
mother of god, its official. everyone is running for mayor of oakland. the impending 2010 mayoral election roster is currently bloated with a total of ten, mother fucking ten, candidates, all biffin’ it out. who knew that trying to be the mayor of oakland was so popular, really if one thinks about it, being mayor of oakland is the skinny jeans and post-ironic rasta-colored d.a.r.e. shirt of the political scene right now… frankly we at casual friday feel like this glut of candidates is in part due to ron “take this job and shove it” dellums lowering the bar to such an extraordinary level that basically even we at casual friday feel like we could be the mayor and successfully hold down a second part-time job as well…
none the less, we here at the offices of casual friday have spent countless half-hours pouring through ten largely worthless cadidates that are available to us and have widdeled down our opinions to the following:
rebecca kaplan- stud of the dykes, fun and dope party. she is somewhat fresh in the oakland political scene, but comes with some good ideas on how to manifest some positive, and much needed changes in oakland. she has backed the taxing of weed, is dedicated to making functional public transportation a reality rather than a cute joke, and helped update the puritanical cabaret laws in oakland. and she also got mouthy with the cops at the oscar grant “riot”, which always makes our heart go pitter patter.
jean quan- a more boring, but very qualified candidate. while we don’t want to take her moonlit make-out party walk around lake merritt with her, as we do kaplan, we will however recognize that she is a broad who could get the job done. quan has fought to save music programs in public schools, feels that cops need to be more integrated in the “community” they work in, and has had the balls to call perata out on his numerous manifestation of bullshit.
so we like these two. we’d take either or both of them, though ultimately our allegiances lie with kaplan…
as to those we feel poison towards, are, not surprisingly, king of the hell-beast pigfuckers don perata. now donny boy is a slime bag supreme, not only is he flagrantly disregarding the election spending caps that oakland has in place, he has time and again shown that he is lazy, big into cronyism, and is corrupt as fuck. he sodimized the oakland public school system and in 2002 threatened then-oakland schools super intendant dennis chaconas with godfather-esque violence after he (chaconas) failed to hire perata’s buddy. perata has been very closely involved in three separate incidences of money laundering. he also has a face you just want to punch.
in addition to all of the aforementioned is perata’s lastest fuck you, aka the crazy mayoral candidacy of marcie hodge. the hodge candidacy is a very likely to be a perata-backed scheme to block votes that kaplan and quan might get in what is boiling down to a very tight election. conspiracy theory? well perata helped hodge the fuck out in her 2006 bid for city council and the amount of money that she is blowing on glossy leaflets and billboards is huge, and is further sketchified by the fact she will not disclose the source of her campaign contributions/funds. if we could pick a song to soundtrack the hodge-perata relationship it would 100% be “master of puppets” by metallica. not only is hodge dumb as a rock in her own right, she herself has been a source of scandal after poorly managing the peralta school district and using the districts credit card for personal use.
this is a similar, though vastly dumbed down, situation that manifested in 2000 with bush sliding nadar money to help draw votes away from gore in what was a very close election… so there you have our illustrious opinions on the impending races- the good, the bad, and the ugly… or more correctly: the awesome, the good, the evil, and the stupid.
and, rebecca kaplan, the offer totally stands if you would like to take a romantic stroll around whatever oakland landmark you chose with us.
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