PretePress’ October surprise: a horrible, debilitating cold

It figues. Just a week before what is probably the biggest Election Day I’ll ever see in my life, I’ve come down with a really bad cold. It’s the kind with chills, uncontrollable sneezing fits, running eyes and nose — and it has made my head so fuzzy I sometimes get confused trying to make tea.

I feel like i’ve let down my six readers, but there’s not much I can do when my life is filled with spit, snot and worse from a 7-month-old baby. When he gets a cold, I get it too. So on the off chance you were actually disappointed that I haven’t written lately, I’m sorry. I’ll try to post something soon about the final days of the run for the White House, and probably something about the most important issue on California’s ballot, the one that touches every other issue in state government in some way: redistricting.

That is, if I can make it to the keyboard.

California green policies aid economy, says study

Contrary to the fears of opponents, California’s policies seeking to increase energy efficiency and fight global warming are actually good for the economy, according to a new study.

David Roland-Holst writes for the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Energy, Resources and Economic Stability that based on past state policies and practices, implementing California’s historic “Global Warming Solutions Act” — also known as AB 32 — would create as many as 403,000 new jobs, boost household incomes statewide by as much as $48 billion and increase the Gross State Product by $76 billion.

Looking ahead, California’s ambitious plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as mandated by the California Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32) puts the state on a more stable economic path by encouraging even greater investment in energy saving innovation.

The California Air Resources Board is on track to consider and possibly adopt an implementation plan for AB 32 in December.

Read the full report in PDF form here.

This post originally appeared in my other blog Golden State Cleantech. If you’d like to share or pass on this post, please visit the post from Golden State Cleantech.

PretePress poll gives Obama big edge over McCain

PretePress readers overwhelmingly believe Barack Obama beat John McCain in the third presidential debate, and

Obama stencil found on sidewalk in San Francisco Aug. 24, 2008

by an even larger margin indicated they expect Obama to be the next president of the United States.

It was an unscientific poll by anyone’s standard, and included some conflicting responses, so take the results with plenty of grains of salt — but the fun survey I created after Wednesday’s presidential debate (using WordPress’ nfity new PollDaddy poll feature)  was interesting nonetheless.

Of the PretePress readers who took the poll, 84 percent said Barack Obama won the debate, while 16 percent gave the victory to John McCain.

Barack Obama will be elected the next president of the United States, 95 percent of respondents believed — even though only one-quarter of respondents identified themselves as registered Democrats.

The rest of the poll:

• 90 percent of respondents said they were citizens of the United States.
• 95 percent said they were registered to vote in the U.S. (get out that salt).
• 50 percent of participants said they did not belong to any political party, 25 percent said they were registered to vote under the Democratic Party, 10 percent said they were Republicans, 5 percent Greens and 0 percent Libertarians. 10 percent said they were registered under some other party.

You can see the original post will the poll here, but I’m still learning to use the PollDaddy polls and at the moment I’m not sure how to turn off the poll. The results you see in the original post may not match the results at the time of this writing.

Six first impressions of the third Obama-McCain presidential debate

Well, someone certainly put a heck of a burr under John McCain’s saddle before the third presidential debate. Was it enough to get him back out of the ditch and onto the road to the White House?

1. The Republican nominee for president of the United States turned in his most lively and coherent performance of the three debates,
2. If John McCain was looking to ding Obama, he missed  a perfect opportunity — twice. McCain brought up the criticisms that had been leveled at him and Sarah Palin by U.S. Rep. John Lewis. He noted first that Obama had yet to repudiate Lewis’ statements, but then let the conversation turn elsewhere. Not long later, McCain again brought the topic back to Lewis and again noted that Obama had not repudiated the accusations, but he got nowhere with it as he let Obama successfully divert the talk on both occasions. McCain should have said something like, “Senator Obama, you have yet to repudiate John Lewis’ unfair remarks, but I’d like to give you the opportunity to do so right now. Will you tell the American people you want no part of his accusations, right here at this debate?” Instead, McCain allowed Obama to remain comfortable and dodge the issue.
   
3. Barack Obama was as dull as dry toast. Post-debate polls put him significantly ahead of McCain, but I think that must be at least as much because of Obama’s momentum (and the perception of inevitability his campaign excels at cultivating) as the strength of his performance at the debate.
4. McCain clearly didn’t learn anything from reviewing old video of a grimacing Al Gore in Gore’s debate with George W. Bush. He was all forced half-smiles and nervous-looking blinks. McCain seemed sometimes to channel Jon Lovitz’s Michael Dukakis, who in a Saturday Night Live sketch famously exclaimed in reference to Dana Carvey’s George H.W. Bush, “I can’t believe I’m losing to this guy!” In spite of McCain’s efforts to maintain a neutral expression, he came off like an exasperated and angry porcelain doll (albeit one with a really advanced blinking function).
5. Did McCain really pull out the air quotes while discussing abortion? Yes, unfortunately, he did. When Obama said he was opposed to late-term abortions but thought consideration ought to be given to the health of the mother, McCain pooh-poohed the health issue, making air quotes when saying that the meaning of “health” had been stretched too far by abortion activists. This is already the stuff of blogs and punditry, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find it featured in an ad by Thursday morning.
6. Although McCain did much better in this debate, he’s going to have to do much better still if he is to eke out a victory.

Who won the Obama-McCain presidential debate?

Who won the third presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain? Which candidate will be the next American president?

 

Third Obama-McCain presidential debate preview

U.S. presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain meet at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. tonight for their third and final debate of the 2008 race. Does McCain still have a chance to turn his campaign around? Can Obama conclusively nail the race tonight?

Barack Obama

Barack Obama has what looks like an overwhelming lead in Electoral College votes, according to most polls, and he continues to press the Republican candidate in states that McCain should have sewn up a long time ago.

But John McCain has been newly energized about promoting his plan for handling the current economic crisis and recharging the U.S. economy. Tonight’s debate is viewed by some analysts as a do-or-die moment for the McCain campaign, when he either will seize his last chance to get American voters excited about his candidacy or watch the presidency slip irretrievably out of reach.

I’ll make my own prediction — it’s a safe one — and say that neither candidate will do anything tonight to change the minds of voters who already have made up their minds for the other guy. Furthermore, my guess is that Obama will convince some undecided voters to throw in with him, but will still leave most of the undecideds questioning who should get their votes.

John McCain

However, this debate does present a convenient opportunity for McCain to decide how he wants this campaign to fit into his legacy as a war hero and respected legislator. Does he make one last push in an attempt to surmount long odds, using whatever methods are expedient, at the risk of marring his reputation even if he wins? Or does he look beyond this election, distance himself from some of the campaign tactics he previously disavowed but now employs, and ask history to remember him as he was before this run for the White House?

That’s a choice only McCain can make — but if he want to keep pushing for the presidency, he needs to take advantage of tonight’s debate, even though the debate alone is highly unlikely to make the difference.

McCain has spent the past few days pushing an economic plan that he bills as new, even though much of it simply reflects the core of the Republican economic agenda of the past decade or so. But it sounds new enough to most people that McCain should keep going back to it as often as possible in the debate.

He needs to do tonight what Obama did in the first debate: present concrete ideas in clear, simple language. If McCain did no more than adopt Obama’s answering style of a simple preface followed by three or four numbered points, he would be way ahead of his performance in the past debates and well on his way to quashing the notion that his campaign has run out of ideas and can’t come up with a credible alternative to Obama’s proposals. Now that McCain has a relatively coherent plan — for the purposes of the election it doesn’t really matter whether it will work as economic policy or not — he needs to push it and push it and push it.

Obama could choose to play defense tonight, seeking long-term victory by simply avoiding errors in the debate. If he can, though, Obama should use the debate to keep McCain off-balance. McCain’s best ammo for the debate is his “new” economic plan, but pushing it as strongly as he will need to leaves McCain vulnerable to Obama coming out with a strong presentation of his own domestic policy plans.

Both candidates would be unwise to even address the attacks their campaigns have made on each other in the past two weeks. It makes for dull television and seems not to play well with undecided voters in this election.

The debate starts at 6 p.m. Pacific time, 9 p.m. Eastern. On nearly everywhere. Ostensibly the topic is domestic policy, but both candidates are likely to direct their answers where they want to go.

* * *

Parting Shots: I’m no economist, but there’s one idea both Obama and McCain have suggested recently that even I know is foolish in the extreme. That idea is the proposal to offer tax relief to people withdrawing money early from their 401Ks and other retirement savings accounts, and it’s dumb on two levels. First, for many people this will serve merely to enable them to put off reckoning with their overextended lifestyle, giving them a way to spend money they previously had reluctantly saved. When that money is gone, what good will it have done them? Second, at a time when investors only worsen the economic downturn when they withdraw their money from the market, this proposal would give many more people a tax incentive to do just that. It doesn’t make any sense.

Ed Jew pleads guilty to extortion charges

Ed Jew, the former San Francisco supervisor who fled his post representing the southwest corner of the city after

Ed Jew

coming under fire for allegedly accepting bribes and living outside the district he represented, has pleaded guilty to federal charges.

Jew pleaded guilty on Friday, Oct. 10 to federal charges of extortion, bribery and mail fraud related to accusations that he accepted tens of thousands of dollars from the owners of several tapioca-drink shops inexchange for helping them obtain City permits. The plea means that a trial on the charges that had been scheduled for November will not go forward.

Jew is scheduled to be sentenced in February. His attorney, Stuart Hanlon, told the San Francisco Chronicle that he expected Jew would go to prison but that he hoped it would be for only two years.

Jew still faces nine felony charges under California state law, alleging that he lied about living in San Francisco’s Sunset District while actually residing in the nearby suburb of Burlingame.

Ed Jew is alleged to have lied about living in this Sunset District house to qualify to represent District 4 on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

Jew’s sudden departure from office resulted in Mayor Gavin Newsom appointing current officeholder Supervisor Carmen Chu, who faces several challengers for the seat this November, including Ron Dudum.

Suicide barrier for Golden Gate Bridge OK’d by board

The board that oversees the Golden Gate Bridge has voted in favor of installing a safety net to deter people from

Golden Gate Bridge

committing suicide by jumping off the bridge, according to its web site.

The Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District voted 14-1 on Friday, Oct. 10 in favor of the net, one of several ideas proposed to deter suicides. While the vote means the district has selected the net as its preferred alternative, several layers of environmental review are required before anything is installed on the iconic bridge linking San Francisco to Marin County. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission also would be required to include the project in its plans.

The statement on the Bridge District’s site is nearly unintelligible bureaucratic gibberish, but if you want to wade through the alphabet soup, read the official statement here.

Java Beach Cafe second location opens

Hey, cool! That fixture of San Francisco’s Outer Sunset District, Java Beach, just opened its new location on Sloat Boulevard and 45th Avenue.

Java Beach Cafe at the Zoo, San Francisco. By Tom Prete.

I’m really happy to see this open, as it’s in my neck of the dunes and there’s no decent place to get a good cup of coffee within walking distance of my house. It’s right next door to the Irish Cultural Center and across 45th Avenue from Sloat Garden Center, under the watchful eye of the Doggie Diner head. If you aren’t familiar with the Doggie Diner head, it’s a giant fiberglass dachsund head wearing a chef’s toque and blue bow tie. No, I’m not kidding. The city moved it to the center median of Sloat Boulevard a few years back after the head pitched over in a wind storm and broke its face. I’m not kidding about that, either.

Five beers on tap, including Guiness. Free WiFi. Open until 11 p.m.

Java Beach is throwing a block party Saturday to celebrate the opening of the Sloat location. From their web site:

On Saturday, Oct.11th we are having a BLOCK PARTY to celebrate our opening. The cafe, as you may know, is at the corner of Sloat and 45th Ave. We will have the whole block of 45th Avenue between Sloat and Wawona closed off and we’d love to have you join us. There will be bands, jumpy castle and lots of neighborhood fun from 10am to 5pm. The ribbon cutting ceremony at 10am will kick off the whole event.

Java Beach web site.

National Debt Clock runs out of digits

The National Debt Clock in New York City now doesn’t have enough digits to display the bloated U.S. national debt.

What’s even scarier is that the clock’s owners are modifying it to be able to display a national debt of as much as a quadrillion dollars. That’s $1,000,000,000,000,000. When the National Debt Clock was first installed in 1989, according to the Associated Press, the U.S. national debt was $2.7 trillion.

The clock, which resembles an electronic billboard, shows not only the overall national debt, but also a breakdown of the debt per American family.

From the AP:

As a short-term fix, the digital dollar sign on the billboard-style clock near Times Square has been switched to a figure – the “1″ in $10 trillion. It’s marking the federal government’s current debt at about $10.2 trillion.

The Durst Organization says it plans to update the sign next year by adding two digits. That will make it capable of tracking debt up to a quadrillion dollars.

The late Manhattan real estate developer Seymour Durst put the sign up in 1989 to call attention to what was then a $2.7 trillion debt.

- AP

Still image of National Debt Clock from CNN video.

NYC National Debt Clock runs out of digits – Yahoo News