With President Bush in Hillsborough last night raising 1.5 million bucks, it looked like a fine time to see where the Bay Area’s many “Swells”, suckers, pundits, players and peons are putting their dough…

According to Federal Election Commission rules, contributions above $200 are required to be disclosed & through the painful magic of database technology I ran some names, zipcodes and candidates against the various fields.

In any case, big or small, it’s interesting to see so many who put money on guys like Edwards & Giuliani now that they’ve walked from the race, and how few of the Bay Area’s monied folks were interested in backing current Republican frontman McCain. On January 30th, the Time coverboy filed his end of year 2007 data with the FEC and it revealed just how little money he had in his coffers to start this year off.

Anyhow, if yer interested following some of the acknowledged money below the fold, look for yer faves from Craigslist, Google, The Gap and Metallica etc. …

Also after my more or less brief list, there’s info on how you too can easily check up on the political proclivities of yer own neighbors, bosses, corner store owners & fave celebs…
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President Bush visited the Bay Area today, attending a Republican National Committee fundraiser in the wealthy town of Hillsborough (map) and keeping intact his record of not setting foot in the City and County of San Francisco. The last president to avoid the City so thoroughly? Calvin Coolidge.

Hillsborough, for all its wealth, is not an exclusively Republican stronghold, however, as its political donations show. Plenty of support there for Obama and (alas) Edwards.

Thursday night’s big literary event is the book party for Sex for America, the Stephen Elliott-edited anthology of fiction and nonfiction melding those two American obsessions, sex and politics.

Reading are Liz Henry and Michelle Richmond — both former bloggers on this site — Charlie Anders, Michelle Tea, Daphne Gottlieb, and Mistress Morgana. Click here for time, place and cost.

When I interviewed Stephen Elliott earlier this month about his Progressive Reading Series and he mentioned the Sex for America party, I asked him if Liz Henry would be reading the same piece about fucking in the Texas State Capitol that she read in 2005 at LitCrawl on the same program as me. He said “Oh my God, Liz’s story is so freaking good. That’s the one.”

So journalist Karen Solomon wrote a review of the review site Yelp in San Francisco Magazine, and how it’s a one-town biz, and all of the other reasons that have been stated before about the online recommendation system. Well, with a lot more muscle, and from a journalist (vs. blogger, mea culpa). The response? Eater SF gets their bunchie in a wad, and Valleywag gets all huffy that K. Sol has some kind of conflict of interest- as she writes reviews, and SF Mag is in competition with Yelp. SF Eater gets response quotes that are interesting, but… So let’s see, they’re not happy that someone used to reviewing restaurants has taken on the job of writing about a restaurant review site. Let’s go back to the article… was anything actually wrong with it? Lord knows I’m Over Yelp. I’m wondering if the myopic blogger world can’t grasp that 100 reviews of a restaurant in tweener SMS speak is *not* useful in finding a good late night Chinese restaurant. From the front page, I didn’t have to look far: “san-francisco-white-chicks-dating-asian-guys-how-often-do-you-see-it”- join that thread now! Sigh.

This time last year, all eyes were on Barry Bonds as the Giants tried for months to get him to sign a one-year contract that wouldn’t make them look like they were bending over backwards… or maybe just bending over. In this, they failed.

This year, Barry is gone from the team and under indictment, and the winter has seen few deals. They re-signed reliever Brad Hennesey ten days ago. And today they officially lost Pedro Feliz, who signed a two-year contract with the Philadelphia Phillies. Feliz, never a fan favorite, spent his entire eight-year career with the Giants, providing a solid but rarely brilliant third base defense, and power from time to time.
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Tonight’s biggest literary event is in Berkeley. Michael Chabon, Ayelet Waldman, Dave Eggers, and Daniel Handler host a $1000-a-head fundraiser for Barack Obama at the home of longtime political activists Linda Schacht and John Gage. They’re among many area writers who support Obama.

The Illinois senator’s first fundraiser in San Francisco was almost a year ago, when the price was $150 a head, not $1000.

Previously:
Stephen Elliott’s Progressive Reading Series
Your local presidential donors

A 49-year-old Michigan woman was under arrest today after the FBI cooperated with northern California law enforcement in response to an ad she placed on Craigslist for a hit man.

The accused met the victim’s husband online and began an affair with him during a weekend in Reno in 2005, later meeting him near the man’s home in Oroville (map), 70 miles north of Sacramento. Craigslist users who responded to her ad for “freelance work” were offered $5000 to kill the man’s wife.

Yesterday Valleywag posted about a house in Noe Valley going to two Google employees for $2.2 million.

The 2500 square foot, 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom house on the corner of Noe and Elizabeth (map) is very nice, sure. And the price is double what it would have been n number of years ago and ten times what it would have been in, say, 1980.

But so what? Is anybody surprised that a great house — and refurbished, too, judging from the pix — in a nice neighborhood is really expensive? And as for Google employees buying it — who else do you think has been propping up the Bay Area real estate market for the last three years?

The rain stopped by this morning, but the National Weather Service was reporting these rainfall amounts over the last 24 hours ending 7:00 AM:
Petaluma — 4.89″
San Rafael — 4.32 ”
Napa — 2.15″
San Francisco* — 3.18″
SFO — 2.48″
Orinda — 2.03″
Downtown Oakland — 1.86″
Moffett Field — 1.36″
San Jose Airport — 0.99″
Ben Lomond — 6.07″

Highway 1 at Devil’s Slide was reopened during the night after being closed by a mudslide on Friday afternoon.
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Flood warning sirens were activated in San Anselmo tonight (map) as San Anselmo Creek approached flood stage after a day of heavy rain.

Hours more rain is forecast for tonight, so police and firefighters were going to local businesses to warn them, and authorities also activated a phone warning system, according to broadcast news reports and the Marin Independent Journal newspaper.

The town, about 15 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County, regularly floods after prolonged rains. The local fire department has a web page with live reports of the creek level, but the site was experiencing heavy use tonight and was difficult to reach.