Free Republic

Mitt Romney has little chance of winning the presidential election, but Barack Obama could still lose it. Take a look at the polls: Romney just can't sell himself. In fact, the more you see of the guy, the less you are willing to buy. On the other side, Obama's lead is still narrow, but growing. Nothing is going to change on the economy between now and Nov. 6, so Obama has weathered that storm. But if he appears overly aggressive or cocky or condescending in the debates, or if the lid really comes off the Middle East, he could still...

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has had a trying week, what with the surfacing of a video in which he appears to dismiss 47 percent of Americans as government freeloaders. So he was probably looking forward to being among friends at a high-dollar fundraiser in Hillsborough Friday evening. But in the solidly Democratic Bay Area that meant he first had to experience an enthusiastic greeting from about two dozen protesters as his motorcade drove through the wealthy neighborhood where the event was held. Some of those protesters carried signs reminding him of the video, in which Romney appears to denigrate...

A seemingly ordinary day at the Transbay Transit Center construction site became a mammoth day of discovery Monday when a mild-mannered crane operator reached deep into the earth and pulled out a tooth. This was no ordinary tooth. The 10-inch-long brown, black and beige chomper, broken in two and missing a chunk, once belonged to a woolly mammoth, an elephantine creature that roamed the grassy valley that's now San Francisco Bay 10 million to 15 million years ago in the Pleistocene epoch. Other woolly mammoth fossils have been found in the Bay Area, including in San Francisco about 2 miles...

(09-12) 18:31 PDT PIEDMONT -- Anyone who talked to J. Christopher Stevens instantly became the center of his world. Stevens, 52, the American ambassador to Libya killed during an attack by militants Tuesday in the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, was a natural diplomat, from his youth in Piedmont to his undergraduate years at UC Berkeley and studies at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, friends and colleagues said. His violent death was doubly shocking, coming in a country in which he took a personal interest and whose revolution he had strived to help and understand, acquaintances said. "Chris...

If you didn't get enough of President Obama this past week at the Democratic National Convention, he'll be in the neighborhood Oct. 8 for one more fundraising pitch before the election. While details have yet to be worked out, we're told the fundraiser - Obama's eighth money-raising trip to the Bay Area since April 2011 - will be similar to an appearance he made at the Nob Hill Masonic Center in February. That event drew hundreds of small and high-end donors, and was part of a three-day California fundraising blitz that took in $8 million. Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Obama-to-be-in-Bay-Area-on-Oct-8-3850301.php#ixzz260AORmV1

Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan will stop by the Danville home of a former San Francisco 49er for a fundraiser on Saturday morning. The San Jose Mercury News reports Ryan will be attend the breakfast fundraiser at the home of retired football player Brent Jones. The breakfast begins at 8:15 a.m. [...] Earlier tonight Ryan was at a fundraiser at the Alamo home of Steven Burd, the Chief Executive Officer of Safeway Inc., the Pleasanton-based grocery store chain.

Here is a live blog of the appearance this morning of Congressman Paul Ryan, the Republican vice presidential nominee, at a breakfast fundraiser at the Danville home of former San Francisco 49er Brent Jones. 9:45 a.m.: A quick get-away for Congressman Ryan. The Republican vice presidential nominee walked out of the home with Jones. He then climbed into his black SUV-like vehicle and the convoy led by the CHP drove off. Ryan was in the house for about an hour. He's on his way to Mountain View. The valets keep running and the guest keep waiting for their cars. One...

GLENDALE, Calif. (AP) — These days, wherever you see Clint Eastwood, an empty chair is sure to follow. Even if you're on a hike. A life-sized cutout of a cowboy Eastwood has stood on a trail overlooking a Southern California freeway for months, but on Tuesday a pair of chairs were next to him, one also a cardboard cutout, the other an actual wooden chair. Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Chairs-placed-by-Eastwood-cutout-on-Calif-trail-3840013.php#ixzz25ZbDJVci

Clint, did you ever make my day. The two biggest names to show up at the Republican convention were Isaac, whose winds thankfully shortened the giant infomercial, and Clint Eastwood, who stole the show on closing night. Republicans were looking for a big name to get big attention, but, as they say, be careful what you ask for. You recall that Clint did that great commercial for Detroit that aired during the Super Bowl. So the GOP thought, hey, let's do it live, on prime time. What they forgot was that Clint is an actor and that the commercial was...

When the documentary "2016: Obama's America" was released at fewer than 200 theaters earlier this month, Democrats, liberals and other Obama supporters speedily dismissed it as a right-wing polemic, destined to quickly disappear into the nether land of late-night cable and GOP fundraisers. But the movie, pushed nonstop by conservative talk show hosts Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and others, took off. When it expanded nationwide to 1,091 screens last weekend, it earned $6.5 million, the seventh-highest weekend gross in the nation. Finding a documentary among the top 10 box office moneymakers in any week "is very, very rare,"...

Like teenagers on vacation with their parents, Republicans from blue states and Democrats from red states don't want to be seen with party elders. "I don't spend a lot of time thinking about Mitt Romney," Elizabeth Emken, the Republican who will face off against Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein in November, recently told me. "That's the truth. I've never met him." Emken thinks she has a shot at winning the election precisely because she is not the pick of the GOP establishment. "We've had millionaires and billionaires and CEOs and movie stars," said Emken in a not-so-subtle swipe at former top-of-the...

Moving to broaden its menu — and perhaps by consequence, America’s waistlines — Atlanta-based Cinnabon cut a new slice into the country’s Italian food market this week with the limited introduction of the Pizzabon. “It’s like a regular pizza but smaller and with less taste of sauce,” Karina Agaton, an employee at the Cinnabon’s remodeled Atlanta Cumberland Mall venue, told the Daily News. The new snack, which looks a lot like the chain’s Minibon but without the frosting on top, is only available for now at the company’s revamped Cumberland location, which houses a test kitchen used to try out...

Spent some time “for work” at a Phish concert Sunday at San Francisco’s Bill Graham Auditorium, the fruits of which is in this San Francisco Chronicle story. The purpose of this “research” was to check up on efforts to register young voters, who cast ballots in record numbers in 2008 — helping to propel one Barack H. Obama to the White House. One of the nation’s leading such outfits is HeadCount, which decamps at pop music concerts in an effort to connect with the yutes. They’re hooked up with more than 100 bands and are currently spiriting their volunteers around...

A Lubbock County, Texas, judge is asking for a tax increase to hire deputies for the inevitable civil war he believes would follow President Obama's re-election. The way he puts it, Judge Tom Head wants to prepare for the "worst", which to him means "civil unrest, civil disobedience" and possible "civil war", according to a report from Fox 34 Lubbock Judge Tom Head and Commissioner Mark Heinrich told the station this week that a 1.7 cent tax increase for the next fiscal year was necessary to prepare for many contingencies, including Obama's re-election. He also mentioned to the station that...

Oakland officials say they and federal investigators have discovered a major source of disruption to the city's police radio communications system: interference from cell phone towers. Specifically, officials said, cell phone towers operated by AT&T Wireless have been interfering with the city's public safety communications frequency and causing radio failures among police and firefighters on city streets. AT&T, notified by the city of the problem last week, is cooperating and has partially disabled 16 towers. A company spokesman said the impact on customers will be minimal, affecting only those on the company's oldest phones. The towers constantly interfered with the...

The American Sociological Assn.’s annual meeting got underway Friday in Denver, and among the weighty topics to be discussed is the practice of “hooking up.” For any readers who are not familiar, hooking up refers to “casual sexual activity,” according to one of the more tame definitions offered by Urban Dictionary. A study to be presented on Monday focuses on the social consequences for those who engage in frequent hookups. Two researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago examined responses from more than 19,000 students who completed the Online College Social Life Survey last year. They found that both...

Enrique Candia lives a quiet life in Oakland. When he's not working, he takes care of his ailing wife and his three grandchildren and makes sure his son is on track to finish college. Now, although he has no criminal record, the 56-year-old is facing a court battle that could take him away from his family for years. In June 2010, federal agents arrested Candia for working in the United States without proper authorization. A Mexican national who has lived in this country for almost 20 years, Candia was sent to an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement detention center. "It's the...

Diet Coke turns 30 this year, and despite health concerns and an rocky advertising trajectory (remember Paula Abdul dancing with dead celebrities?), the Thank-God-It's-Not-Sugar-But-Hopefully-Aspartame-Won't-Kill-You beverage is doing better than ever. Diet Coke has held the title of second most popular soda in the world (after regular Coke) for two years running — 40% of colas currently sold are either Diet Coke or Coke Zero — and it seems like more people are now drinking it for the taste instead of as a diet aid. But it wasn't always this way. When Diet Coke was introduced in 1982, "it was too...

As the unstoppable cyborg in "The Terminator," Arnold Schwarzenegger made "I'll be back" part of the national lexicon. Nearly two years after leaving California's highest elected office, he's making good on the promise in a big way. The former Republican governor, who just turned 65, told The Chronicle that he will head up the Schwarzenegger Institute for Public Policy at University of Southern California, a think tank designed to explore "post-partisan" politics and global challenges. Among the luminaries working alongside him are former Mexican President Vicente Fox, Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann, former U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros...

If you’ve ever contributed to a political campaign, your email box is filling up as the campaigns are hitting you up to give AGAIN before midnight so your cash counts toward the latest fundraising period…..which ends at midnight tonight. But sheesh…the past four days have marked a new low in desperate fundraising pleas from the Democrats. From all levels. The Leader of the Free World Himself, President Obama, sent out a note Tuesday morning with the subject line: “So?” “So?” Isn’t “so?” a bit beneath the Prez? It was barely more dignified than Obama’s fundraising e-mail blast from the other...