Obvious anti-'Merica Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin spit in the eye of a crying bald eagle making heterosexual love to Michelle Malkin today after skipping a Chevron-sponsored Veterans Day hour for an Occupy rally. "About 100 protesters gathered in front of Richmond City Hall this morning for an Occupy 'speak out' addressing wealth inequality," reports the Oakland Tribune. "Organizers called the rally for 11 a.m., the hour traditionally reserved for Veterans Day remembrances."

In part of an email sent to San Jose Mercury News, McLaughlin writes: "I choose to honor our veterans, not only on Veteran’s Day, but daily, but supporting an end to military warfare to prevent further fighting and dying in needless wars...I am a strong supporter of Veterans for Peace and Iraq Vets Against the War."

Local veterans groups and entertainment news channel Fox News lambasted McLaughlin for choosing her own battles. "[T]he mayor has ties to the Richmond Progressive Alliance and has a history of creating controversy in the city," sadfaced Fox.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the peace-, love- and mud-fest known as Woodstock, and organizers of a free, commemorative concert in San Francisco are being threatened with a very un-peaceful and unloving cease and desist order from Woodstock Ventures, a New York-based organization that claims to hold the right to the Woodstock name. As SF Weekly's All Shook Down blog reports, the SF organizers do not plan to comply with the order, and are, as of now, going ahead with planning the October 25th concert, claiming that San Francisco has as much of a right to celebrate as any city -- with 18 of the groups who played at the 1969 festival hailing from San Francisco. As the Weekly puts it, "It's never a good thing when hippies fight. Especially aging hippies." We hope they work it all out, and we also hope Grace Slick will be there.

by Lisa Hix

Like many people, Cari Zinter is looking for a place, a nice flat in the East Bay — except she would prefer that flat to be a platform in a tree. And she's willing to pay rent for a good solid oak in a backyard.

She'd been riding her bike across the country and decided she would like to build her own permanent residence in Oakland. In the name of finding "alternative ways of using space to live," her home among the birds would be rather simple — built on a 10-by-10 platform, with a wash basin for laundry and bathing, and a system for collecting rain water and using her urine for compost. In the future, she would even consider installing solar panels for electricity and a zip line to bring her bike up and down. She says she's hoping to inspire a new way of living, maybe even a whole community of people living in treehouses.

But perhaps Zinter, originally from Ohio, is unaware of how unpopular tree-sitters have become after a dozen or so poo-flinging activists — including our favorite Dumpster Muffin — spent 21 months altogether sleeping in the oak grove in front of UC Berkeley's Memorial Stadium. Failing to prevent the university from chopping down the trees to erect a athletic training center, the last four were neatly plucked out of their perches on September 9 when construction workers built a scaffolding for the Berkeley cops to reach them.