Monica Lewinsky's interest level in working for SF city government just went up a notch, as the SF Board of Supes overwhelmingly voted down Chris Daly's proposal to ban office affairs between supervisors and supervisees. (No, not affairs with supervisors like Chris Daly is a supervisor, affairs with supervisors like your boss. We could probably get a proposition on the ballot barring affairs between the San Francisco Supervisors and their constituents, though -- because, come on, ew.)

The vote was 10-1 opposed, with only Daly voting for his own proposal. The message we take away from this? Only Chris Daly is faithful to his wife. Better keep a short leash on Jake, Mrs. McGoldrick! (Especially since one of the other proposals on the table at yesterday's Board of Supes meeting was Supervisor McGoldrick's suggestion that prostitution be classified as a low-priority crime in SF.)

We can debate whether or not it's appropriate to have policies regulating private lives in place at the office, but Daly's proposal was viewed by pretty much everyone as mostly a dig at our triumphant second-term mayor Gavin Newsom, who, as you may recall, got busted sleeping with his former Appointments Secretary Ruby Rippey-Tourk earlier this year. Maybe Daly should just have proposed something prohibiting people in city government from sleeping with their best friends' wives. If you're going to call Gavin out, Chris, you should just !

Picture of Maggie Gyllenhaal from the movie Secretary.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos threw down some serious shade today. "While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies," he cried, shaming two senior Yahoo officials. Why? Because the Sunnyvale company named names, handing over private information about Chinese journalist Shi Tao's online pro-democracy action to country officials. (Or, as the New York Times so eloquently put it, their "complicity with an oppressive communist regime." Oh snap.) This landed the journalist 10 years in the slammer.

Lantos then demanded Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang and General Counsel Michael Callahan to fork over a mea culpa to journalist Tao's mother, sitting directly behind them. Which they did. Both of them turning around and bowing to face Shi's mother, Gao Qinsheng, who then immediately (and understandably) broke out the water-works. Awk. Ward.

But Yahoo isn't the only company to get smacked in the rear like this for such behavior. Google and Microsoft have both been at the receiving end of criticism for "helping the Chinese government stifle the flow of ideas in exchange for greater access to the country's rapidly growing Internet market." But they've never had to apologize to someone's bereft mother for having him thrown in the clink. At least not yet, anyway.


image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images, via NYT

This reading list is the result of a conversation that started innocently enough on the SFBG's blogs, in a post about homelessness in Golden Gate Park and, tangentially, the Spanish American War. When the SFBG's Tim Redmond that "We can fix that. It costs money. Money comes from taxes," SFist_Mattymatt responded with distressed skepticism. Frankly, he was a bit of an asshole.

Stephen T. Jones, the paper's city editor, responded via email, and after some conversation, provided a reading list for the aspiring Marxist. We asked if we could post the conversation here, which we've done, minus anyone's contact info. We've also refrained from adding commentary to the emails, and in fact specifically promised not to be glib. This was an incredibly difficult thing for us to do (and as you can see, our accompanying illustration utterly fails this commitment), but it seemed like the nice thing to attempt since our "attitude and wordplay" is a point of some contention.

Ironically, both parties involved in this conversation probably believe that it proves totally opposite things about themselves and each other. But we won't say what those things are -- for if any commenting is to be done on this state of affairs, it is up to you, the readers.

-----Original Message-----
From: mattymatt
Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2007 11:57 PM
To: Steve Jones
Subject: [Politics] New Comment Posted to 'Yes, Chuck, enough is enough'


A new comment has been posted on your blog Politics, on entry #1883 (Yes, Chuck, enough is enough).

Oh dear God. Tim wrote "Money comes from taxes." Funny, I thought money came from work, and taxes are what take money AWAY.

---

On 10/10/07, Steve Jones wrote:
Money comes from government mints...

Reginald Ross, 39, of San Francisco died today after getting struck by a 15-ton shipping container while working aboard the CMS Stuttgart Express. Due to the incident, all longshore workers halted shiploading for the day, and won't return until tomorrow morning.

The ship was docked at the time of the fatal accident, said Diann Castleberry, director of public affairs with the Port of Oakland, according to CBS5.

Read more about it here or here.

Hwang claims that she was outside the North Beach bar Dolce last week, celebrating the end of her law school finals and waiting for her boyfriend when she saw some police officers. She said, in a flirty voice, "I guess you'll have to tackle me if I try to cross the street," at which point she says the cops, totally unprovoked, grabbed her by the hair, tackled her, and took her into custody. She claims she was targeted because of her relationship with Willie Brown and says contrary to what the cops say, she was drunk. She'd only had one pear cider that night. The cop in question, it turns out, has a long record of citizen complaints.

SFist Jim picked up a 30 second snippet of the press conference you can listen to here -- it's worth hearing Esther detail what happened to her "pretty dress," pearl necklace, and fur coat. It's like that scene in Clueless when Cher gets mugged. "But this dress is an Alaia!!!!!"

After the jump (and updated!): More excellent picture by SFist Jim for your perusal. And there's some more spectacular pictures by Luke Thomas on Fog City Journal too.

Picture by SFist Jim. Yes, those pictures behind Hwang are swimsuit pictures of herself.

Here's how: we've got Veterans Affairs hospitals of our own in the city.

*

You're for the war? Against the war? Sure, whichever; this is about supporting people who represent all of us.

Here's what you can do, send care packages for wounded veterans to:

San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center
AMVET Service Officer
Building 200, GA 163
4150 Clement Street
San Francisco, CA, 94121

"They need things like razorblades, toothpaste, toothbrushes, socks," said service officer Bob De La Cruz. Everyday things. This is an easy way to show that you care. Write a letter too, if you'd like.

Pitch in, help a veteran today.

Next up: what you can do for today's arrested protesters, if they're still being held.

See, Rob joined the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and traveled to several third world countries to try and bring democracy to them. It didn't go so well. Or, at least, a lot of the countries he was involved in had bad things happen to them, you know, like the kinds of things that happen to third world countries. Countries like Zambia and Liberia and Paraguay. What does this have to do with Rob? Well, as the blog says: "Rob Black has left a trail of death, murder, instability, corruption and authoritarianism wherever he has tread politically." In other words, a vote for Rob is a vote for Charles Taylor. If he wins, the next thing you know, we'll have death squads roaming the streets! Heather Fong overthrowing the Government and installing herself as Military Junta! And the Mission and the Marina would finally start shooting at each other like we all know they secretly want to do. Cause, again, as the site says: "Don't let Rob Black leave a trail of disaster in The Tenderloin, SOMA and the North Mission like he's done from Zambia to Liberia and down to Paraguay."

We could be wrong here, but could one say that Rob Black, candidate for some city government job, just got Swift Boated. Oh, and seriously, what's up with the crappy Photoshop imagery? My computer illiterate mother could have done some better graphics.

Image of a young Rob Black with Jimmy Carter, plotting the overthrow of the Paraguayan Government from Rob Black's web site.