Tim Redmond

Cancel Pelosi’s vacation

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Petraeus: “The big green weenie that we are giving to the troopers after politely asking them to bend over with ‘stop-loss’ and ‘involuntary extension’ is about this big. And it’s called the fifteenth month deployment.”
(From the blog of Sgt. Adam Kokesh)

Here’s a good idea: Cancel all leaves, vacation and family visits by member of Congress until the troops come home from Iraq. If the military can put “stop loss”orders on the troops, Congres ought to be able to abide by the same rules.

The stop-loss Congress group will bring Adam Kokesh, a former Marine Corps sergeant who is now active against the war.

Details on his appearance follow after the jump

Clinton needs to drop out

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Finally, the mainstream media is starting to do the math. As the Examiner reports today, Clinton would have to win something like 80 percent of the delegates after North Carolina and Indiana to go to the convention ahead of Barack Obama. It’s over — and all that Bill and Hillary are doing is damaging the Democratic Party’s prospects in November by trashing the almost certain nominee.

This is nothing new to the blogosphere — Paul Hogarth explained it nicely way back in March.

I’m not among the Hillary bashers who just can’t stand her; I think she’d be a fine president. But she has adopted her husband’s win-at-all-costs, scorched-earth attitude and I’m starting to think that she would rather see John McCain in the White House than Barack Obama. Because that’s where her behavior is leading. She needs to drop out.

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

I like Muni. I always have. I know that makes me strange and sick, but I’ve always enjoyed riding the buses and trains, and my kids love riding the buses and trains, and in the end, despite all the problems, it’s one of the great things about San Francisco.

Then there are days like April 20.

It wasn’t an unusual Sunday; sunny, a bit chilly. There was, of course, the grand stoner holiday, and people were flocking toward a 4:20 convergence in Golden Gate Park, but one would think the folks at Muni would realize such a cosmic event was in the offing and plan for it.

One would be wrong.

We joined a small group waiting for a westbound bus at Haight and Divisadero. The sign told us the next bus was coming in five minutes; Michael and Vivian sat on the horribly uncomfortable seats designed to keep homeless people from sleeping on them, and in about 10 minutes along came a 6 Parnassus. It slowed down enough for us to see that it was standing room only (but nowhere near as bad as the 14 Mission is every day), then pulled away without taking on passengers.

Okay: bus too crowded. Driver decides no more passengers can fit safely aboard. It’s called "passing up" a stop, and it happens. Typically there’s another, emptier bus just behind. And sure enough, the sign said a 71 Haight/Noriega would be along in three minutes.

Well, seven minutes, actually — and then the same thing happened again: full bus, no stop. At this point there were maybe 30 people at the bus stop, and some had been waiting quite a while and were getting pissed. After a while, along came another 71 … and passed us up. The corner was getting crowded; people were yelling at the bus, chasing it, running into the street, and trying to climb in the back door when it stopped in traffic. Not exactly safety first.

Eventually we walked, which was fine, except that Vivian, who at six is already a slave to fashion, was wearing shoes that looked lovely but weren’t exactly designed for a hike so she wound up with blisters, and I had to stop and get her some Band-Aids and beg for new socks at a shoe store. Such is life in the big city; I can’t really complain that much.

But there’s an issue here that intrigues me: What is Muni supposed to do in this situation? It doesn’t seem as if this should be an impossible management problem. A Muni controller could, for example, radio the next five buses on the Haight Street line and tell them each to pass up alternate intersections so everyone gets a chance to ride eventually.

I called Judson True, a nice guy who has the unfortunate job of handling press calls for Muni this week, and he told me Muni does the best it can at line management — that in theory, someone watching the Haight Street line should have radioed in the problem (I think the drivers ought to do that too) and a controller should have been able to shift more buses to that line. I suspect this may have been a screw-up. But one thing that happens when you keep cutting the Muni budget is that the ranks of controllers and line managers — those middle-management "bureaucrats" Matier and Ross and the like always whine about — start to thin out. And this shit happens.

You wonder: how often do these people who complain about government spending actually ride the bus?

VERY FUNNY oil spill video

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Okay, as afar as I can tell this is NOT a real interview, but an Australian TV skit. Still, it’s a really, really funny commentary on an oil spill.

Leno on Newsom’s budget cuts

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Assemblymember Mark Leno, who is challenging state Sen. Carole Migden in the June primary, responded this afternoon to our editorial on Newsom’s budget cuts.

Migden responded earlier today.

Here’s Leno’s statement:

Dear Bay Guardian Editors,

You are absolutely right to assert that the Federal Government has turned its back on urban America and the Governor’s repeal of the Vehicle License Fee (VLF) has left our City in extremely challenged fiscal health. I agree with you, Tim, that new revenue is needed for the City. Current state law gives local government few options.

For that reason I have and am presently authoring legislation to bring more local control to our revenue streams, so that we can guarantee that San Francisco’s budget is not balanced on the backs of those who can least afford it.

In 2005, I authored AB 799, co-sponsored by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, SF Labor Council, Board of Supervisors and the Mayor, which would have allowed San Francisco voters to restore their own VLF which would have brought approximately 70 million new dollars to San Francisco. Unfortunately the Governor vetoed the bill.

I brought the bill back in 2007 as AB 1590. Unfortunately, it got held up in the Senate. I am working with all four co-sponsors to shake it loose this year.

Back in 2003, when cities and counties were faced with huge cuts, I authored AB 1690 to bring more revenue to the local level. The measure would have allowed voters to decide to levy a local income tax, which could have eased our way and pre-empted painful cuts to our local budget. That measure, though passed through the Assembly, was also held up in the Senate.

The Mayor and Board of Supervisors have a great challenge on their hands. The fiscal crisis we face is nothing short of tragic. I will continue to use my voice to argue that the cuts considered must be equitable, and those with the least should suffer the least.

I continue to argue that we have a revenue problem, not a spending problem. To forestall mean spirited cuts, we need to be as creative as possible to create new revenue streams. Otherwise, we will be continually faced with Sophie’s Choices.

Sincerely,
Mark Leno

And thanks to Mark for sending that, and for pushing for state legislation that would give cities more ways to raise revenue. I have always been impressed by his willingness to do that and his creative approaches.

I will note, for the record, that Leno declined to say anything critical of Gavin Newsom and his budget decisions.

McCain called his wife a what?

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Got an interesting letter from writer Paul Loeb today. It’s an open missive to Hillary Clinton outlining why she should remember that John McCain is the real enemy, not Barack Obama. It includes a little snipped I had somehow missed: A new book on McCain reports that he once lashed out at his wife during a campaign event and called her a “cunt.”

What a swell guy. CHeck it out:

Migden on Newsom’s cuts

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Our editorial this week calls on the two candidates for state Senate, Carole Migden and Mark Leno, to speak out against the Newsom budget cuts. I haven’t heard from Leno, but I got the following message from Migden this morning:

“I completely agree with your take that Mayor Newsom’s budget cuts are cruel and will take from those who have little or nothing to give. I have stood and spoken out with SEIU 1021 at two protests this year against these cuts to vital social services. Moreover I have stood with the California Nurses Association as we try to save St. Lukes and enforce staff to patient ratios. What is most vexing about the Mayor’s move to cut $18 million in healthcare for the City’s poorest residents, is that there seems to be no willingness to reach out and ask more from those who live in this CIty and can afford to pitch in extra. There is no question that the City and the State is in dire economic straits. Yet San Francisco also has a population of incredibly wealthy individuals (including our Mayor) and we must explore all options and pull in extra resources to make the City whole. Cutting is the quick and frankly the easier option; hard work and leadership is what is required to save vital services.

-State Senator Carole Migden”

So, go Carole. Mark?

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

The pope isn’t coming to San Francisco. Too bad; a few of us have a few things to say.

When the last pope, John Paul II, came here in 1987, it felt kind of like a circus. The dude loved theater, and there was plenty of it to go around — he made a point, for example, of meeting with Clint Eastwood, who was then the mayor of Carmel, which gave my friend Victor Krummenacher of Camper Van Beethoven the chance to make up "Monterey Pope Festival" T-shirts. A few enterprising sorts made photos of Eastwood with a gun in his hand telling the Holy Father: "Go ahead, bless my day."

When JPII showed up at the Mission Dolores, some jokers who lived across the street hung a huge banner that read: "The pope is a wanker."

I, of course, didn’t want to miss the show.

It turned out that getting a press pass for the pope’s visit was a little tricky, especially for a reporter for an alternative newsweekly who made no secret of his disdain for the local Catholic hierarchy. But I went to Catholic school and have a good old Irish name, and I wasn’t going to let this one get away.

So I filed my application with the locals, and had it rejected. The day before the pope was due to arrive, I called the archdiocese headquarters to ask who was really in charge of papal press. After a bunch of squirming, they admitted there was a special monsignor in a downtown hotel who made the final decisions. I got his name; I called the hotel and got the suite, where his secretary told me he was seeing nobody, that the deadline had passed, and that, in the vernacular, I was SOL.

But my father taught me well: priests drink bourbon, monsignors drink Scotch. So I picked up a nice single-malt and made my way to the holy press room. I pitched a fit of sadness to the secretary (my poor sainted mother, who was praying for me even now, would be in tears if she thought I’d missed the chance to see His Holiness) and that got me through the door.

The monsignor looked up and told me there was no way anyone was getting credentials the day before the visit and he’d never heard of my newspaper anyway. I pulled out the bottle, and he smiled.

"Bless you, my son," he said. "I think we can do business."

So I got the special Pope press pass, and saw the Popemobile, and saw the big wanker banner, and had a grand old time — and other than the fact that the city tore up all the bushes along the papal route so nobody would plant bombs, the city was pretty quiet.

That would not be the case today.

The new pope isn’t just a wanker — he’s pissing off all sorts of people, including his own believers. Queer groups, women, people who believe in stem cell research, people who believe in sex education for kids, people who think that wiping out family planning and prenatal programs for third-world women to avoid even the slightest mention of abortion … they got a beef with this guy. And they’re more active than ever.

So Benedict, the former Cardinal Ratzinger, won’t make it to SF. Damn. Despite Mayor Newsom’s embarrassing hide-the-ball game, we did a pretty good job on the Olympic torch. And the pope would be too big to hide.

NY Times gets all anguished over opinions

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I thought this debate was pretty much over, but the Public Editor at the NY Times is all agitated now about the “line between analysis and opinion” in newspapers. Gee: A business or legal reporter with many years experience in the field dares to give an informed opinon about what’s really going on. That seems like elemental journalism to me.

I think Clark Hoyt missed the larger, and more interesting debate, which is particularly relevant at a time when blogs are becoming a major source of information for people.

It’s not about opinion or analysis; it’s about reporting.

Some opinion writers (Maureeen Dowd comes to mind at the Times) never ever seem to pick up the phone and call anyone; they just read what others have written and opine. That’s fine, I suppose, but I’ve always thought the best columnists were the ones who actually do some legwork, who get out and report on events and then tell us what they think. At the Times, Bob Herbert does that. William Safire, who was often wrong, did it, too — I remember years ago reading a piece he’d written about NY Governor Mario Cuomo and Saddam Hussein; instead of whining about the guv, he picked up a telephone and called him. Thanks to the Times index, I ran the 1992 column down. Check it out; here’s a conservative Times columnist and a liberal New York governor arguing about how to handle what become the first Gulf War. Far more interesting reading than a lot of the tumbsucking that goes on in op-ed columns these days.

So if the business and legal reporters, who are actually interviewing sources and calling people and running down stories want to add their opinions, the world is better for it.

The bloggers who actually make phone calls, interview people, call someone before they comment about him or her are still rare. But that will change as this new form of journalism emerges.

I’ve found that my biased, slated, non-objective reporting is always better if I call the other side and argue for a while. Makes me smarter. Makes the story better. Demanding that your columnists call the subjects of their vitriole before they let loose seems to me a lot more important than worrying about who’s sneaking an opinion into a story.

The price of the torch

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So Gavin Newsom’s torch episode — which disappointed almost everyone and pissed off a lot of us — cost the city $600,000 plus. That’s at a time when we’re laying off city staff by the hundreds and closing critical services.

Six figures to give China a video postcard. Nicely done, Mr. Mayor.

How to hire more cops

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Rebecca Kaplan, who is one of my favorite politicians, is running for Oakland City Council — and she has a great idea how to solve one of the city’s most pressing problems.

See, Oakland can’t hire enough cops. That means a voter-approved community-policing plan, which requires foot patrols in all the districts, is way behind schedule; there just aren’t enough officers to walk the beats. The OPD has more than a hundred job openings, and not enough applicants. And among those who apply, a lot don’t make it through the police academy.

So the city of Oakland is spending a lot of money on recruiting (including billboards near the Bay Bridge, which Kaplan, an AC Transit board member, thinks is nuts: “I know the demographics of the people crossing that bridge, and trust me, none of them are going to apply to be Oakland cops.”)

One of the things the city has learned is that ex-military people tend to do better in the academy — they already have the physical fitness and disciplinary training. So the city is sending fliers to military bases around the country. “Which is not terribly effective,” Kaplan told us in an interview today. “The thing is, with stop-loss, nobody’s really gettiing OUT of the military right now.”

But there’s a perfect applicant pool that the city is ignoring.

“There are 5,000 people who have been kicked out of the military because they’re gay or lesbian,” she said. “They have a dishonorable discharge, so they may have trouble getting work. But a lot of them are totally qualified to be Oakland cops.

“The OPD pays about four times as much as the military, the Bay Area is a great place for gays and lesbians, and if you’ve been policing Baghdad, moving to Oakland is going to look pretty attractive.”

The names of those 5,000 people are accessible, if the city wanted to do a little work to round them up (Ron Dellums, former chair of the House Armed Services Committee, could probably handle it with one phone call).

But that might not even be necessary: “If the Oakland mayor and police chief held a press conference and said, hey, Uncle Sam doesn’t want you but Oakland does, I suspect the word would get out.”

Somebody ought to put this woman on the City Council.

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

Everybody knows the Democratic Party’s superdelegate problem: if Barack Obama wins the popular vote, as he probably will, and wins the highest number of elected delegates, as he almost certainly will, and the party leaders turn to Hillary Clinton instead, there will be a revolution in the rank and file that could damage the party for years to come.

But in San Francisco, that happens all the time.

The local Democratic Party is run by the Democratic County Central Committee, and 24 of the members are elected, democratically. But every Democrat who holds an elected office representing San Francisco, and every Democratic nominee for office, automatically gets a seat on the committee, too — so you’ve got another eight or so (it varies) people on the panel who are the local equivalent of superdelegates. US Sen. Dianne Feinstein is on the county committee. So is Board of Equalization member Betty Yee and state senator Leland Yee. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has a seat. Rep. Tom Lantos was on the committee until he died; his replacement, almost certainly Jackie Speier, will take over his slot this week.

Of course, none of those high-powered types ever show up for committee meetings. They send proxies, either trusted advisors or staffers from their local offices. And often — all too often — those superdelegate proxies are the deciding votes on local issues.

See, the committee may not be the highest profile office in the land, but it has a fair amount of local clout. The central committee decides what position the Democratic Party takes on local issues — and that means both influence and money. The party endorsement on ballot measures can be influential, particularly when it comes with a place on the official party slate card.

These days the committee has a majority of elected progressives. But it’s not an overwhelming majority — since half the seats are apportioned by Assembly districts, half the grassroots members are from the west side of town and tend to be more moderate. And not all of the eastsiders are progressives.

So on key endorsements this year — for San Francisco supervisor, for example — the majority of the elected delegates will probably vote for the progressives. But a minority will support the slate backed by Mayor Gavin Newsom — and the superdelegates will mostly go along.

So the Newsom slate at the very least will block the progressives from getting the endorsements. In fact, for a progressive candidate or ballot measure to get the party nod in a contested race requires an almost impossible majority of the elected members.

It can be infuriating.

Supervisors Chris Daly and Aaron Peskin, who often don’t get along, are working together to get a solid progressive slate elected to the DCCC this June. It’s a good idea, and there’s a good chance many of the 24 slate members will win. But the will of the voters won’t matter if the superdelegates can still weigh in and screw up any real reform.

I suppose it’s possible to change to rules to kick the superdelegates off the committee, but that would be a brutal battle. And there’s a much easier solution:

The committee needs to eliminate proxy votes.

Feinstein can’t use a proxy to vote on the Senate floor. Pelosi can’t send a proxy to vote in the House of Representatives. Proxies aren’t allowed in the state Legislature. Why should the DCCC be any different?

If Dianne Feinstein really cares about Gavin Newsom’s slate of supervisorial candidates this fall, then she can show up at the committee meeting and vote. Otherwise the grassroots, elected delegates get to decide. Seems fair to me.

Protesting the torch

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You have to wonder what Beijing and the International Olympic Committee were thinking.

A country with real human rights problems, involving not only the horrors in Darfur but the immensely popular, mediagenic Dalai Lama and Tibet, hosts the Olympics. The torch goes through several countries where political protests are common and there’s a large population ready to scream about China’s repressive regime. Then it stops in San Francisco, where there’s a large Chinese population and an equally large population of political activists ….

What, you didn’t think there’d be protests?

Now the IOC is actually talking about scrapping the rest of the torch tour, which would be silly. There will still be protests around the Olympics — and there should be.

If China wants the PR boost of hosting the Olympics, it will have to deal with the fact that the news media will also focus on human rights and other issues Bejing would rather ignore. The Olympics are too much of a spectacle these days; there will be too many reporters looking for stories, and protesters around the world ready to offer them.

The protests have been immensely successful so far. They’ve done exactly what they’re designed to do: Focus press attention on China, Tibet and Darfur. Nobody needs to disrupt the Olympic torch in San Francisco; in fact, it’s great that the torch is here. The torch brings media, and the more the better. Mayor Newsom needs to make public the final route in plenty of time for the activists to show up; the protesters need to be peaceful — and visible, and loud.

I love this. It’s the best tradition of this city.

Adam Werbach makes me puke

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I heard Adam Werbach, the onetime boy wonder of the Sierra Club, on Forum this morning, talking about how wonderful it is that Wal-Mart is starting to use special trucks that rely on batteries when they idle to save diesel fuel.

And I have to say: He made me want to puke. I wanted to jump into the radio and slap some sense into him and say:

Adam, Adam: Wal-Mart is the very definition of an unsustainable business. This is company that imports cheap shit made with near-slave labor in countries where there are no laws against putting 12-year-olds in factories, ships it to a few distribution points in the U.S. and then trucks it all over to shopping malls with giant parking lots where everyone drives. Wal-Mart cuts costs so aggressively that its employees go on public assistance, and in the process drives locally owned, independent businesses into bankruptcy.

Wal-Mart represents a fundamentally flawed economic model that is as much to blame for the problems in the American economy as the subprime mortgage meltdown. Money is sucked out of communities to profit one of the richest families in the world as main-street businesses, which might actually serve pedestrians and shoppers who take transit, businesses that keep money in the community and create and preserve decent jobs and wealth for middle-class people, are killed off.

I know Werbach thinks that moving the world’s largest retailer toward better practices is worth the effort.

But you can’t make Wal-Mart anything but an environmental train wreck and an economic disaster, and to even try gives credibility to a truly awful corporation with a horrible business model.

But I guess that’s what happens when you sell your sustainability consulting company to an ad agency.

Is Newsom hosting a dictator?

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You don’t hear as much about El Salvador these days as you once did in the Bay Area, but the Coalition in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador is still very active, and the issues in thyat impoverished country, run by the right-wing equivalent of a dictator, are very real.

And now CISPES is furious that San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is, according to Salvadoran press reports, planning to meet with Salvadoran president Antonio Saca. “Newsom is set to declare April 4 as the Day of Antonio Saca,” a CISPES statement says. This “has outraged the Salvadoran community of the Bay Area and allies because of ongoing human rights violations and state repression in El Salvador.“

I can’t get the mayor’s press office to confirm this, despite two emails and a phone call. In fact, I was told that only Nathan Ballard, the chief of the press office, could talk about this, and although I asked for a response by Thursday night, and emailed him directly as well, I have heard nothing. So possibly the Salvadoran press is wrong — and possibly Newsom doesn’t want to get a lot of press on the visit.

But CISPES is mobilizing to send a message that President Saca is not welcome in San Francisco and that the City should not honor him, and the group plans a press conference and demonstration Friday at 12 noon outside City Hall.

If Newsom is indeed meeting with Saca, it will put him in league with Dianne Feinstein, who used to love to meet with dictators. In the course of just one year, she hosted Ferdinand Marcos, Jose Napoleon Duarte and Muhammed Zia Ul-Haq.

At the time I called it her “third-world dictators hat trick.”

Newsom ought to know better.

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

I was away with the kids and missed the state Democratic convention in San Jose, but from what I hear, it was quite the show. The big local news, of course, was that Assemblymember Mark Leno blocked State Senator Carole Migden from winning the party’s endorsement for her reelection bid. That’s a big victory for Leno, who is trying to unseat her.

And the way a lot of my favorite blogs told the story, it was also a victory for the grassroots activists in the party: the Sacramento establishment, they say, was working for Migden.

I don’t think that’s entirely true; both sides had their heavy hitters. And I’m going to sound a note of caution here: Leno and his team papered the hall with some nasty negative fliers attacking Migden, not just for her travails with the Fair Political Practices Commission but for her driving record.

Leno told me he had to educate the delegates in a short period of time and that the fliers contained "nothing but facts." Which is true. But I don’t think he needs to go negative on Migden; she’s doing a fine job of that herself. And the attacks open ugly wounds in the community and could help the third candidate, Marin’s Joe Nation.

Leno needs to keep a tight leash on his campaign team as this heads for the finish.

And now we pause for a brief reflection on the First Amendment.

Matt Smith over at the SF Weekly took a shot at us last week, arguing that our lawsuit would somehow damage his paper’s ability to produce good journalism. Migden was in court this week to argue that the state shouldn’t prevent her from spending campaign money in violation of campaign-finance rules. Both claims rely on a dangerous interpretation of one of the most important pieces of law in the history of the world.

Smith’s theory: since we nailed the Weekly and its corporate parent for predatory pricing violations, we are somehow guilty of seeking to force the chain to cut back its editorial staff.

We heard the same sort of argument in court, and I suspect the Weekly‘s lawyers will trot out the First Amendment on appeal. Gee, they will say, the government can’t tell a newspaper how much to charge for its ads. That’s unconstitutional.

In fact, I think it’s pretty clear that the Weekly, not the Guardian, has been the paper attacking the First Amendment. The whole notion that James Madison had in mind when he introduced the Bill of Rights was that a free marketplace of ideas made for a more free and democratic society. Big chains that swallow independent papers limit that marketplace, particularly if, like the SF Weekly‘s owners, they enforce ideological consistency. Chains that try to kill other papers are even worse. That’s what our lawsuit was about.

Then there’s Senator Migden, whose legal papers cite one of the worst Supreme Court decisions of my lifetime, Buckley v. Valeo, which says that money is speech and that the rich can spend whatever they want on political campaigns. Again, the problem is the marketplace of ideas: if one side can corner the market with cash, there’s no free exchange. Campaign finance laws, properly written, don’t diminish the First Amendment; they enhance it. So do fair-competition laws in the media. Because both promote what Madison had in mind — a level (or at least relatively fair) playing field of ideas.

Home Depot, good riddance

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So Home Depot has pulled out of its plans to build a giant store on Bayshore Boulevard. I hope Gavin Newsom, Sophie Maxwell, Aaron Peskin and all the others who supported this terrible deal are paying attention and get the point: You do business with big national chains and you’re more than likely to get screwed.

It’s the same thing that happened with the mayor’s wi-fi proposal: City officials got all excited about a promise from a big private-sector operator that cares nothing for San Francisco – and when the dollars didn’t add up, the vendor bailed.

In both cases, the deal was bad for the city. Home Depot would have hurt small businesses, brought horrible traffic to nearby neighborhoods and done little for the local economy.

And the whole thing stunk of sleaze: Former mayor Willie Brown began pushing the deal after his political consultant, Jack Davis, was hired by the company to lobby him.

But the supervisors went along with it, by a 6-5 vote (with Peskin casting the swing vote for the chain) – and now the city is back to the drawing board. If the supes had rejected Home Depot, we could be well underway toward creating a community-based alternative for the site.

That’s what Sup. Tom Ammiano wants to start working on now. “We need to get a collaborative effort going to find the proper use for that site,” he told me.

Meanwhile, Newsom is calling Home Depot to make one last push. He wants to company to put its plans on hold, instead of abandoning them. In other words, he’s asking that the site be left empty for as long as Home Depot wants.

Talk about a stupid idea.

Bad Voodoo tonight

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Editors note: Award-winning reporter and former KTVU news anchor Leslie Griffith sent us this dispatch.

By Leslie Griffith

Tonight you can watch the mother lode of reality shows. It’s called “Bad Voodoo War,” and it airs on PBS’ Frontline. “Bad Voodoo War” is the story of a platoon of 30 soldiers in Iraq armed with both military might and camcorders. Cameras are attached to their humvees and carried in their hands as they take us on a mind-molesting mine-field of monotony that turns into an eruption of violence and leaves viewers sitting as anxious as nervous fingers on a loaded gun.

Director Deborah Scranton (“The War Tapes”) uses her brilliant subject as reporter theme to tell “Bad Voodoo’s War.” With very few “embeds,” (journalists reporting from Iraq,) Scranton jars us into the reality of war by forcing us to see through the eyes of the soldiers.

She chose a California based National Guard unit with seasoned soldiers. Almost all of them have seen prior active duty. They are not wide-eyed “want to be” warriors. They know the ropes, and they know a meaningful mission when they see one. Viewers get the impression there are many reasons to doubt this mission is worth the lives of the extraordinary men Scranton’s cameras introduce us to.

At 18 years old, when most of our sons are working to get into someone’s pants, Jason Shaw learned how to tie tourniquets around his pant legs to keep himself and his fellow soldiers from “bleeding out” during battle. While fighting for control of the Baghdad airport in 1993, the 18-year-old Shaw was awarded the Military’s third highest award for valor, The Silver Star.

He lost six of his best friends during that tour, returned to the states and moved to California to help care for the child of one of those buddies killed in action. Shaw, suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome, lost his girlfriend and his religion and insisted on returning to die with his “brothers” if he had to. He did not want them in a fight he might be able to help them win. His fear of them dying on the battlefield without him was stronger than his fear of returning to Iraq. He is now 22 years old in “Bad Voodoo War.” I wonder if he understands the bravest people are always afraid.

Give me a break, Matt Smith

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I’m starting to wonder how many times I’m going have to fight this battle.

For five weeks, as our predatory-pricing case against the SF Weekly was in trial, Andy Van De Voorde, the Denver-based hit man who works for Village Voice Media, attacked me, attacked the Guardian, attacked our witnesses and attacked the whole idea that an independent paper had the right to go to court to fight a predatory attack by a national chain.

When a San Francisco jury found (by an 11-1 margin) that VVM and its local outlet, the SF Weekly, had sold ads below cost for seven years with the intent to harm the Guardian – a violation of state law – Van De Voorde attacked the judge, the jury and the law itself.

Then when we started to talk about what the verdict meant, the hit man retailed the same old arguments all over again, in yet another blog post.

And now Matt Smith, the Weekly columnist who is often wrong on the issues but generally has some sense, has jumped in with what appears to be a preview of the arguments we can expect when the Weekly pursues its appeals.

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

A couple of decades ago, the American Civil Liberties Union sued San Francisco over the cross on Mount Davidson. The issue was pretty simple — a religious symbol on public land — but the furor was insane: critics attacked the ACLU up, down, and sideways and acted as if the separation of church and state was some form of blasphemy.

Yes: even in this tolerant, secular city, people get amazingly bent out of shape over this stuff. In fact, when I called Mission Police Station this week and asked why churches are allowed to use the middle of Guerrero Street for free parking on Sundays, Sgt. Larry Gray tried to talk me down.

"Tim, Tim, you don’t want to go up this tree," Gray, who is a charming and funny man, told me.

Sorry, Sarge, but I’m going there.

See, if you live in the Mission, it’s pretty hard to ignore. Double parking and parking in the medians is strictly illegal, and people get stiff tickets for it — except on Sunday morning, when churchgoers get a complete pass.

The churches don’t have to get permits or pay the city a fee or anything. According to Gray, there really aren’t any rules. The cops just look the other way.

"It’s a San Francisco tradition that goes back a hundred years," Gray told me. "They used to do the same thing with horses and buggies."

I know, I know, tradition and all. Last Sunday was Easter, for Christ’s sake, and I ought to give the believers a break. And on one level, it’s not that big a deal at all. The streets are still passable, mostly, although it’s a little more dicey for bikes and cars to coexist on a narrower strip of pavement. Traffic isn’t a big deal on Sundays (mostly), and if it is, people shouldn’t be driving so much anyway.

But nobody else gets to do this.

If you go to see the (secular) Mime Troupe in Dolores Park and you stick your car in the middle of the street, you get a ticket. If you drink at a (secular) bar or eat at a (secular) restaurant and you leave your car in the Valencia Street median, you get cited. You can’t double park while you run in for a (secular) cup of coffee at Muddy Waters.

So, with all due apologies to Sgt. Gray and the good people of faith, I have to ask again: Why do the churches get something nobody that else does? Am I the only one who thinks this is a bit sketchy?

I continue to get calls from people who are furious about the state’s plan to spray chemical pheromones from helicopters over San Francisco in August as a way to wipe out the Light Brown Apple Moth. Assemblymember Mark Leno and state Senator Carole Migden both are fighting it. Mayor Gavin Newsom wrote the governor this week to urge a health study before the spraying starts.

An environmental impact report is underway, but the state and the feds are calling this an emergency (the LBAM damages crops) and they’re planning to go forward no matter what.

I fear the only way to stop this is in court, with a challenge to the EIR — its timing, validity, the emergency declaration, etc. City Attorney Dennis Herrera ought to take this on. Thousands of people with young kids in the path of the spray would be immensely grateful.

Or maybe just, No Joe Nation

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Well, my blog item on some supporters of Ross Mirkarimi suggesting he run as a green for state Senate attracted calls almost the moment I posted it. And the callers have a point:

This isn’t just a San Francisco seat. Right now it’s a queer seat. And it’s possible that even the talk of Mirkarimi running could siphon away some of the energy that progressives say is needed to defeat Joe Nation.

For the record, I don’t think it’s a particularly good idea for Mirkarimi to run for state Senate; as I wrote, I think he would do better to stay in San Francisco. But I think the fact that this is even being talked about (and not by Ross, who I’m sure is flattered by it but who really isn’t pushing the issue) is evidence that there’s a concern out there about what would happen if neither Carole Migden nor Mark Leno wins the June primary.

Here’s the other option: Progressive supporters of both Leno and Migden could do something entirely radical, and come together to campaign to keep this a queer SF seat — which means running a campaign that says hey: Vote Leno. Or vote Migden. But don’t vote for Nation.

That might mean Migden and Leno deciding not to attack each other as Election Day approaches, and to save their negative campaigning for the candidate from Up North.

Gee, could they actually do that?

Mirkarimi for state Senate?

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I just heard a fascinating little rumor that says something about the state Senate race between Carole Migden, Mark Leno and Joe Nation.

Nation’s from Marin and is the more moderate candidate, and some San Franciscans fear that the two more progressive queer legislators could split the SF vote and leave the door open for Nation to win – and for San Francisco to lose a state Senate seat. So a few supporters of Sup. Ross Mirkarimi are saying that he ought to enter the race, as a write-in for the June Green Party primary.

Under the theory here, Mirkarimi would get the Green nomination. If Migden or Leno is the Democrat in the race, he’d drop out. If it’s Nation, he might want to decide to stay in.

Of course, that could mean giving up his board seat, since he’s up for re-election in November, and I’m not sure that’s a good idea. Perhaps better to have Mirkarimi in San Francisco than Sacramento.

But it shows how concerned people are about the prospect of SF losing this seat.

Mirkarimi was a little startled when he first heard of the plan, which was hatched by supporters who never actually talked to him about it. “I was taken by surprise at how well thought out this became, completely independent of me,” he said. He said he’s running for re-election to the Board of Supervisors, and that’s his priority. But he’s not against the concept of joining the Green Party primary, and if the Democrat were Joe Nation “then I would have to make a decision.”

FPPC Chair: Migden “Deceitful … We Will Fight Her”

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By JB Powell

On Thursday, the full board of the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) voted to approve a record settlement agreement with State Sen. Carole Migden. As part of the deal, Migden had to pony up $100,000 of her own money as a down payment on the $350,000 in total penalties – the largest amount the FPPC has ever fined a public official in its 34 year history. The incumbent senator has one year to come up with the rest of the cash. Migden and two of her campaign aides admitted to 89 different campaign finance violations – including spending over $16 grand of campaign funds for “personal use.”

In a separate matter – covered this week in the Guardian (“Migden sues the FPPC”) – Migden is hauling the FPPC into federal court to save about a million dollars they say she can’t have. In a statement released after the vote yesterday, commission chair Ross Johnson didn’t mince words in voicing his displeasure with the San Francisco Democrat: “Senator Migden’s track record has shown her complete disdain for [campaign finance laws] … We will now focus our attention on [her] lawsuit and Senator Migden’s numerous other serious and deceitful violations of California law. We will fight her all the way.”

Obama’s moment

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Okay, I didn’t hear the speech live. And I didn’t have a chance until tonight to watch the clip and read the entire text..

But wow. I must say, I agree with the NY Times — its was a a profile in courage. Obama broke through a huge barrier — he actually talked about race in an intelligent way and gave white Americans a reason to understand that he shares their pain, but that he expects them to share his. Yes, it was historic.

I don’t know if it’s over now; I was just watching the idiots on the O’Reilly factor talk about how the polls in Pennsylvania are favoring Hillary Clinton and that one of the great moments in political oratory of our generation might actually cost Obama votes. Still, for the superdelegates, this will be tough to ignore.

And I think that femlaw at kos is right: This was Obama’s swift-boat test, and he did far better than John Kerry could dream of in showing how he will deal with vicious attacks from the GOP.

God, it would be nice to have a president who can demand that Americans rise to their best instincts. I don’t agree with Obama on everything, and I’m the world’s worst cynic when it comes to national politics, but tonight I’m thinking that his candidacy is truly something special. He got me.

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