Gavin Newsom (formerly: Joanna Newsom's cousin is a shit (allegedly))

xpost - ok, so he's got a "rep"

"Ruby, what's on the schedule for noon?" (cue porn music)

Matt Gonzalez's favorite album is Crooked Rain Crooked Rain, whereas Newsom's is Kind of Blue. Also, Gonzalez used to write a monthly column for my friend's zine. I think there's a pretty strong possibility that Gonzalez owns a few Drag City releases, regardless of whether or not he's related to the musicians.

http://www.meshsf.com/blogs/876528081_l.jpg

and Hairwatch (Also -- today's Gavin hair report: gelled. ???) says she's on the right here:

http://www.sfist.com/attachments/sfist_rita/1114272602_m.jpg

At the time, Mountz had a MySpace page that said she was 19. It now says she's 26.

But according to the Sonoma County registrar of voters, the Rohnert Park resident turned 20 on Sept. 17 -- three weeks and two days before Newsom turned 39.

I categorically refuse to believe this name is real. It is too perfect.

Sorry, I had to see it in black and white.

First the scientologist c-list actress
Then the 19 year old Aqua hostess
Then this Marin-realtress looking MILF...

Dude should be getting 1st class prime cuts, not this slop.

I don't recall that any of Willie's skanks worked in his office, or at least not on the City payroll.

lol

I just finished watching San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom apologize for having a sexual relationship with the wife of his former campaign manager, Alex Tourk."I'm deeply sorry," he said during a brief City Hall news conference.
The TV described this as "Breaking News." By what definition? I mean, really, why is this anybody's business -- except for Mr.
Newsom, Mr. Tourk, Mr. Tourk's wife (the evocatively named Ruby Rippey-Tourk), and Mr. Newsom's ex-wife.
Why is this a public matter?
Despite my less-than-stellar opinion of much of the media, I am still shocked that with Iraq continuing to implode (with January setting a deadly record for Iraqi civilian deaths, and another 61 killed today), and all the other problems facing the world, the media are willing to use up their precious air-time oxygen with pointless crap like this.
Our political and media culture clearly regards sex and scandal the same way Vince Lombardi felt about winning: it isn't everything -- it's the only thing.
This media fixation on personal peccadilloes is a perfect example of what G.K. Chesterton warned about: "If there is one thing worse than the modern weakening of major morals, it is the modern strengthening of minor morals."
I've been writing about the need for a thick line to be drawn between public matters and private lives for years (see here, here, and here). But that hasn't stopped the never-ending cycle of public voyeurism, titillation, admission, contrition, and inevitable prime-time absolution. There was Wolf Blitzer, following up Newsom's news conference by promising: "We're going to have a lot more on this story." I bet they will. And I can already hear any number of TV news personalities clearing their throats and getting ready to usher Newsom into their broadcast confessional.
Spare me. Please.
Unless Newsom misused public funds in the course of his affair or broke some law, this isn't a matter for CNN, it's a matter for Newsom, his friends, and his therapist (if he has one).
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Unless a politician has broken the law, there is only one legitimate answer to the illegitimate probing of private lives: "It's none of your business." (If the pol in question is really popular, "Go to Hell!" is an acceptable substitute.)
I am utterly uninterested in the marital fidelity of our politicians. "Does not stray" might be a wonderful attribute in a husband -- or a dog -- but history has clearly shown that it says nothing about what kind of leader a person will be.
Our politicians need to keep their private lives private, and the media need to keep their focus on what does -- and what surely does not -- constitute news. "Breaking" or otherwise.

Really.

State. Gavin ain't going to win any elections nationally anyway.

guess who just checked into "alcohol abuse" rehab:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/02/05/BAG4ENV8B514.DTL

Xpost That being said...idk that this bloc is large enough to nudge him. ICE really snapped a lot of people who didn't previously have deep investment to attention

It just seems like there's plenty of time to start rallying around decent candidates rather than wasting a lot of energy acting like the worst candidates are inevitable.

i am 100% a Bernie truther, he was absolutely kneecapped by the Dem establishment and the media. to believe otherwise seems insane to me, to be frank.

I don't entirely disagree. I also think that if he won more early primaries, he'd have been the nominee.

Well it’s not either/or — advocate for candidates AND issues. But here’s the thing, you have to make them count. That takes organizing on a mass scale, and leadership capable of doing it. (See also my longstanding observation about the lack of both on the American left.) Republicans didn’t start out as the ban-all-abortions embrace-all-guns party they are now, they were forced into those positions by decades-long campaigns by well-organized interest groups who built power in the party to the point where they were able to start enforcing them by taking out people in primaries and threatening the same to anyone who crossed them. In other words through the same electoral mechanisms you’re sneering at.

And par’me while I mount this here high horse, but here we are at the end of Black History Month and I’d just like to mention the people who fought and fucking died because they understood the importance of the ballot. If the ballot didn’t matter, nobody would have murdered them to keep it away from them.

xps to tables

While it's true that the Dem establishment didn't want Bernie as the nominee and took actions to prevent that, Bernie was also counting on being able to win with the Centrist vote fractured between 4 or 5 candidates. That doesn't tend to happen in primaries, where many candidates drop out after suffering losses and the race usually ending up as a one on one between the top two candidates. When it was just Bernie vs. Biden, Biden was more popular.

If we’re indulging in Bernie fantasies, mine is that he would have used the energy and momentum of his campaigns to build and nurture a powerful national network and movement that could by now be a truly substantial force. But he didn’t, for the same reason he didn’t win — he wasn’t the guy who could do it.

Which is not even that much of a criticism, it’s a tall order to do that. It would probably help eg to not be a stay-at-home septuagenarian/octogenarian from a tiny state.

Anyway the point is, if you don’t want Newsom as the nominee, beat him.

Anyway the point is, if you don’t want Newsom as the nominee, beat him.

― paper plans (tipsy mothra), Thursday, February 26, 2026 8:47 AM (fifty-seven seconds ago)

not unless he pays me

lol

haha

it's more a matter of how much my vote as a single vote in a presidential election matters to the fate of people in Gaza, as opposed to how much it might matter to the fate of, for example, food stamp recipients in the USA or refugees from Sudan, or children who might catch polio or measles. there's a lot potentially riding on who is president and Gaza is only one place where death is on the line. picking one and ignoring the rest seems ghoulish to me.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Wednesday, February 25, 2026 8:07 PM (yesterday)

american electoral politics in 2026 _is_ ghoulish! honestly, i don't know a way to not be ghoulish to some extent when casting a vote. if my vote for president actually mattered, i'd be much more torn up about this than i am (and i am somewhat torn up about it, i just have more direct problems to deal with right now). i knowingly and consciously voted in 2024 for someone who supported genocide, and that was absolutely fucking ghoulish of me. i don't think i'm a _bad person_ for doing that, but at the same time, doing that was strongly against my personal values and against the values of the people i respect most. i do absolutely accept any consequences that come from my having done that.

really the problem i have with your framing - which i think is thoughtful and respectful, which is why i'm choosing to respond to it - is that there is... when you talk about "food stamp recipients in the USA", you're talking about me, you're talking about my friends. and look, i know you, i think you're coming at this from a good faith perspective. but the way you're framing it does tokenize us. this whole line of argument saying that people have an obligation to vote for someone like newsom or harris on _our_ behalf... we're not some abstract monolithic group. we're a diverse group of people. some of us will probably say "please vote for anybody but trump, i don't want to die". most of the marginalized people i know personally... and most of the people i know in-person are highly marginalized... aren't gonna say that. me and a lot of the people i know don't believe that voting for newsom is in our best interest. because to me, it's _not_ just about the people in gaza. it's because if someone will support a genocide, i don't _trust_ them to have our backs when we need it.

i am on board with majorairbro saying that they're going to vote their conscience. the only way out of this, i think, is for us to have values and to live our personal values, as best we can.

I also think that if he won more early primaries, he'd have been the nominee.

― jaymc, Thursday, February 26, 2026 11:28 AM (six minutes ago)

the primary system as its currently constructed disenfranchises most of the party's voter base, to pretend as if it's a representative system is to stroll happily onto a mouse trap to take a big bite of cheese

Do you mean because of the schedule or the superdelegates?

Either way, those can be changed too! I was reminded of that by the Jesse Jackson obits that noted his crucial role in changing to proportionate assignment of delegates, which Obama couldn’t have won without.

Nothing about the restrictive nature of American democracy is eternal and unchangeable — which we know, because it has been changed repeatedly to make it less restrictive, by people fighting much more daunting foes than the lame-ass DNC.

xp I agree with that, too. There should be a national primary.

What's happening in Gaza is hideous, a war crime, a tragedy. There are terrible things going on around the globe at all times, and to fixate on one faraway tragedy to the extent that it prevents (or absolves) you from doing anything about the problems in your own country is... a choice.

― placeholder username till I think of a better one (unperson), Thursday, February 26, 2026 12:11 AM (eleven hours ago)

i'm gonna put aside the ghoulish moral calculus being articulated here and just say that there's ample evidence all over the place that there is a deep connection between the forces driving the war on gaza and the forces causing "problems" in our own country. there's essentially no difference between being anti-zionist/pro-palestine/anti-war and being anti-oligarchy, which can be seen pretty explicitly in recent elections involving democratic politicians. so to say that gaza is a "faraway tragedy" is -- again, putting the morality of that statement aside -- just factually incorrect about its relationship to tentpole issues motivating the democratic voter base, and this was the biggest mistake made by the harris campaign. you can't be pro-israel and also attempt to take a populist stance as a democratic candidate. those two things do not compute because they are inextricably linked together. the voters are no longer buying that lie because the curtain that once shrouded the connections between the people driving america's relationship with israel and america's inequality has been fully pulled back. this is everywhere in the epstein files which are the biggest american news story in years. to not understand that being pro-gaza is a proxy for holding a broad set of progressive values should be disqualifying from discussing democratic politics, let alone to be involved in them

xp to tipsy: ah yes, how to force a party beholden to center-right banking industry, real estate industry, and any number of bad foreign actors to actually do right. you are living in a politics of the past— a majority of the Dems in congress will bend over backwards to avoid doing anything to upset the flow of money coming into their campaign coffers, and they have nothing to do with their constituents or their interests. if your response to that is “mount a decades long advocacy front” then you’ve lost me— it’s like seeing someone drowning and yelling “don’t worry, they’ll be draining this lake in a few months.”

as far as your second point, i am not sneering at voting or the violence of disenfranchisement, i am sneering at the idea that somehow the people have more than a modicum of actual say in who the candidate might be when there is a built-in institutional antipathy toward anyone to the left of a center-right fucking lizard like Newsom. in other words, it’s not the actual franchise i am sneering at, but more the illusion of choice when so many interests and institutions have already tipped the scales in certain candidates’ favor.

i think that part of what we disagree about, honestly, is that i don’t believe Democracy is for the people.

I'll admit that from my pov it took the steady accumulation of Epstein news for me to understand the size of this global oligarchy and they don't have to act like a well-organized cabal to quash any notion of progressive policy or governance. The sexual abuse of women is the prize the members enjoy and an example of how cheaply they regard human life.

and if you regard human life so cheaply how the hell can you care about, say, healthcare for all?

just factually incorrect about its relationship to tentpole issues motivating the democratic voter base, and this was the biggest mistake made by the harris campaign

Which was apparently the finding of the party postmortem that got buried by the DNC.

https://www.axios.com/2026/02/22/dnc-2024-autopsy-harris-gaza

The party establishment overall is basically out of touch with its own base, and often at odds with it. That’s a problem but also an opportunity. It’s roughly the position the GOP was in pre-Trump, and that disconnect and frustration was exactly what he exploited and rode to power on. Of course in that case what the base wanted was white supremacy and wimmen in the kitchen and license to bully queer kids. The left-Dem base wants different things. But the opportunity is the same.

it’s not the actual franchise i am sneering at, but more the illusion of choice when so many interests and institutions have already tipped the scales in certain candidates’ favor.

I think maybe the main thing we disagree about is that you seem to think those people and interests can’t be beaten, and I think they can. But only with sufficient organizing, energy, and leadership. And yes it could take decades, lots of things do.

The party establishment overall is basically out of touch with its own base, and often at odds with it. That’s a problem but also an opportunity.

Recent election results in NJ are a big example of this. The Democratic Party machine is getting body-slammed again and again by voters in districts they thought were safe and compliant.

That was also a case of AIPAC taking out one candidate in favor of another, only to end up benefiting a third.

Let's move this boring civics lesson to the Democratic Party Direction thread and leave this thread to it's intended purpose: shit-talking this lizard man until his dying day.

i think that part of what we disagree about, honestly, is that i don’t believe Democracy is for the people.

― a tv star not a dirty computer man (the table is the table), Thursday, February 26, 2026 9:24 AM (three hours ago)

agreed. the dnc being "lame-ass" and ineffectual is the point! they wouldn't have the power they do if they weren't supported by stronger, more effectual forces. the dnc patsies, and i'm not particularly interested in taking their place. what i'm interested in is living within a system that gives people rights and opportunities to live our values. i think that's a natural state of affairs, and that the current dystopia is an _unnatural_ state of affairs requiring a great expenditure of effort to reinforce. who wants to be the last person to die for a mistake?

I agree that Newsom is too slick, but I don't think he hates trans or gay folks at all.

He did the first gay marriages in California in 2004, and has been a reliable ally to us since then.

He said what he had to say to be electable in this political moment - that trans women in sports is an issue of fairness and still has to be settled in the public mind (I think they should be allowed). My SF and NY boomer friends have questioned Lia Thomas winning the NCAA title in 2022. I’ve been trying to bring them around, but it’s a big sticking point for a lot of people, and I don’t think the rest of the country is even close to being on board yet

He has signed laws that protect gender-affirming care from out-of-state subpoenas and has protected LGBTQ+ students from being outed at school. He has a trans godson

the dnc being "lame-ass" and ineffectual is the point! they wouldn't have the power they do if they weren't supported by stronger, more effectual forces.

Nah c’mon, who are you even talking about? Who’s so big and sinister that we can’t ever beat them? Look at the Epstein files, or all of European history, the people in charge are more likely to be vain nasty nitwits than Dr. Doom. There is no big giant sinister unbeatable Democratic Party Machine, there’s just a bunch of rich assholes who are often wrong and dumb, a bunch of party hacks and flacks trying to hold onto whatever position they’ve gotten to, pundits all vying to identify the right trends.

We would’ve saved the world but we couldn’t beat THOSE guys? I don’t buy it. I have spent time in this world, it’s way more muddled and porous than people seem to think.

It's true. Rich dumb assholes never get what they want.

You know what, I'll unbookmark this dumb thread instead. It's making me insane.

xp right, because nobody has ever been disappeared, or "committed suicide," or ended up spending life in prison for sticking their neck out in favor of people-centered leftist social programs

xp same, fuck Gavin Newsom forever as well as anyone who votes for him

yeah, I don't really want to talk about him... lates!

But only with sufficient organizing, energy, and leadership. And yes it could take decades, lots of things do.

if i have to read one more post like this i'm going to explode. thinking y'all have the right idea, i'm off this thread

lol I don't know how you guys think anything actually happens or has ever been accomplished by anyone.

right, because nobody has ever been disappeared, or "committed suicide," or ended up spending life in prison for sticking their neck out in favor of people-centered leftist social programs

Jesus Christ, of course it's hard, and of course it can be dangerous to speak out and show up. But literal millions of people in this country have done that before, it's the only way things get better! For fuck's sake. Nobody has to do more than they are able to or comfortable with, but sustained mass organized movements can and have and do make big differences. If you don't want to engage at that level that's fine, but don't say they don't or can't matter, that's absolutely not true. And goddamn, it's disrespectful to the people who have fought and sometimes yes died.

agrred, tipsy. this self-actuated sense of limitation is a measure of the success of right wing psy-ops on the people of the USA. the worst case scenario of the rich is when the lid blows off their carefully constructed courage & hope containment vessel

"You just got to want to it more" is not the strongest argument about overcoming structural impediments IMO.

so, which argument is the strongest?

Though it must be said Mao was out there giving it 110% and leaving it all on the field.

He said what he had to say to be electable in this political moment - that trans women in sports is an issue of fairness and still has to be settled in the public mind

Dan what the fuck are you talking about! California has term limits.

Though it must be said Mao was out there giving it 110% and leaving it all on the field.

lol

decades of sustained activism got the death penalty banned in Virginia

I'm glad that ILX does not have Reddit-style upvotes and downvotes, but I have often wished I could upvote all of tipsy's posts whenever we have this debate because he articulates my thoughts much better than I can.

Aw thx jaymc

And I don’t disagree much on policy or priorities with most of the people posting here. I’m just most interested in HOW things can get done.

Yeah it's good we don't have upvotes. The possibility that everyone is reading my posts going "god what a fucking idiot" is a good motivator not to chat too much shit for me.

lol otm

Oh I know everyone thinks I’m an idiot, that’s why I keep posting

table, as much as I am dismayed by some of your posts I think you are brilliant, please keep posting

thanks Dan S. i also hope you keep posting too, despite the fact that we disagree on many things.