The bulk of the media attention to last week's local election in San Francisco has been directed at the mayoral race — the first competitive contest under both public financing and ranked-choice voting (RCV). However, digging a bit beneath the surface of the election of the District Attorney sheds some light on how RCV played out. I was able to download the entirety of the ballots from a public website. To be clear, I cannot tell how a specific person voted; however, I can tell you exactly how many people voted for Bill Fazio in 1st place, George Gascón in 2nd place, and David Onek in 3rd place: 1,055. I can also tell you that the progressives who supported the ticket of Onek–Bock–Fazio (recommended by the San Francisco Bay Guardian/sfbg.com and others) had the unintended effect of helping George Gascón to an easy win. Although she was the second choice of the "anybody but Gascón" crowd, Sharmin Bock's core supporters clearly were not fully on board with the concept.
An important caveat is that the data I downloaded were preliminary results, and do not include the last 2,603 ballots (1.39%) to be processed.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Analysis of Ranked-Choice Voting: SF D.A. 2011
Tuesday, November 08, 2011
Transcript: Bill Clinton on The Daily Show
Bill Clinton was the featured guest on tonight's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central. The extended interview is in 3 segments, embedded video below, with the transcript of part 1 after the jump. Parts 2 and 3 of the transcript will be added tomorrow. Update: transcript of all 3 segments completed.
Copyright ©2011 Comedy Central, all rights reserved. Transcript presented under "fair use" in the furtherance of political discourse.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Transcript: Billo on Daily Show 9/28/2011
Fox News Channel host Bill O'Reilly was the guest on tonight's Daily Show with Jon Stewart. The embedded video and transcript appear after the fold. (Update: complete transcript of Part 1 [as aired on Comedy Central] and Part 2 [web extra from TheDailyShow.com])
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Transcript: Jon Stewart's rap about Fox News
I only just saw last Wednesday's Daily Show, with Jon Stewart's slam of the Fox News coverage of the invitation for the rapper Common to perform at the White House. Since I didn't find this gem transcribed, here's the conclusion:
Friday, May 06, 2011
David Barton on The Daily Show: full transcript and videos
Jon Stewart on Wednesday (2011-05-04) had one of his most controversial guests ever, David Barton, a fundamentalist Christian who is trying to reclaim some of the "forgotten" history of the United States, and pass along that message to children through their textbooks and curricula. Barton is the darling of the Fox News crowd, and highly praised by the likes of Mike Huckabee and Michele Bachmann, but much less highly regarded by history scholars — people with actual advanced degrees in history — and many educators. The interview as aired on Wednesday's program is about 8 minutes, but the entire interview is available through TheDailyShow.com; the embedded video clips and the full transcript, followed by some commentary and links to sites debunking Barton's historical narrative, appear below the fold. The full interview is broken into five segments, and totals about 40 minutes.
Comedy Central/Comedy Partners owns the copyright to this material, which is presented here under "Fair Use" in the interest of furthering political discourse.
Wednesday, April 06, 2011
Huckabee on Daily Show: transcript and video
2011-04-06: Former governor Mike Huckabee (R–AR) did an extended interview on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. The full transcript with embedded video links follows after the fold.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Transcript: Rumsfeld on The Daily Show (extended)
This is a quick transcript of the full extended interview of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, 2011-02-23. The embedded video is in three segments, totaling just over half an hour.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Doing the Right Thing
Tonight's blog entry is entirely personal. I'm not writing about politics or transcribing somebody else's interview that I thought was important. You might say that I'm bragging on myself in this piece, but I'd say I earned it, because tonight I Did The Right Thing (IDTRT).
I was walking back to Muni at the end of my evening when I saw three people on the sidewalk ahead of me, arguing. I heard what sounded like the man shoving one of the women against the metal cover over a shopfront. I walked around on the other side of the row of parked cars, assessing the situation, and then heard the woman scream, "Give me my purse! Give me my purse!" I found an inconspicuous place from which to observe the altercation and call 911, but did not intervene directly because there did not appear to be any immediate danger of bodily harm. At some point, though, the man noticed me standing there, talking on my cellphone, and he walked off, dropping the woman's bag on the sidewalk. I followed from a safe distance, about 20 or 30 meters back — close enough not to lose him, but not close enough to be in his space. The last time I ran that hard, I was trying to catch the driver that did a hit-and-run on my car. I kept the 911 dispatcher informed of our movements, but before the SFPD found us, I happened upon two UCSF patrol cars. I shouted, "Help! Police! Help!" and the police officers detained the suspect. I am told they also found the woman and got her account of the whole scenario.
It's been over an hour and a half, and my heart is only now slowing back to normal. I was so out of it that I spaced right through my Muni station, and just barely caught the last train back. Wow.
