Amongst the estimated 1,000 people who showed up outside the W yesterday to protest/holler at President Obama was prominent local Democratic fundraiser Susie Tompkins Buell. A good friend and major campaign supporter of Hillary Clinton, Tompkins Buell has had it up to here with Barack! And she's not going to take it anymore! Rather than lend her money in support of his fundraiser yesterday, as the Chron reports, she was outside with demonstrators waving signs that said STOP KEYSTONE XL, referring to an oil pipeline project from Alberta Canada to Texas that is now her pet project. more ›

Former Mayor, esteemed Chronicle reporter and food blogger Willie Brown went on Hardball with Chris Matthews this afternoon to discuss the President's dire poll numbers in California (He's at 46% approval rating). Matthews, drawing on inspiration from Democratic strategist James Carville, asks Da Mayor what he thinks Obama has to do to turn this campaign around, in California and elsewhere. To which Da Mayor, apparently reporting from a newsroom in the sky, responds: "he has to demonstrate that he is very, very tough... seldom, if ever, have you had a president who has waited so long to show truly his nature in terms of a fight." We're not entirely sure that sentence makes any sense, and he might actually be talking about some local bistro's poor bread service, but there it is. Video embedded below for the rest of Willie's analysis on how Obama can get back to his base. more ›

Remember Solyndra, the Fremont-based solar panel manufacturer who got a $535 million low-interest loan guarantee from the Obama administration in 2009, and whom Obama visited on one of his last trips to the Bay Area? Well, they're now suddenly bankrupt, shocking the White House and prompting an investigation by the FBI starting today. more ›

Two political economists, writing in the Journal of Political Economy, have concluded that being a voter in the primaries in New Hampshire or Iowa makes you essentially as powerful as five voters on Super Tuesday — the date on which the most states hold simultaneous primaries in a presidential election year, which in 2008 was a total of 24, including California. That means that two states, each with arguably centrist tendencies, and with a combined population of 4.4 million (per 2010 Census data), wield enormous political power when it comes to choosing presidential candidates. In 2012, given that California has one of the most racially, religiously, politically, and ethnically diverse populations in the nation — not to mention being the most populous state in the country with 37.3 million residents — why shouldn't we be an early primary state? more ›

Nearly ten years after the September 11th attacks, Osama bin Laden has been killed. An anonymous government or military official who is familiar with the circumstances of bin Laden's death and the capture of his body has informed the press ahead of an official announcement by President Obama which is expected momentarily. The White House has been discussing the event internally since this morning, and it's now emerging that bin Laden was killed in Pakistan. UPDATE: The President has spoken, and it turns out they've had intelligence on Osama's whereabouts going back to August, in Abottabad, Pakistan. A team of American operatives moved in today and, following a firefight, killed bin Laden and captured his body. [ABC, NYT, CNN] more ›

Oakland activist Naomi Pitcairn and a gaggle of friends attended a fundraising lunch with President Obama at the St. Regis today, paying a total of $76,000 (funded by Pitcairn) for their seats in order to sing an a capella ditty at the President that seems to be called "We Paid Our Dues, Now Where's Our Change?" Pitcairn revealed, in the middle of the song, a t-shirt she was wearing under her clothes protesting the imprisonment of Pfc. Bradley Manning. more ›

This little bit of wonderful comes from the brilliant minds behind Auto-Tune the News (remember them?), who also received some accolades recently for this Obama Kickass Song, featuring President Obama, Matt Lauer, Tinky-Winky, and the Lollipop Guild. more ›

The Obamas are only in town for another hour or so, taking off from SFO at about noon. The President spent this morning at Fremont solar panel manufacturer Solyndra, which the San Jose Mercury News tells us: "is one of several "thin film" solar companies in Silicon Valley [that] uses a unique cylindrical panel design made specifically for flat, commercial rooftops... [like] at a Coca-Cola sales center in Macon, Ga." more ›

Our old pal Zennie editorializes today on his City Brights blog about the "negro" comments made by Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid in regard to Obama's candidacy back in '08. Zennie says that Reid's comments may have been racist, but the man is not, and he goes on to make the (somewhat spurious) argument that, "Much has changed since Barack Obama became the 44th President of The United States, specifically attitudes about race and the overall willingness to talk about race and racism." He also brings up the fact that many (older) African Americans didn't believe Obama could get elected, which was racist in itself. more ›

The Environmental Protection Agency today announced that they would be enacting tougher smog restrictions nationwide, which are expected to cost industries tens of billions of dollars to comply with. You may recall that the EPA tried to do this under Dubya, but was thwarted because of his quest to destroy the planet. The new rules are not likely to affect California, which has been at the forefront of de-smogging protections for a while. But as ABC News reports, counties in Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, and Minnesota are all likely to feel the pain of compliance. more ›

In the NYT today, California is once again front and center in a piece about cash-strapped states entering the new year with nothing but swaths of red on the books. The Governator is expected to continue shaking his tin cup at President Obama when he makes his State of the State address at 10 a.m. today, saying that when the new fiscal year begins in July, California will be unable to pay for any social services without aid from the federal government. The stimulus funds of last year are going to start running out, and it's about to get really ugly, with Medicaid patients here already being denied dental benefits and unemployment funds teetering in the balance as well. Happy New Year! more ›

We know we're preaching to the converted here (for the most part), and we probably should have caught this semi-gruesome spoof ad by NYC's Upright Citizens Brigade (which once gave birth to Amy Poehler) before Halloween. But here it is, nevertheless, because it still gives us a chuckle, and everybody's in a political mood today anyhow. more ›

In 1987, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, the Department of Health and Human Services added HIV to the list of communicable diseases that barred tourists and travelers from entry into the U.S. In 1993, Congress went further to list HIV-positivity as the only medical condition listed as grounds for inadmissibility for immigration into the country, and therefore no major AIDS conference has taken place here ever since. more ›

They sure do love our fine President up in Norway! Despite having only been in office 12 days when the nomination deadline passed, the Nobel committee went ahead and awarded Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize, apparently as "an encouragement" for him to act peaceably and use diplomacy in the future. Also, this was clearly a Fuck You to Dubya, as ABC 7 News points out, with the Nobel Committee handing this award to the first person who wasn't named Bush pretty much the minute he took he office. Everyone, including the White House, was taken by surprise. more ›

Apart from a few new sand dunes, the CA coast remained unscathed by yesterday's tsunami in the Pacific. The tsunami struck the islands of Samoa and American Samoa, killing over 100 people with dozens still unaccounted for, following an 8.0 quake 120 miles away (see AP vid above). Early this morning another quake struck the Indonesian island of Sumatra, killing at least 13 75 people. President Obama has declared American Samoa a "major disaster," thereby rushing federal aid to the region, and the Australian government has pledged immediate help as well. 25 FEMA crew members from Oakland are on their way as of early this morning. more ›

In that *super controversial* address to school children that had conservatives nationwide saying he would turn our kids into an army of health-care-reform-endorsing zombies, President Barack Obama today advised kids to "be careful what you post on Facebook" because it could come back and haunt you someday. Sound advice. He also made the *super controversial* statement, "Every single one of you has something to offer," and said that of anyone dead or alive who he could have dinner with, he'd choose Ghandi. No word yet on the number of glazed-over, socialist automatons later seen wandering the nation's school yards. more ›

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? more ›

We're not sure there is such a thing as a *good* wax figure, but we're sure the people at the Fisherman's Wharf Wax Museum would like us to think so. In any event, your afternoon palate cleanser today is this collection (via Buzzfeed) of really bad wax figures that's making its way around the webs. Sources aren't given, so it's very possible that one or two of these are featured in our very own museum, but having never stepped foot inside, we cannot confirm. Perhaps one of our eagle-eyed commenters will recognize something. Here we give you a selection, featuring scary-bad versions of the Cast of Seinfeld, Julia Roberts, Cher, LeAnn Rimes (looking, um, "special"), Michael J. Fox, Barack Obama, and Pulp Fiction-era John Travolta and Uma Thurman. PREVIOUSLY: Wax Obama to Arrive at Wax Museum Today more ›

Thanks to loyal SFist contributing photog Steve Rhodes, we have these pictures of the sizable protest that went down in Union Square last night, in which activists, Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi and local Iranian-Americans gathered to voice their support for the post-election protests in Tehran and to ask President Obama to support reform leader Mir Hussein Moussavi. more ›

We suppose not everyone really subscribes to the theory that Osama Bin Laden hasn't been alive and kicking for years, but in case you did, his Al Qaeda puppet-masters have released a new audio tape in which Bin Laden attacks the Obama Administration for recent crackdowns on militants in the Swat Valley of northwest Pakistan. In the tape, released on Al Jazeera, the allegedly alive terrorist leader says, "Obama and his administration have sown new seeds to increase hatred and revenge on America. The number of these seeds is equal to the number of displaced people from Swat Valley." So the old man is still sucking air someplace, and apparently has misplaced his video camera, but anyway... carry on. more ›

A new piece today in the Washington Post suggests that Obama administration officials and members of Congress alike are considering the possibility of a VAT, or value-added tax, which would impose a levy on all goods and services in order to cover the nation's gi-fucking-normous budget deficit. Along with raising taxes on the highest earners, the idea of a VAT seems to be gaining traction as something that has worked for 130 other countries worldwide. more ›

Judge Sonia Sotomayor, a self-described Newyorican who grew up in a housing project in the Bronx after her parents moved from Puerto Rico, has been tapped by President Obama to be the next Supreme Court justice of the U.S. She was inspired by Perry Mason as a little girl, and has served as a federal judge for New York's Southern District for 17 years. In addition to being the first person of Hispanic descent ever appointed to the court, KCBS reports that Sotomayor brings "more judicial experience to the Supreme Court than any justice confirmed in the past 70 years." more ›

A wax statue of President Barack Obama will arrive, via the F Market, at the Fisherman's Wharf wax museum today around 3PM. The first 100 patrons at the museum after Wax Obama's arrival will get in free. Tourists from far and wide shall now come to our fair city solely for the purpose of viewing our very own Wax Obama. more ›

A new piece in the East Bay Express tells the tale of AC Transit's decision to move forward with a $28 million purchase of 12 zero-emission, hydrogen fuel cell buses -- that's just over $2M per bus, and the same total price tag of 55 hybrid buses. Robert Gammon in the Express calls this a "boondoggle," and points to President Obama all but eradicating the federal fuel cell program due to costs. more ›

Senator Arlen Specter, reborn as a Democrat, appeared at the White House with President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden and said, "I think that I can be of assistance to you, Mr. President. ... There are a lot of big issues we're tackling now that I've been deeply involved in." Specter and Biden are good friends; the NY Times reports that Biden had been pressing Specter about switching parties lately: In the past 10 weeks, "Mr. Biden and Mr. Specter had spoken 14 times — six times in person and eight in telephone conversations. [Each time] Mr. Biden argued that the Republican Party had increasingly drifted away from Mr. Specter since the election and that ideologically, he was closer to the Democratic Party." Today, Obama said, "I don't expect Arlen to be a rubber stamp. In fact, I'd like to think that Arlen's decision reflects recognition that this administration is open to many different ideas and many different points of view... I'm eager to receive his counsel and his advice, especially when he disagrees." more ›