worth, Sox think Beane pulled a fast one on the Sox GM.

Still, it's not easy being a fan of the gold and green.

-- Those rectangular glassy lofts on Folsom and Fourth Streets are, in fact, award-winning rectangular glassy lofts. Also, love the windows. [Curbed]

-- What to do in SF when it pours. [Gridskipper]

-- Democrats having a spine? What a novel idea! [BeyondChron]

-- Behold! Tinkerman's top 10 musical experiences and releases of 2007. [SFBG]

-- Matt Gonzalez caught shopping at Community Thrift on Valencia. Dude, we also l-o-v-e Community Thrift! Why, it's where we bought our Ionic Breeze. [Spotswood]

-- Resume rules. [The Snitch]

-- It's Nutcracker time. [Civic Center Blog]

-- Yesterday's flame-ravished building at 7th/Mission to be torn town. [FCJ]

-- And your Word of the Year choices are... [Culture Blog]


"A Long Row of Rectangles" courtesy of Flickr photog Eric in SF, via Curbed.

According to the story, Matt really wasn't sure if his bud Sean was making a joke or not (although we've yet to hear Sean Penn make a joke and can't be sure he ever has) and turned it down because he refused to switch to the Democratic Party.

Now, we've done a quick search through the news and couldn't find any damn stories corroborating it and Wonkette doesn't supply any links to the story. So, this could either be Wonkette having a laugh at our expense, and, if so, are you having a laugh? Are they having a laugh? Or, they got tipped onto a juicy-ass rumor that somehow scooped the entire San Francisco media/gossip train. We kinda hope this story is true 'cause besides giving old SFist an actual election to cover, and quite a juicy one at that, the idea of Sean Penn being involved in SF politics and playing money fairy to Matt Gonzalez is just stupendously awesome.

You know we usually try to hoard up all the crime-type news for the Tuesday and Friday blotters, but there was enough vaguely unsettling news this weekend to warrant a post a little early, we thought. To wit:

--Fernando Gonzalez, an 18-year-old Redwood City man, died after he fell into a vat of sulfuric acid. Gonzalez was working the early-morning shift at Coastal Circuits Factory this weekend, without a protective face mask, when he appeared to be overcome by fumes and fell into the vat, which was filled about waist-high with the acid. Even more gruesomely, his body was discovered by his father, who went to the factory after his son failed to come home.

--And there were five assaults/shootings/stabbings over the weekend in San Francisco (none fatal), one at Church and Market, one in the Tenderloin, two near Mission Terrace and one in Visitacion Valley. On top of that, there were two murders in Berkeley (3rd and 4th for the year) and one murder in Mountain View (2nd for the year). (Also, one in San Jose and one in Oakland.)