Progressives scored a big win on Wednesday night. SF Board of Supes Prez Aaron "Payback's a Bitch" Peskin was elected to head the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee last night, inching out former chair Scott Wiener and giving "a boost to progressive candidates for supervisor in the November election." Peskin, according to SFBG, won on an 18-16 vote. The real vote, because political committees inexplicably love several rounds of voting on anything, will happen......

While the Democratic primary raged on and on and on, something that felt as long and grueling as sitting through the latest Indiana Jones movie-- twice in a row, and almost as painful-- two of the big questions were whom homegirl Nancy Pelosi supported (supposedly she was an Obamamaniac) and when she, along with the rest of the Democratic leadership, were going to get off their asses and end the damn thing....

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......

SFist's dear neighbor's, Wired, came across this racially explosive internet meme on the Daily Kos, which is set to have Democrats duking it out online. According to the Daily Kos, someone in the Clinton campaign took Obama's image from this video and darkened (a la OJ Simpson gracing the covers of Time and Newsweek) for this commercial. According to the Kos: In case you needed yet another reason to despise Hillary Clinton and her......

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......

-- Those rectangular glassy lofts on Folsom and Fourth Streets are, in fact, award-winning rectangular glassy lofts. Also, love the windows. [Curbed] -- What to do in SF when it pours. [Gridskipper] -- Democrats having a spine? What a novel idea! [BeyondChron] -- Behold! Tinkerman's top 10 musical experiences and releases of 2007. [SFBG] -- Matt Gonzalez caught shopping at Community Thrift on Valencia. Dude, we also l-o-v-e Community Thrift! Why, it's where we......

-- Why, it seems to be election day. [SFGate] -- The indictment of Ed Jew. [SFExaminer] -- Endorsement orgy. [SFBG -- .pdf-heavy] -- Mos Def? Mos Definitely! Heh. Eh. Yeah. Anyway, last minute show at Mezzanine. [ASD] -- Christmas is canceled: wood fires could be banned in homes. [SFExaminer] -- Did you know that Cap’n Crunch has a first name? He does. And Joyce Slaton knows what it is. [The Grinder] -- As the Democrats......

After House Democrats rescued him from censure today, Fremont Democratic Representative Pete Stark then apologized to members of the House and President Bush for his recent remark about "'soldiers getting their heads blown up...for the President's amusement."...

Here's a video posted on YouTube by the San Francisco State College Republicans. Yes, boo, hiss, etc. -- BUT they were trying to co-host a peaceful memorial for 9/11 victims with their democratic counterparts. Extending the olive branch and, according to the speech the guy gives, trying to whitewash this of political partisanship to whatever extent possible. Of course, some protesters showed up, once again proving that there are just too damned many opinions constrained within this predominately two-party system of ours. ...

In case you missed it, President 25% Approval Ratings was able to ram through some legislation revamping all those FISA laws you keep hearing about. It's hard to make heads or tails of what the bill says as the administration, in a surprise to no one, won't tell anyone what it says, but it involves making warrants kind of unnecessary, the monitoring of anyone suspected as a "terrorist" and-- get this-- the oversight by one Alberto "Fredo" Gonzalez. That's more than letting the fox guard the hen house, that's letting Michael Vick run the SPCA. ...

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. ...

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....

Here's the daily wrap up of the news...

Ralph Nader is in town this week to promote his new book, The Seventeen Traditions. He did an interview with KGO radio criticizing Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi and 2008 Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton. ...

We really dread to be doing this, again, but here it is, your recap of the reaction to Gavin's admission that he's seeking counseling for booze. Or, as the NY Post puts it, "S.F. Sex Mayor In Booze RX." You know, we used to joke with our fellow -ists about how exciting our Mayor is compared to their boring, dreary Mayors (Gothamist's biggest scandal concerning Bloomberg was that he has bad fashion sense) but we're kind of over it. ...

Nancy Pelosi stepped up her fight against the White House over the surge, escalation, augmentation, whatever the hell they're calling it these days. On the place where most major policy discussions are held-- in between cooking segments and celebrity interviews on "Good Morning America" Pelosi accused the President of rushing to send off the troops in a rush to circumvent congressional oversight. In a response, the White House said, oh who cares what the White House says. ...

So yes, we have a predilection for hitting up Fox News occasionally. We like to look at it as testing our mental fortitude, a way to see how far we could go before our blood pressure rises to the point we have to throw things. Somehow, this weekend we missed Matt Gonzalez appearing on Fox's "The Lineup" to talk about the Yale Choral Group story (Yalegate? Doughgate? Choirgate?). Oh, and your host of the Lineup? The former Mrs. Gavin Newsom, Kimberly Guilfoyle. ...

A few photos of the MLK Breakfast at the S.F. Hilton, Monday morning, 1/15/07...

Last night, Arnie wheeled himself out on his crutches to give everyone the State of the State speech. How is the state doing? Fabulous, as always. Why? Because we're all working together. And because we, not the children, are the future. In fact, he said California could be the shining example to the rest of the country on how to move forward on everything from health care to the environment. In his speech, he called us the "modern equivalent of the ancient city states of Athens and Sparta" which is high praise indeed. But who is Sparta and who is Athens? We think we're more Athens than Sparta but would that mean LA is Sparta? San Diego? Bakersfield? Or maybe we're Sparta and LA is Athens. We always preferred Athens over Sparta, but then again, if we were Sparta we could go up to some interloper and kick them into a giant hole while yelling "We are Sparta!!!!" at the top of our lungs like in that scene from the trailer for 300. Man, that movie looks awesome. ...

So now that our Nance is the women in charge, how did her big soiree go? Jam-a-riffic it sounds like as besides performances by Carole King, Wyclef Jean, and Tony Bennett, Pelosi had various members of the Grateful Dead and some other jam-band types play her party. Apparently Pelosi is a big fan of the Dead which we're not buying at all but we guess that's part and parcel of representing a district (does this mean if we ever achieve political office we'd have to pretend to like the Counting Crows?) ...

As our little Nancy Pelosi is discovering it's good to be Speaker of the House. Your peeps get some shout outs, you get to name who chairs what (even if they don't know the difference between the two branches of Islam that are currently killing each other in Iraq), and you get to chill with rock stars, as Nancy is, having the pleasure of hanging with Bono for Bono's semi-annual visit to congress. ...

While we're focused on the Mayoral race and the rest of the media is focused on the Presidential race (Lord, save us), the netroots are already focused on the next congressional race. In their cross-hairs? Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher (D-Walnut Creek). Her crime? Playing footsie with the President. Nobody wants to see that. ...

Last week's winner, the Bay Guardian. Tim Redmond wants.... Ques-tion TIME! Ques-tion TIME! Also -- impeach! And be nicer to pigeons. Chris Daly likes putting city propositions on the ballot. Ed Jew -- get to know him now, since he didn't get any coverage during the election. A tattoo artist shot in the head in East Oakland. Buy a San Francisco Values t-shirt from the Guardian. Cover articles: The Year In Music (why the Bay......

While most of the 2006 elections are over, there's still a bit of a contention coming from, where else, Florida. In the Sarasota congressional race, a recount was held and 18,000 under votes were discovered. That meant those people voted for everything else but not for congress. This drew alarm bells from people because the percentage of under votes was higher than anywhere else. And, you'd have to figure that the one race people would vote on would be for congress instead of the school board or bond measures or a Sarasota style Question Time. Voters also complained that the machines garbled everything up and they never got a chance to vote. ...

Slowly and surely, our Governator is letting loose with his plans for the upcoming year, most of which came in an interview on "Meet Tim Russert." And let's just say Schwarzenegger is feeling a little cocky in light of his electoral stomping and all of the love thrown his way by the Democrats in the Assembly. So much so, he's getting flack from his fellow Republicans. ...

And so yesterday it was made official-- our Little Nancy is now Speaker of the House. No matter what you may think about her-- ultra-liberal, corporate sell-out, uninspirationalparty hack, and inspirational career woman-- it's a pretty big deal. Among other things it means, yes, pork, tons of pork headed to us. More pork than an All You Can Eat night at Jimmy Dean Sausage Emporium ...

If hoops is a game of streaks, right now the Warriors are Frank the Tank. They're flying so high, they're looking down on the Democrats. They're looking so good, Gavin Newsom is jealous. They're buzzing so hard, they're getting calls from Courtney Love (and Mel Gibson?).

Two days after Nancy Pelosi had to redo her business cards to say "Madame Speaker," the fall-out of the election is still falling out. Pelosi yesterday gave kind of a victory lap press conference where she made a few jokes, tried not to sound too giddy, and said bipartisan about twice every minute. For those of you wondering how good of a job she could do as the Dem leader despite her obvious lack of television charisma, wonder no more-- she started off her press conference with a cute homily about children being the future and God help us whenever a politician says children are the future. ...

That eavesdropping case we've been following took another step to eventually seeing the light of as an appeals court has decided to review the decision by U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker that the lawsuit should move forward despite the whining of the Federal Government. The eavesdropping case, for those who don't remember, was brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation against the Government and AT&T for reading things they shouldn't be reading. Of what, we don't know but its super serious and of utmost importance to the War on Terror. And porn. We're sure somewhere they're checking out porn. ...

SFist Jon's having computer woes, so we're covering all the rest of the races here too. National They called the race for Feinstein like 5 minutes after the polls closed in California. Pelosi is not only going to win, she's going to be the next Speaker of the House! Let's hope she'll bring home some pork for the Bay Area! In the other race everyone's watching, Republican Richard Pombo over in Tracy is trailing McNerney,......