Gavin Newsom is the Mayor of San Francisco, and a big fan of new media. He twittered his daughter's birth, and writes frequently at Huffington Post, ARSTechnica, Daily Kos, and even Calitics on occasion.
But, perhaps I got that wrong, because, you know, blogs are often wrong:
"That's just factually incorrect," Newsom said Friday following an unrelated press conference in City Hall. "Though blogs often are." (SF Examiner 10/4/09)
The knock on Gavin Newsom has always been that he doesn't take criticism very well. And that is exactly what this was about. StreetsBlog had published a story saying that Newsom was putting his finger on the scale of whether to increase parking meter hours. In response to a question at a press conference, we got the above answer.
As something of an epilogue, Matier and Ross published a very similar story on Monday. I wonder what the response to a question concerning that article will be. Something about the environmental impact of killing all those trees to print the Chronicle I suppose.
Over the last few weeks I have been writing about the plight of security guards working for a company called Inter-Con, a contractor at Kaiser Permanente Hospitals in California. One post I wrote on this was titled, Why Don't We Hear About Labor Issues Anymore? and I want to get to that subject some more here. But first, I want to go over what was covered.
Ken is corrupt and it is our responsiblity to make sure everyone knows and force the hand of the GOP to get this man out of any position of power. I will post what we find and repost what others have contributed -- all in an effort to show more and more what Kennie boy is all about.
Oh, and mistersmith is already doing a great job at this! If we really want to get rid of Creepy Ken next year, we need to get the message out on just how creepy he really is. And what better way to get the message out than to blog it, and let the message spread out through the internets. And hopefully, voters in Orange and Riverside Counties will find it, and they'll then know what to do.
So what are you waiting for? If you're in or near the 44th District in Southern California, and you want to learn more about one of the CREEPIEST REEPS in our area, go see Eye on Calvert. It will really open up your eyes!
Tell you what; you're still a relevative [sic] young man in good health who obviously supports this president and this war. Do what hundreds of other soliders have done. Put your life on hold and go enlist. Ask to be assigned a unit going to Iraq. Support this war and this president all you want. But the veto is not supporting the troops. The veto is a sentence to extend this quagmire to satisfy a tyrant president's stubborness and refusal to admit mistakes.
Dan Chmielewski said that to Republican insider/consultant/"blogger"Jubal/Matt Cunningham on Monday, after Jubal/Matt spewed out the same old Republican talking points that Democrats hate the troops. Well, all hell soon broke loose as Jubal/Matt had his fit. I guess it's so much easier to "support the troops" by blithely sticking a yellow ribbon on a Middle-Eastern-oil-guzzling SUV while ignoring the real hell that our troops must suffer in Iraq.
So Matt/Jubal, since you seem to support this debacle in Iraq so much; since you seem to believe that this war is really about terrorism and not an occupation; since you support this President and his stubborn insistence that there is something over there that can be won, other than oil and no-bid contracts for his friends; why don't you put your butt where your mouth is, step up to the plate, and become part of King George's noble cause.
The Liberal OC turns one year old today. Looking back in our archives, the most talked about topics back when we started this thing were Tan Nguyen and his racist run for congress, and Phil Angelides v.s. Steve Westly.
And the very first post on this page was an email that was sent to me by Benny Diaz regarding the May Day protests last year.
Here's to one more year of political blogging!
Yes, here's to another year of the best damn blogging behind the Orange Curtain! Our blogosphere wouldn't be the same wihout you. Horray for The Liberal OC! : )
I'm not sure where to even being rebutting this post, which is a rich combination of paranoia and grandiosity that would make your hero Art Pedroza proud. [...]
Andrew, if you really want to see a "noise machine" all you need to do is read your own posts: loaded with straw men, unsupported assumptions, jumped-to-conclusions, screechy rhetoric and paranoia.
So why is Jubal/Matt still fuming over this? Well, he completely lost control. And why is he so angry about that? Well, I'll tell you all about it after the flip...
A long time ago I was told that in this business you are judged by your enemies. If your enemies are mostly democrats then you must be doing something right. They're willing to tear you down, especially people like Andrew Davey who posted on the Calitics page. He's just a punk with a computer.
The Executive Director of the OC GOP, some guy named George, called Ryan and complained about this post. He asked Ryan to remove my reference to the OC GOP voter registration effort. No go! Ryan was NOT my source for that information. And no, it is not coming down. If the OC GOP wants to put a guy in charge of voter registration in central OC, who ran perhaps the most anti-Latino campaign I have ever seen (i.e. Trung Nguyen standing at the border to "stop" the Mexicans), that is his prerogative. But it is a dumb idea!
Here's a shocker - my sources are telling me that GOP Assemblyman Van Tran is trying to talk Democrat (and former state legislator) Joe Dunn into running against Supervisor Janet Nguyen in two years. Tran is apparently still quite bitter over Nguyen's victory over his Trannie, Trung Nguyen. This sort of thing is not new for Tran - he has worked behind the scenes with other Democrats before, such as Bruce Broadwater and Mark Rosen.
Rosen by the way changed a prior vote and ended up backing Republican Steve Jones to replace Janet on the Garden Grove City Council. I wonder if Tran had anything to do with that? Jones is a developer - watch and see if he either has contributed to Tran and his cronies or will do so in the near future.
While we are on the subject of Trannies, Trung's campaign manager, Saulo Londono, was apparently tabbed by the OC GOP to conduct voter registration in Central Orange County. They didn't even bother to ask Janet how she felt about this. The sense was that Van Tran has been successful at this and so they went with the Trannies. I cannot see how this is going to work out. The Trannies will make this work for them and will not try to help the most prominent GOP elected official in the area, Janet Nguyen. (Yes, she is ostensibly in a non-partisan office, but you know that is true in name only).
So what's going on with those lovely Republicans? And why do they hate bloggers? Well, follow me after the flip for more...
Special Guest: John Perez, Political Director of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 324, to discuss current contract negotiations with Albertson's, Von's and Ralph's. Other items: Presentations on peace actions, blogging in CA (by Calitics' own atdleft!!), resolutions to be voted on at State Convention, media presentation and more. For collection, bring household items or gift cards for Beverly House, a home for 18-21 year old emancipated foster women.
H/T to Orange Juice for all their great coverage of Santa Ana issues. We probably wouldn't even know about how these administrators are hurting our kids and their educational opportunities if it weren't for Thomas Gordon, Art Pedroza, Claudio Gallegos, and the entire O-J Team. Thanks to all of you for getting the MSM's attention.
Chris Reed has a post up [...] on his UT blog discussing the continuing "media error-a-thon" in regards to classifying those without health care in the United States. His complaint is that there are not 47 million Americans without health insurance. Rather, there are 47 million people in America without health insurance. His gripe so much as I understand it is that immigrants, legal or otherwise, shouldn't be part of the health care discussion in the first place and that including them improperly legitimizes these people as Americans and artificially inflates the health care problems faced in this country.
On St. Patrick's Day 2005, then Congressman Rob Portman was tapped by President George Bush as U.S. Trade Envoy. The progressive blogosphere paid attention within two hours and the very next day, Swing State Project publisher DavidNYC wrote the following on the front page of Daily Kos:
If last week was defined by Katie Merrill catapulting a primary campaign against Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher, this was the week that Tauscher tried in vain to distance herself from Joe Lieberman.
As a general matter, I tried to be kind with blogs that haven't posted in a while, and I did not include blogs that I knew were sponsored by a publication.
If Katie Merrill had the goal of preventing a primary campaign against Ellen Tauscher, it might not have been the best strategy to provoke the publisher of the most widely read political blog in the world into declaring, "So in CA-10, we will have a candidate, and there will be a primary."
But as Jane Hamsher noted, Tauscher has greater problems than netroots. Sure, California bloggers are going to cover this race closely (Calitics is averaging more than a post a day on Ellen Tauscher in December of all months and Markos lives in the east bay). And sure, if things get interesting the national blogs will have the ability to get the race nationwide attention. But all of that will be focused towards understanding and supporting what is actually going on in California's 10th congressional district.
Shhh. Don't tell anyone. I'm going to let you in on a little secret as part of our getting-to-know-you process in the blogosphere. Ok, here it is. I am a political Luddite… a technology rebel… a wireless outlier. That's right. You heard me. I am declaring myself, at least for the purposes of this piece, anti-technology. I am not completely anti-technology of course. I am, after all, writing this entry on my computer. For the launch of a new blog, no less. It's just that I think that the whole notion that the Internet and wireless technology are changing the way we win elections is… well, a bunch of hooey. Incendiary remarks, I know. And bygones up front to my friends and colleagues in the mobile media, net roots, viral marketing, online activism world. But here's the thing, I just don't think any of those things actually win campaigns. At least not yet. And not in California.
So, to the netroots, I say this: It's time to get constructive guys. Roll up your sleeves and help our party leadership govern. And lay off the moderate Dems. They actually share your values. We as Democrats have a tremendous amount of work to do in the next 23 months. It's time for you to focus on beating Republicans, not Democrats.
In just three and a half months, she went from admitting she didn't have a clue about how much we don't matter to trying to tell the netroots that we need to get "constructive" and listen to her when it comes to focus?
(Poor Pombo, people don't like him, and we dare to organize against him - promoted by SFBrianCL)
In a recent comment printed in the Manteca Bulletin, Congressman Richard Pombo (CA 11) gives blogs high praise by singling out their effectiveness. Speaking of the Defenders of Wildlife, he said:
The group has a full-time office in Pleasanton with a full-time staff, Pombo said. They have drawn their activist workers from personal website blogs in the Bay area. They send them into the neighborhoods campaigning against him in his congressional district, he said.
“It’s a full-blown campaign,” he pointed out. “I don’t think there has ever been anything to this extent before.”
Just recently the campaign group had some six buses pick up the Bay Area activists they had searched out from San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley taking them to district neighborhoods for door-to-door contact.
When Pombo was home in the district during the months of August and September, the group showed up at every event he attended with their signs charging him with corruption, he said.
Those blogs are PomboWatch and SayNoToPombo. The effectiveness of getting feet on the streets is one thing that the Internet does as as well as it helps raise money.
Cross-posted from Calitics: the progressive community blog for California
Yesterday, KQED's Forum, ordinarily a program that I enjoy, had a program about the close of the legislative session. After a discussion of possible reforms, talk moved to the blogs. I have uploaded the clip here.
Apparently, Bill Whalen, of the Hoover Institution, is scared by me. Well, bloggers in generally I suppose. (The transcript is courtesey of Kid Oakland).
I don't worry so much as a Republican, but as a citizen, and there's one word: "the blogosphere" That's what scares me. There are angry people on the left and angry people on the right. And I'm not sure if I want to see that anger harnessed in reforming our government. I like the firewall, if you will. ... Among the leaders opposing [Prop 89] are the California Teachers Association and the California Chamber of Commerce. Why? They are very vested interests in Sacramento, they don't want the rules changed. But Direct Democracy, to me we have it in effect in the initiative process and I'd kind of like to keep it harnessed. (KQED Forum 9/1/06)
I recently put up a technologically revamped site for Jill Martinez for Congress (CA-24). It used to be a bunch of static pages. It is now a blog-format site with comments, diaries an event calendar and the usual goodies. Now that it's built, who will come?
below: The Saga of a Web Site, Technical Wankery, and 83 days to know if it works
Ever since the primary, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, aka Kos, has been talking down the chances of one Phil Angelides for Governor. He was pro Westly during the primary and now he seems to be happy to talk down Angelides' chances at every turn.
