I don’t mean to stray from the original purpose of this blog, which is to cover the politics of encampments and policing in Oakland, but today I want to revert to something I wrote yesterday, about my cancer diagnosis, and the public response to it. When I say “public” I mean, of course, members of the Coalition, who are the only ones I send the blog to. Dozens of them—of you--wrote in or emailed me, more than for any other post ever, expressing the same sentiments: sorrow, prayers, and thanks.

Anyone who didn’t go through that event on Oct. 20, 1991 can’t know how traumatic it was for the entire city. The Oakland Hills Firestorm was, at the time, the most destructive urban-wildland fire in American history. Two or three miles of the densely-populated hills went up like a blowtorch. True, the flatlands didn’t burn, but they almost did. I worked that fire as a reporter, and was told by every expert I interviewed that, for long hours at a stretch, it looked like both downtown Oakland and downtown Berkeley were doomed.

Soleil Ho was not a good restaurant critic. Take it from me—that was my field. She never captured the trust of readers the way her predecessor, Michael Bauer, did. Maybe that’s why she didn’t last long at the San Francisco Chronicle, where they now allow her to be a political columnist. She’s extremely woke. You can’t work for the Chronicle if you’re not. Her boss, editor-in-chief Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, was brought in by the Hearsts to push the paper to the left, because they were hemmorhaging subscriptions and the Hearsts figured that they could recapture the affections of progressive San Franciscans. It didn’t work, but the Hearsts, and Soleil Ho, haven’t got the memo.

You may have heard that the Oakland City Council’s Finance and Management Committee, responsible for the city’s budget, canceled its most recent scheduled meeting, for Oct. 15, and rescheduled it for Oct. 22. This has many people wondering what’s going on with the people who are tasked with managing Oakland’s money, in such a fiscally precarious time as this. The city’s budget, obviously, is headed toward a fiscal cliff. The sale of the Coliseum to AASEG, on which Thao was depending on, appears increasingly shaky, as AASEG has already missed one scheduled payment. There are conflicting reports on whether a so-called contingency budget is already in effect. The primary victim of all this uncertainty is the Oakland Police Department, which is facing the historic elimination of scores of officers—at a time when the #1 issue among voters is public safety.

He’s made all sorts of dire predictions about what he’ll do on his first day if he’s re-elected. Shoplifters will be shot. Heads will be broken. Liberals will be arrested. Illegal immigrants will be deported. The military will descend upon our cities and if there are riots, the soldiers will act with maximum force.