Well, frankly, neither had we. That is, until we read this crazy -- yet, not so crazy -- article on Republicans in Ohio switching party alliances and voting Democratic. 16,000 Republicans, to be exact. Now, why the heck would all these Republicans go Democrat? This is part of "The Plot." Instigated by Rush Limbaugh, the theory is that Hillary Clinton would be easier for Republican fave, John McCain, to beat at election time. By having......

Ralph Nader announced yesterday that he will take yet another tireless stab at the Oval Office, this time running as an Independent in the 2008 presidential election. Oh joy. Prattling on endlessly about how the Democratic and Republican candidates aren't addressing the issues, and blah blah, who cares, this will be his fifth attempt at snatching the title President of the United States of American. What with a black man, Barack Obama, in the......

FILM: In Being Michael Madsen, the titular star "turns the tables on notorious paparazzo, Billy Dant, by hiring a trio of documentary filmmakers to chronicle Dant's life, loves, and troubles." Crafty! The film also stars David Carradine, Daryl Hannah, and Virginia Madsen. Screens at The Roxie. READING: Michael Layne Heath and William Taylor Jr. read in honor of Abraham Lincoln's birthday (and of being our first gay Republican president!) at Dog Eared Books. *......

Republican (it goes without saying) Assemblyman Guy Houston of San Ramon wants to slice off more than $3 million in state funding from Berkeley for their stance against Marine recruiting. He will introduce legislation to "withhold state transportation money until Berkeley rescinds its 'war on the U.S. Marine Corps.'" Jesus. In a move that will ideally hurt his political career -- since it's a waste of time, a symbolic prick move, and has little......

Well, you'll probably all be as relieved as we were that the proposal to adopt an SF policy to buy back Alcatraz Island from the feds for a billion dollars in order to build a peace center was thoroughly trounced in the polls, losing at a rate of almost 3:1 (72% no). You can continue telling your friends back home that you'll take them on the ferry ride to the prison if they'd ever come......

Bashing Gavin's plans to pay for his staff members (and lobbyists) from the MTA budget isn't just something us local folks can do. It's something everyone can do! Like a U.S. Senator. A Republican Senator. From Oklahoma. Wha?...

Yesterday, the drug chain maneuvered through the choppy waters of bipartisan politics via Republican and Democrat Pez dispensers. Now they honor Black History Month, which starts today, by the way, with a barely squelched cotton-pickin' joke. You slay us, Walgreens. Credit: Nature abhors a vacuum......

While perusing the colorful aisles of Walgreens this afternoon -- because nothing sooths the soul and an ADHD-addled mind like a trip to Walgreens -- we came across Pez's take on the election. It took us some time to dig through all of the elephants to find a donkey, but we did. Rainbow Grocery should have it's own Green version available soon, we hope. Maybe a Pez-dispensing gray whale, a Nazi solider, or something......

But don't get too excited, folks. Our way unpopular president will be at a Republican National Committee fundraiser at a private home in the posh Peninsula town. So alas, there is no chance to hear him speak, or watch him speak, or fall asleep during a W speech à la Senator Joseph Biden at the State of the Union address.......

The hostage standoff is over. No one died. Nothing went ka-blam. The "deranged man" at Clinton's HQ was simply the town crazy infamous around those parts for his kooky mental instability. (Then, this situation must happen on a daily basis over at Hillary Clinton's SF headquarters.) According to CBS 5: WBZ Radio's Lana Jones learned that the [wacky] man's stepson reported to police that his stepfather had been drinking for two days. The son......

It's kind of an interesting Presidential Race in that two of the leading Republican contenders, Romney and Guiliani, are basing their campaigns on bashing the liberal bastions they governed. The obvious reason is to throw some red meat at conservatives by saying not only are they not actually liberal, but that they based most of their governance on beating back gays, Jews, and dark skinned people liberals. So Rudy just put a commercial out saying that he tamed "America's Most Liberal City." This didn't sit well with New Yawkers, however, and Douglas A. Muzzio, a professor of public affairs at Baruch College, fought back and said, “Blame San Francisco. We’re not No. 1.” ...

This weekend's Muni news spans both ends of the Kinsey scale: for straight people, football; for the gays, Cirque du Soleil. Of course, gays are also allowed to like sports. (All those bulging uniforms! And the cheerleaders! Mmmmm.) And if the Republican party has taught us anything, it's that straight married men secretly adore, and aspire to be, limber fags in spandex. The Cirque will be performing in the parking lot of AT&T park, which......

Today, right here our own backyard, Republican Presidential candidate (and now eventual loser) Fred Thompson said he is "personally opposed to civil unions and domestic partnerships." Uh oh. ...

Hey, remember the Wikipedia scanner that tells you who's edited what page on the ol' Wikepedia? Well, we decided to have a little fun with it and see who's been playing with the entry for our beloved mayor. There's lots of fun to be seen: - Someone with an AT&T account deleted a Michael Moore reference because "[Moore] is not an SF voter. - A probable Republican (other edits to Reagan's funeral and the......

So, obviously, SFist can't even pretend to be neutral when it comes to Prop A. We've been covering its progress for months, and now it's evolved into a smart, fair compromise that has just about everyone on board -- everyone except a local Republican group. Our local GOP is backing the loathsome Prop H, which would, no joke, replace bus stops, trees, and bike lanes with parking garages. Could this be any more like......

Charles Hurth, city attorney for the tiny town of New Haven, Mo., is one of the main men behind the push to make California Electoral College votes more Republican-y, a confusing ploy that would split the votes by congressional districts. But Hurth also has another claim to fame: Charles "Chep" Hurth III was best known for a headline-grabbing incident a decade ago in which he bit a young female law student on the butt in......

We don’t dabble in national politics much, except when a gay Republican senator is outed in a Minneapolis airport (fun!). But we relate to the Two Americas theme of Democratic primary candidate John Edwards’ campaign: there is an America which will go to the SF Opera tonight, and another one which will go to Opera in the Park on Sunday. The first one, tuxedoed and bejeweled, cheered up by a cocktail reception, will enjoy a......

Last week's winner, the Bay Guardian. We should totally put needle disposal boxes in Golden Gate Park. Also, C.W. Nevius says that Newsom called him and yelled at him for 45 minutes after he wrote his first article on the issue. We'd put that call on mute. Gentrification is destroying Polk Street. City contractors still use sweatshop labor. Annalee Newitz has mice. Sonic Reducer's still at the Guardian. Cover article: Local bands to watch. You've......

"I am not gay. I never have been gay," lisped Republican Idaho Senator Larry Craig, with his beard wife, Suzanne, by his side. After getting arrested by an undercover office in a Minneapolis airport boy's room for engaging "in actions 'often used by persons communicating a desire to engage in sexual conduct,'" the GOP senator plead guilty to a disorderly conduct charge, with the hope that it would all quietly go away. Well, it......

"Cult Alert!" flyers garnished lamp posts on Third and Market Streets the other night -- a siren song if ever we've heard one. (It seems like forever since SF's been plagued with a jazzy, crazy-ass cult. No offense, L. Ron.) In case you missed them, or in case the quality of life sect tore them down, the missives cried out: Cult Alert! Please be advised: Youth With a Mission (YWAM) has been under investigation......

So California is pretty much a Blue State, right? And it'll probably be bluer than blue over the next few decades or so considering the Republicans have been hell-bent on pissing off every Hispanic voter lately, right? So what's a Republican to do to change all that? Better ideas? Better Presidents? Better wars? How's about changing the rules so that the Republicans can get some of that California's electoral gold. ...

Associated Press' Scott Lindlaw reports that at yesterday's federal building grand opening, as Nancy Pelosi was in the middle of playing the time-honored role of ribbon cutter, "anti-war protestors" audibly chanted such gems as "Impeach now" and "How about cutting the funding for war?" What's more, they unraveled a large banner reading "Impeach" in front of the day's speakers. But here's the best part: master of ceremonies and Bush administration official, Peter G. Stamison, tries......

--Ha! The guy to your right ran for mayor of Barcelona, and doesn't he look like Matt Gonzalez? By copatbark from the SFist Flickr stream. --John Edwards was in town at Google. So was Hillary Clinton. --Yau-Man's back at work and gives the lowdown on the Survivor season to the UC Berkeley web newsletter. --Oh no, Ed Jew! Bevan Dufty's not living in his district right now either! (it's all okay, though, at least for......

The Governor's annual May budget revision was rolled out yesterday. The document still shows a net operating deficit of $1.4 billion, but represents this as "major progress as compared to the $4.4 billion that was anticipated for 2007-08 at the time the Governor signed the 2006 Budget Act." The revised budget includes plans for early debt payments as well as to avoid tax hikes, and shows Arnold's intent to restrain spending growth and maint adequate reserves, among other things. Democrats are concerned, though, that it's doing so at the expense cuts social services and public transit -- which could have a direct affect on BART and other orgs....

From the Daily Show to the Googleplex -- Republican presidential hopeful Walnuts John McCain, struggling in the polls and in fundraising, gamely stopped by Mountain View yesterday afternoon for an hourlong forum with Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Google employees. The questions were respectful but tough from the fairly-liberal crowd, touching on McCain's flip-flopping reembrace of religious fundamentalists after calling them "agents of intolerance" in 2000, his support of the Iraq war, the firing......

Oh, what's become of our good old-fashioned hard-hearted conservative Republicans? Performance art?!?! What's next, long hair? Berets? Drapes and doilies? Irish cuisine? The Davis College Republicans are sponsoring some sort of symbolic art-game today (Tuesday) at 12:30 out on the quad, wherever the hell that is. They're calling it "Illegal Immigration Capture the Flag," and here's the ingenious twist that'll earn 'em an A in their semiotics seminar: "Illegal Immigrants team will vastly outnumber......

We have our own little bit of PurgeGate on our end of the country. Maybe not the most exciting part of the story, as it doesn't involve voter fraud or missing e-mails, but still a piece of the puzzle. ...

Since this rumor is getting a lot of play these days, it's time to do the Official SFist post on it and that is the Danny Glover for Mayor rumors. The rumors supposedly started on SFJunto and have been picked up by progressives as something doable and even kind of exciting. Hell, somebody has to run against Gavin. The thinking is he'd make perfect candidate because he's a noted lefty (he was so virulently anti-apartheid that he killed a bunch of South Africans diplomats), lives in San Francisco, and is a star, baby, a star. Hell, if Arnie could be governor and Fred Thompson the sudden leading Republican Presidential candidate based on his appearing on "Law and Order" why not Danny? The Examiner has him at 450-1 odds that he's running. ...

Since this story is now the #1 most read story on SFGate, we feel we would be remiss in not covering it. Give the people what they want and all that. So anyways, a 7th grader in a school in Napa got in trouble at school for wearing socks with Winnie the Pooh's BFF Tigger on it. And now the ACLU wants in. ...

This weekend, both the Chron and the Ex had big stories about Gavin's community court idea. Oh, wonky, earnest Gavin, how we missed you. Anyways, the thing about both stories is that we actually have community courts already set up. In fact, we've been praised for our community court program. So, then, why all the hullabaloo? And what is the proverbial what because as we could all attest, it's not like they appear to be making a difference? ...