Sam Spade's San Francisco

Jim Gray is a San Franciscan and very well known throughout the community. He is lost at sea.

Jim went out for a solo sailing trip to the Farallons and failed to return home.

For Jim Gray, an experienced sailor, that is highly unusual. Gray is one of the brightest and most successful computer scientists in the world. He invented the powerful software architecture that drives ATMs and online purchasing. Without Jim Gray you would be waiting in line inside the bank and if you wanted to buy something from afar, your only option would be mail order. The photo of the Farallon Islands shown here is taken from a software mapping program developed by Gray.

Jim Gray also created the Sloan Digital Sky Server, an amazingly advanced astronomical database that is the largest and most powerful on the planet. Then he turned his attentions to Mother Earth and created the world's largest and most powerful database of maps and aerial photos, TerraServer.

The U.S. Coast Guard 11th District Headquarters, based at Coast Guard Island next to Alameda in San Francisco Bay is coordinating a massive search. Updates can be found from the USCG 11th District Public Information site here.

Just how far has this country slipped?

Once, America was the symbol of freedom, fairness and due process. All that has ended.

We are now seen around the world as an imperialist empire and beneath the Darth Vader mask worn by the leader of the U. S. Storm Troopers is scrawny little George W. Bush.

Now we hear that the German government has issued arrest warrants for 13 U.S. CIA agents who Germany accuses of kidnapping a German citizen in 2003. The standard definition of a terrorist organization is "a political movement that uses terror as a weapon to achieve its goals." The CIA, under the Bush Administration, has come dangerously close to meeting that definition.

According to the German government, Khaled al-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese ancestry, was abducted by CIA agents in the Macedonian capital Skopje on New Year's eve 2003 and flown to a jail in Afghanistan where he was interrogated, beaten and tortured during a five-month ordeal. Al-Masri was freed in Albania in May 2004 after the CIA found out that they had abducted the wrong person.

Reality Check: The President of the United States has humiliated our country, destroyed our international good will, reduced our nation to the level of kidnappers and torturers and, by so doing, invited renewed and even more violent attacks on our nation ... which will almost without doubt ... occur soon.

Thanks a lot, George Bush.

Listen, Mary, the real Queen is coming to town, so put the high heels back under the bed and pay a little respect.

The grandeur and sheer impressive beauty of the remarkable Cunard Cruise Line ship, the Queen Mary 2, will grace our skyline on February 4th.

Massive

At 1,132 feet in length, the massive ship weighs in at an astounding 151,400 gross tons.

The QM2, as she is affectionately known, is:
- 113 feet longer than the original Queen Mary,
- twice as long as the Washington Monument is tall,
- able to accommodate more than 3,000 passengers and 1,200 crew members.

Power to Spare

One of the more interesting technical facts about the QM2 is its propulsion system. It is among the most advanced on the planet, naval vessels excepted, of course. The ship is not propelled by conventional fixed propeller blades at the stern of the ship. Rather, QM2 glides through the water at a good 30 knots and is propelled by four Rolls-Royce Mermaid podded propulsion units that produce a combined total of 157,000 horsepower.

No Rudder!

Each pod, which is the size of a small house, has one forward-facing low-vibration Kamewa propeller with separately bolted blades. The forward pair is fixed, but the aft pair can rotate through 360 degrees, obviating the need for a rudder.

The QM2 offers 15 restaurants and bars, five swimming pools, a casino, a ballroom, a theatre, and a state-of-the-art digital planetarium.

Best of all folks, the Queen Mary 2 will be here in San Francisco on February 4th to 5th.

Where and When you can see the Queen

At four times higher than Telegraph Hill and 280 feet longer than the height of the Transamerica Pyramid, it will dominate the skyline. On Sunday, February 4th at approximately 3 PM, the Queen Mary 2 will glide under the Golden Gate Bridge. It will be escorted by San Francisco Fireboats, the U.S. Coast Guard and a huge flotilla of private boats.

There are no announced plans for public tours. You're going to need to know somebody in high places in order to get aboard. The mayor and a number of other local dignitaries (people who do know somebody) will attend an invitation-only tour and luncheon aboard the QM2 with the captain on Monday.

The Queen will depart Monday evening at 8 PM. Her arrival on Sunday marks the 26th day of her Around the World in 80 Days Tour.

Story tools:

Cunard's official QM2 site
Wikipedia's excellent QM2 article
Photo Gallery of QM2
QM2 live Bridgecam (today she is in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas ... see for yourself!)
QM2's revolutionary on-board planetarium system
QM2's restaurants (you can even read the menus)
Bars, Lounges, Saloons and Fandango Parlors
Theatre, Nightclubs and Casino
Galleries, Books, Afternoon High Tea, Planned Events

Well, maybe not "hundreds of thousands" as expected by organizers, but there was a respectable number of tens of thousands who took to the streets in many of America's largest cities, San Francisco included.

The President has made it clear that he does not intend to listen to anyone outside of his delusional inner circle when it comes to resolving the mess he has created in Iraq. This weekend hundreds of thousands of antiwar demonstrators are taking to to the streets in just about every major city in the country.

The last time we saw this kind of massive up-swelling was during the Vietnam War and the Texan in the White House at the time was Lyndon Johnson.

The big march in Washington today is organized by United for Peace and Justice, a coalition of 1,400 local and national organizations, including the National Organization for Women, United Church of Christ, the American Friends Service Committee, True Majority, Military Families Speak Out, Iraq Veterans Against the War, the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, CodePink, MoveOn.org, and September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows.

If you can't make it downtown today for our own protest, you can join in the Washington Virtual March here. You can also watch You Tube coverage of the Washington March .

For on-going coverage of the peace movement and to read the leading voice of the progressive democratic movement in America, point your browser toward The Nation.

And tonight in San Francisco! ...

Congressman Dennis Kucinich on Ending the War in Iraq

• UU Church, Geary and Franklin
  
• 7:00pm Tonight
  

Congressman Dennis Kucinich speaks on Bush's escalation,and what it will take to end funding for the US war in Iraq. Also speaking: Carolyn Ho, mother of Lt. Ehren Watada, the first military officer to be court-martialed for refusing to deploy to Iraq. Recently added: Rep. Barbara Lee! $5-10 sliding scale. First Unitarian Universalist Church (at Franklin and Geary. Take the #38 bus from Montgomery BART or walk from Civic Ctr BART. Street and paid parking at Cathedral Hill Hotel). More info

On Tuesday, January 30, from 6-8 pm, the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender (GLBT) Historical Society will host “What Do Queer Neighborhood Do for Cities?” This roundtable with community leaders is the second in the series, “Queer in the City: GLBT Neighborhoods and Urban Planning,” that the GLBT Historical Society will run through spring.

“What Do Queer Neighborhoods Do for Cities?” will explore the function of GLBT neighborhoods within the greater urban contexts that they shape. It will bring together businesspeople, leaders in San Francisco ’s tourist promotion, activists, and scholars to explore the political, cultural, and economic values of queer neighborhoods for cities. This dialogue will help develop consciousness around why such neighborhoods bring vitality to cities and how governments and communities should value them.

Panelists will include:

• Steve Adams, Sterling Bank Vice President and leader in the Merchants of Upper Market and Castro (MUMC)
  
  
• Nan Alamilla Boyd, Chair of Women’s and Gender Studies, Sonoma State University , author of Wide Open Town : A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965, and GLBTHS Board Member
  
  
• Joe D’Alessandro, CEO of the San Francisco Convention and
  Visitors Bureau
  
  
• Ben Peacock, Ph.D. candidate in Medical Anthropology at University of California , Berkeley and San Francisco
  

WHAT: “What Do Queer Neighborhoods Do For Cities?” roundtable discussion. Free and open to the public, including refreshments.

WHEN: 6-8 pm, Tuesday, January 30, 2007

WHERE: GLBT Historical Society, 657 Mission Street, Suite 300 (btwn. New Montgomery/Third), San Francisco . One block from the Montgomery BART/MUNI station. Inexpensive city parking nearby on Third (btwn. Folsom/Howard).

- - - - - - - - - - -

The mission of the GLBT Historical Society is to increase public understanding, appreciation, and affirmation of the history and culture of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and other sexual minority individuals and communities. For more information, call 415.777.5455 or visit www.glbthistory.org.

The last time a Speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives exercised the full power of that office was when Sam Rayburn held the position. The phrase, "a jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build one," is attributed to Rayburn.

PHOTO: Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi meet in Baghdad, Friday Jan 26, 2007, in this image released by the Iraqi Government. Pelosi has been a sharp critic of the Bush administration's conduct of the war and has led a drive in Congress against sending 21,500 more troops to the effort as part of a new security crackdown in Baghdad. Man in the center is an unidentified translator. (AP Photo/Iraqi Government)

It looks like Nancy Pelosi is very possibly going to surpass Sam Rayburn and become the most powerful Speaker this nation has yet seen. If she can learn to be a good carpenter, those kills will serve her well, because she is going toe-to-toe with a jackass president who has kicked the barn down.

This past week Speaker Pelosi has gone to Baghdad to see for herself exactly what is going on over there. Today she is in Islamabad to meet with Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf. The meeting is not a social visit nor is it strictly fact-finding. Nancy is putting those people on notice!

This month the Democrats introduced a bill that would link American aid for Pakistan's military with the degree that nation combats Taliban militants, which on again on the rise. The bill would require President Bush to personally certify that the Pakistani government is doing everything possible to seal its border with Afghanistan to prevent Taliban guerrilla movement, and, actively searching out and eliminating Taliban military cells hiding inside Pakistan.

The success of that bill depends on the intelligence, willingness and abilities of George W. Bush to correctly interpret what is going on. That is what has House Democrats (and the rest of the free world) worried.

So, the Speaker of the House has personally gone into forward deployment and she is "boots down" in both Baghdad and Islamabad. Finally, it looks like the United States of America has a responsible, capable, honest and powerful civilian leader on the scene.

About time!

The Bay Area Reporter ran a story about Mayor Gavin Newsom's passion for his job and his determination to run for a second term. The article referenced an old story that appeared in the Chronicle by Matier and Ross that quoted the Mayor as saying that he wasn't sure he wanted a second term.

Sometimes Matier and Ross are a couple of spoons. They like to stir the pot and keep rumors and discontent swirling. I admit that I read them regularly and have for years. Like most people I agree with them sometimes and sometimes not.

Gavin Newsom made things clear during his interview with the BAR. The Mayor said, "I just have a passion beyond ... it is hard for me to describe the intensity of the passion I have for this city. It's a privilege of growing up here and giving a damn," he said. "The hard part of when you grow up here is when you see the graffiti, you see the guy panhandling and the potholes. It is hard."

Those words stuck with me. I recognize the feeling he is describing and I understand exactly the passion he feels. My family first came to San Francisco in 1849. I too have a passion for my City, my Home, that is difficult to describe to people who do not have deep roots. It is truly a passion and it is absolutely intense. And, yes ... it is very hard seeing deterioration in the City and it is even more difficult to see so many people living in San Francisco who obviously don't give a damn about our City and our Home.

If I were mayor, I'd take a baseball bat and run the corner crack sellers, the panhandlers, the wife-beaters, the shoplifters and the street-corner robbers right out of town. I'd be out of office and in jail in no time.

That's why we need Gavin Newsom re-elected. He has the roots and the passion and he has the patience, the goodness and the intelligence to run the City far better than anyone I know ... myself most certainly included.

Good luck, Gavin!

It looks like the Shorenstein Co. is finally getting ready to move forward with development of the old Mining Exchange property at 350 Bush Street in the Financial District, shown here in the photo. Plans call for the original classical columned building to be incorporated into a 19-story office tower that will offer 350,000 square feet of office space.

Last week I reported that Google is leasing 210,000 square feet of office space (read the story ).

Shortly after the story was published, a reader with insider knowledge added a comment that "the lease is set to expire in 2010, which is short-term for that amount of space. Look for Google to be shopping around for a larger, more permanent space in SF. They will probably need around 300,000 square feet."

Hmmm.

Anybody want to set odds that Shorenstein Company is quietly working behind the scenes with Google to build a new Google San Francisco center at 350 Bush?

Sounds like opportunity is knocking!

Now that Steve Jobs has struck a sweet deal with Cingular for iPhone distribution, it seemed like a good idea to take a good look at Cingular. They may soon beat the pants off the competition.

But ... Wait a Minute Here!

Is there really any competition?

I remember the Ma Bell days .... dull olive green trucks with those stylized bell insignias on the doors .... one company, one bill, one place to get service or do without. Well, those days may seem like they are gone, but that, my dear friend, it is just an illusion.

Stephen Colbert explains what is happening in this short and delightful video.

Enjoy!

The growing trend in mass transit is to create special closed-in corridors along major streets for transit buses to travel faster and free of other vehicular traffic.

Creating these special restricted guided busways would be the first step in implementing the bus rapid transit system, or BRT, as the system is commonly known.

Today's San Francisco Chronicle offers an excellent story on the prospect of creating BRT corridors along Geary Boulevard, which, by the way, is a great idea.

(An aside: Geary Boulveard is pronounced "Geer-ee". It is named after John Geary, our first mayor.)

If you're thinking that we already have some lanes in the City designated as "Bus Only", there are some real differences between Bus Only lanes (that are just designated lanes and very difficult to keep others drivers out of) and transit corridors (that are sealed by curbs and barriers to keep other vehicles locked out).

Convincing the Board of Supervisors to support the concept will be more difficult that one might think. If we are going to convince the people of San Francisco that they must keep their cars at home and ride MUNI, we must not only provide flawless service, we must also assure the public that our Board of Supervisors and other City Hall Big Shots will set an example by using MUNI to come and go from City Hall.

Perhaps we can take the lead from Scotland. Senior politicians and top civil servants will be forced out of their government-owned cars and into public transportation under a Scottish Labour Party proposal.

In an attempt to address Scotland's growing pollution and traffic problems, the party wants to crack down on the use of chauffeured vehicles and taxis by ministers and officials for trips, some of which could be walked in minutes. They plan to take the cars away and make their officials ride the bus.

Putting our Board of Supervisors into MUNI buses and forcing many of our city workers who currently drive City-owned cars (or claim car expenses if they drive their own) to give them up and start using Fast Passes is not going to be an easy task. An amazing number of the City's employees would suddenly claim back problems.

Civil servants the world over are remarkable for their abilities to take as much as they can from the public and do as little in return as possible. They want the paychecks, the cars, the perks and all the rest. They only part they don't like is taking orders and doing work.

There would be some exceptions to the rule, of course. The mayor, by virtue of his responsibilities as our chief executive officer, needs a set of chauffeured wheels at his disposal 24-7. So do most department chiefs, but that's where the free rides end. Everybody else can be issued a MUNI Fast-Pass.

Yes, I know ... there are some employees who will still need City-owned vehicles to do their work ... but not nearly as many as we now have. City-owned cars and other vehicles are as common today as pigeons. They are everywhere.

If San Francisco is serious about becoming a truly Green City, then we need to teach by example, and that means putting Board members and senior staff in MUNI seats ... right along with the rest of us.

Story tools:
San Francisco Chronicle - SF Gate story
Scotland's transit plan - The Scotsman
BRT article in Wikipedia
Bus Rapid Transit Policy Center
MUNI web site
Metropolitan Transportation Commission

OK.

Barack Obama has made the announcement we all knew he would. He has formed an exploratory committee to prepare for his run to the White House.

Everybody suddenly wants to know more about Barack Obama. The best place to begin is to watch this very short video about Barack Obama's life. Just click on the Play button and adjust your speakers.



And in the following video you can watch Senator Obama's announcement that he is exploring a run for the Presidency.

As every San Franciscan knows, CNET is based right here in the City. The headquarters for CNET is at 235 Second Street. CNET is a daily occurance for me. I check CNET News every morning and check several other sites owned by CNET.

BNET is a great source for current white papers, case studies, business-related Webcasts and breaking news. It's extensive and searchable by industry or company name.

CHOW is CNET's deliciousness destination. Its all about food .... restaurant reviews, recipes, and food news. I personally find CHOW to be a good online match for all those Food Network programs my husband and I like to watch ... Alton Brown, Rachel Ray, Mario Batali and Paula Deen.

Anyway ...

The Grinder is CHOW's food media blog and this morning, sitting at home on this chilly Sunday, I read a cute story about sweet-and-sour flavored postage stamps from China. Wow! Just in time for the San Francisco Chinese New Year Parade coming up March 3rd. It's a cute little story and I want to share it with you.

It was posted to The Grinder by Stephanie Rosenbaum and here it is:

Mmmm, More Stamps, Please!

Just in time for the arrival of the Year of the Pig, China introduces a scratch-’n’-lick stamp.

The arrival of 4705, the Year of the Pig, is on its way, and China is celebrating with mouth-watering scratch-’n’-sniff postage stamps. Scratch the cute, chubby pig on the front, and you’ll get a wave of sweet-and-sour pork aroma.

Okay, that’s tasty, but not exactly news; Britain’s Royal Mail introduced a eucalyptus-scented stamp way back in 2001. Last year, Australia offered a rose-scented stamp for Valentine’s Day, while Switzerland did chocolate and Hong Kong green tea.

What’s truly brilliant about the Chinese promotion comes on the flip side. Lick the stamp to stick it, and you’ll actually taste that same sweet-and-sour pork—or a chemical facsimile thereof, since glueing an actual piece of pork to each stamp would be, you know, messy. Not to mention lumpy.

Alas, the stamps are only available in China, where they’ll be for sale starting on February 18 to herald the arrival of the Lunar New Year. If you’re heading to China soon, enjoy them; we don’t think 4706, the Year of the Rat, will get the same treatment.

Welcome Google!

Welcome to San Francisco!

Google is leasing 210,000 square feet of office space in San Francisco and will move more than 800 of its senior staff to the City. Google will sublease three floors of the 345 Spear Street Hills Plaza Building from Gap, Inc.

The 345 Spear tower is a fairly new building that accompanies the original 1925 building at 2 Harrison Street that housed the Hills Brothers Coffee Company roasting plant for more than 50 years. Together they form Hills Plaza.

In the past year both Yahoo and Microsoft have expanded their corporate-level presence in San Francisco. Coming some five-years after the dot-com bust, more than 100 dot-com survivors and web 2.0 startups have occupied more than 1.5 million square feet of space in San Francisco in the past 12-months.

It happened when Larry Ellison brought millions of dollars into San Francisco during his spectacular Oracle Open World event this past October (story here).

Bitch, bitch, bitch: The traffic is bad. The streets are crowded. I can't get a seat at a restaurant. The downtown area is too congested. Bitch, bitch, bitch.

The critics are all whining and sneering at the Macworld Conference and Expo that will draw more than 40,000 people into San Francisco this week for a week-long extravaganza taking place at Moscone Center and many of the City's finer hotel ballrooms.

Sure, it's going to be crowded .... crowded with people spending money ... all over the City ... lots of money.

So, who are the whiners and bitchers? They are mostly the people who work in the Financial District, as do I. Unlike many of those people, I do not frantically flee the City every weekday afternoon, because ... unlike most of the complainers ... I do not live in the East Bay.

Yes, that's right ... most of the complainers do not even live in San Francisco. They whine and bitch about the traffic and the congestion because they are in a god-awful hurry to race back across the Bay Bridge to their homes in the East Bay. Those mob-mentality morons have such an elevated sense of entitlement that they lay on their horns and run red lights and push aside pedestrians so they can get back home to their precious East Bay smog.

And the East Bay BART riders! Egad!

East Bay BART riders line up in queues to wait for the trains. When the train arrives and the doors open they shuffle rapidly in tiny little steps, inches behind the clone in from of them, and they squeeze, shove and push their way into the cars.

Peace only descends upon the City when the commuters have gone home.

Whew!

So, to all you East Bay Bitchers who like to complain whenever we have a major event in San Francisco, I have several good, choice words for you. Unfortunately, none of those words would be appropriate here, so I'll just ask you to stop your complaining. This is our City ... not yours ... and we San Franciscans welcome Macworld back to San Francisco!

On January 17th, the San Francisco Police Commission will vote on whether to install video surveillance cameras at 8 new locations throughout San Francisco. The Commission originally considered this issue in November, but a subsequent hearing is being held due to lack of proper notice at the proposed camera locations.

The police department is of the opinion that surveillance cameras are very effective in high-crime areas. I agree and I would like to see surveillance cameras aimed at every block in the Bayview where a corner liquor store exists and see more cameras at notoriously high crime areas in the Western Addition, at the two main Mission District heroin corners - 24th and Mission and 16th and Mission, in the Tenderloin and along that infamous stretch of Sixth Street between Market and Harrison. Arrests would be up and crime would be down if we did so, but would we be opening a Pandora's Box of even greater, more serious problems?

In a letter to the City over the signatures of Nicole Ozer, ACLU Nor-Cal Technology and Civil Liberties Policy Director; Kurt Opsahl, Staff Attorney, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Chris Hoofnagle, Senior Counsel, EFF West Coast, some very serious issues were raised.

It seems that the Earthlink / Google proposal seeks to create a surveillance infrastructure for San Francisco by allowing greater deployment of video cameras and automated enforcement tools, such as parking meters.

Additionally, Both Earthlink and Google reserve the ability to sell user information for the free City-wide Wi-Fi scheme to others based on an opt-out model. Under such a plan, the company will by default sell information unless the user takes affirmative steps to prevent the sale. While this particular issue is not on the police commission table for discussion, there is a link between increased video surveillance and the Earthlink / Google proposal. A sticky web is being developed that may trap much more than the intended prey.

These are serious issues that will have a direct impact on every San Franciscan. There is more at stake than we may realize.

Plan to attend the Police Commission meeting!

WHAT: Police Commission Meeting
WHERE: San Francisco City Hall, Room 400
WHEN: Wednesday, January 17th @ 5:30 PM

For more information or to RSVP that you will be attending the meeting please contact the San Francisco office of the ACLU by sending an email to:

Story tools:
ACLU of Northern California (San Francisco office)
Join the ACLU's Northern California Email Action Network
Become a card-carrying ACLU member
ACLU's Video Surveillance Issue Paper
The (.pdf)
Electronic Frontier Foundation

The situation is an ideal fit for the Dr. Phil Show: Men who Live in their Dad's Shadows (the story of President George H.W. Bush and his troubled son, Little George)

The mix is perfect.

(The photo: JEB Bush waves as his father smiles and hugs him. JEB's mother smiles and applauds. George W. was not around)

The father is a giant of a man. He is a decorated World War II naval officer and combat pilot. The father was amazingly successful after the war and rose to the very top by anyone's measure of success. He was elected President of the United States. As president, he was a man of action. He sent troops into the Middle East and he brought them back home again after he made his point. The biggest enemy of President George H. W. Bush was Saddam Hussein. He disliked Saddam Hussein so much that he deliberately mis-pronounced his name as "Saad-am Hoo-sayn" just to irritate the Iraqi president.

The father's youngest son, JEB, is bright. Everyone in the family, close family friends and now the entire world knows that the eldest boy, George W., is not very bright. He was always a bit slow. He was never expected to do very much in life. As long as he didn't screw things up, the family thought, everything would be OK.

JEB Bush ("JEB" is really just his initials. His true name is John Ellis Bush) attended Andover, a private boarding school for the elite in Massachusetts. He made it onto the Honor Roll in his first semester. When he was 17 he was teaching English in Mexico as part of his school's student exchange program. Later he graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Texas at Austin. Today he is Governor of Florida.

George, the slow one, never did as well. Although the eldest, he was always Number Two in more ways than one. This son had a problem with alcohol in his early days. He was arrested for DUI and his driver license was suspended. To his great credit, however, he was able to rise above that problem with alcohol and put it behind him. He managed to apply himself sufficiently to eventually earn a master's degree in business administration, but he always felt that he was still Number Two, and he was, in his family's eyes.

Now Number Two is President of the United States and all the ugliness is oozing out of him. He is the Number Two son of a powerful patrician father who has risen to the pinnacle of success. Number Two is struggling, not to serve this country, but to resolve unconscious Oedipal issues through his dysfunctional acting-out in foreign countries. This cowboy-boot-wearing imitation of a man even made sure his daddy's enemy, Sadam Hussein, was rounded up by a posse and lynched in front of a cheering crowd, just the way they did it in the good old days.

It was pathetic. Like a cat dragging a dead mouse to his owner's feet.

I feel sorry for the poor generals and admirals at the Pentagon. They are true professionals. Now they are working for a president riddled with pathological issues. It must be similar to what other military professionals have had to endure whenever similarly unbalanced despots have ruled nations. No matter how many times the Pentagon is ordered to collect the scraps and dis-jointed pieces of foreign policy, lay them out, number them and try to assemble them into one meaningful policy ... it always fails because it never made sense in the first place and makes even less sense now.

There is only one way out for George W. Bush and maybe only one way out for our nation as well. Little George needs to come out from behind his daddy's desk in the Oval Office and admit that he is not the caliber of man his daddy is and he will never be.

Here in San Francisco we put a lot of faith in Nancy Pelosi. She may be "new" to the rest of the nation, but she has been our representative in Congress since 1987. We know her very well. She has remarkable talent, but what is needed to deal with George W. Bush and his War is not the Speaker of the House or anybody else in Congress. The problem is not political. It is pathological.

We need Dr. Phil!

He was born in Oklahoma, attended Shawnee Mission North High School in Kansas and then went on to get a bachelor's, then a master's and finally a doctorate from the University of North Texas. He now lives in California. He's the perfect fit. He is a very smart man who can speak easily to simple folk.

Maybe Dr. Phil can explain to Little George that sending so many people to die just so that Number Two can look like a smart leader to his daddy is ... well ... insane.

Has everyone seen the billboard in San Francisco along the freeway to the Bay Bridge that reads, "CONGRATULATIONS, MADAME SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI"?

I enjoy that billboard and I endorse its sentiment. I am very proud and pleased that Nancy Pelosi is now the most politically powerful woman in the country, is the highest-ranking woman in American history, is third in line in succession to the presidency and is the Member of Congress who represents the 8th district, which is most of the City and County of San Francisco.

Everyone in America wants to give Nancy Pelosi some advice. I am no different. The good news for me is that I am a party loyalist and one of Speaker Pelosi's home-district constituents. That means that I really do have an opportunity to have my thoughts heard. So, wasting no time at all, here is a suggestion for my Congresswoman:

Dear Madame Speaker:

The Iraq War is the most privatized war in American history. The Bush Administration has contracted with more than 100,000 private contractors. The size of our private contractor force is now approaching the total size of our military in Iraq. Private contractors are a delight to the Bush Administration. It is easy to hide facts and details and money because contracting-out creates firewalls and barriers that prevent the American public from knowing what's really going on. Privatization is the favorite tool of crooks, liars, criminals and despots.

Why, for example, has George David, the CEO of United Technologies, (who earns $88-million a year) filed a law suit against the Department of Defense to block publication of Blackhawk helicopter inspection reports? What would we learn about United Technologies if we, the American public, were able to read those reports?

Well, Madame Speaker, we cannot read those reports. A multi-billion-dollar, multi-national corporation is using its financial might to keep that information from us, but they cannot keep that information from you. You are the Speaker of the House. We need YOUR help!

Let me give you just one more example, Madame Speaker:

David Brooks (not the excellent New York Times columnist of the same name... this is another David Brooks). Brooks was in charge of DHB Industries when the DOD was forced to declare an emergency recall of 23,000 bulletproof vests that proved to be worthless. The vests manufactured by a DHB subsidiary were faulty. They were cheap. They were, I believe, the clear and direct cause of many American deaths. DHB was, in my mind, criminally negligent. DHB and Brooks made so much money from their good-old-boy connections with Cheney and Rumsfeld that Brooks was able to throw at $10-million party for his daughter!

Madame Speaker:

Brooks and his gold-spoon daughter were living the life of luxury at the expense of U.S. Army soldiers who were dying in Iraq because of cheap, lousy, faulty, poorly-designed pieces of crap that Brooks and his buddies pawned-off to the military as "bulletproof vests". This all took place at the same time the families of soldiers were holding bake sales and spaghetti dinners to earn money to buy better bulletproof vests for their children.

Imagine! America's moms had to buy their son's military equipment because of massive fraud within the Bush Administration. ... and then some snotty-nosed kid of a rich criminal gets a $10-million party paid-for by the blood of America's young men and women.

Goddam those bastards!

Please, Nancy. Be our eyes and our ears and be our mouths and let Bush and his Republican Crooks know that we have had enough of their lies, enough of their greed, and enough of their treason.

Funny the way some things turn out.

Arnold Schwarzenegger played the the part of Conan the Barbarian in the movies. In real life he is turning out to be a pretty fair governor.

George Bush did just the opposite. He started out telling us all that he is a skilled statesman and was deserving to lead our country. He convinced enough people of that lie to be elected president, which shows just how many damn fools we have casting votes in this country.

In real life, however, George Bush turned out to be the barbarian.

The execution of Saddam Hussein was an absolute disgrace.

President Bush chose to bypass the international tribunal created to handle trials of international leaders. The idea of trying national rulers in a world court grew out of the Nuremberg war crime trials in the late 1940's. It was the United States that argued before the world that even Nazi criminals were entitled to competent and un-intimidated attorneys who are free to complete their case in a jurisprudence system that is fair, free and unbiased.

Bush destroyed sixty years of international good will and he substantially damaged the integrity of our own criminal justice system by handing Saddam over to a kangaroo court where testimony was rushed and defense attorneys were murdered in mid-case. While the prosecution benefited from U.S. investigators and advisers, the defense was not only unable to gather much by way of defense, but even some the defense attorneys themselves were intimidated, assaulted and even murdered.

In this country such problems would bring the trial to an instant halt. The Justice Department would launch an intense investigation. The venue would be changed. Attorneys and witnesses would be protected.

George Bush knew what was the right thing to do. He deliberately chose not to do the right thing. The execution of Saddam Hussein was one of the ugliest acts I have ever known. Even Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani refused to sign a decree upholding the death sentence. Under Iraqi law the execution could not proceed without President Talabani's signature and he refused.

George Bush arrogantly responded by illegally spiriting Saddam out of prison and handing him over to a rowdy bunch of lawless mob-mentality angry Shiites. From there he was hanged while a crowd of onlookers shouted insults at Hussein and broadcast videos of his hanging ... including images of Saddam's grotesquely twisted neck hanging from a rope in mid air. It was execution by a lawless mob, not by any legitimate government and certainly void of any benefit of law.

Imperial America, under George Bush, recognizes no boundaries of national sovereignty and recognizes no law above itself. Even worse, George Bush does not honor, respect and obey the laws of his own country. George Bush is a close as the nation has ever come to a dictator.

No man is above the law, but George Bush has come closer to setting himself above the law than any other president this nation has ever had. George Bush has no respect for the Constitution, no respect for the Congress, no respect for the American people and no respect for international law. He is a renegade and a criminal. George Bush is an embarrassment to his father, a humiliation to the Republican Party and an enemy of the Constitution. He is a disgrace to the office of the presidency. His legacy is dismal and humiliating to us all.

And the 59,054,087 people who voted for that jackass ought to feel thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

Murders are way up in most major cities across the country. Murders are on the rise in New York City and the same is true for Chicago. In Oakland the murder rate has risen by an astonishing 37 percent!

In San Francisco, however, the trend has been reversed. San Francisco suffered 96 murders in 2005. In 2006 the figure dropped to 85, a figure still far too high by everyone's estimation.

Recently the Board of Supervisors overrode a veto by the Mayor and went into the business of actively directing the police department. A lot of politicians have been fighting the plan devised by Mayor Newsom and Chief Fong to focus on high-crime neighborhoods by putting more officers into the neighborhoods and keeping the pressure on the crooks.

The Mayor's critics complained that the plan he and Chief Fong devised would never work. According to themselves, they had a better idea. Now the truth is out. The critics on the Board of Supervisors were wrong. The Mayor and the Chief are right.

The reason for the drop in crime is clear: increased patrols in violence-prone areas and more overtime hours approved by the Chief.

I don't know what the perpetual critics of the Mayor and Chief Fong are going to say now. Almost without any doubt they will come up with some kind of song and dance to show why the Mayor and the Chief are still wrong despite clear evidence that Mayor Newsom and Chief Fong had it right all along.

This is a great example of why the members of our Board of Supervisors should zip their lips and let the Mayor and the Chief do their jobs without constant harangue and annoyance from a bunch of well-intentioned but knuckle-dragging dumb amateurs.

Good job Mayor Newsom!
Good job Chief Fong!

There are only three cities in the United States that have passed laws increasing minimum wage above state or federal minimum wage standards. San Francisco is not only one of those three cities; it is the city in the United States that offers its workers the highest minimum wage standard in the country.

Minimum wage in San Francisco is now $9.14 per hour, an increase over the City's immediate past standard, which was $8.82 per hour. A person working a 40-hour week at the new $9.14 per hour standard will earn a little more than $19,000 per year.

California's minimum wage standard is $7.50 per hour and the federal standard is $5.15 per hour.

To read the full text of San Francisco's Minimum Wage law, please follow this link.

The San Francisco Office of Labor Standards Enforcement will send out more than 100,000 notices to San Francisco employers advising that they must, by law, immediately begin paying all of their employees at least $9.14 per hour. Following is a list of contacts within the SF Office of Labor Standards Enforcement. If you know anyone in the City who is being paid minimum wage, or if you know employers who pay minimum wage, please get this information to them.

City and County of San Francisco, Office of Labor Standards Enforcement
City Hall, Room 430
1 Dr Carlton B Goodlett Place
San Francisco, CA 94102
Phone: Fax:

Web: http://www.sfgov.org/site/olse_index.asp

Prevailing Wage Unit:






Health Care Accountability Ordinance:






Health Care Security Ordinance:





Minimum Compensation Ordinance:






Minimum Wage Ordinance:







Sick Leave Ordinance





Sweatfree Ordinance: