Oakland Focus News | Oakland News Online Blog

In the "now we've seen everything" department, we have former eBay Chairman and CEO Meg Whitman, running for California Governor against Jerry Brown, opening a campaign office in Oakland that shows she and her staff are passive-agressive in their approach to this heavily minority city. The Meg Whitman Oakland campaign office, located near the intersection of Lakeshore and Lake Park and not far from Lake Merritt, is staffed by two young white men; I've not seen anyone of color as of this writing. The gentlemen are nice, but very careful in their communications, almost neurotically so. This reflects Meg Whitman's message to Oaklanders, but even more so is a sign that is placed in three parts of the large bay window. It reads: "SMILE. YOU'RE ON CANDID CAMERA! 24-HOUR VIDEO SURVELLAINCE" Yep. They misspelled "surveillance." So, not only is Meg Whitman afraid of Oakland, she's so fearful she can't even spell "su...

OK, Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin just can't resist putting her foot in her mouth regarding President Obama. She should just admit he's doing a great job and she's got the hots for him. Instead, Palin, who's known for creating new words like "refudiate," had to talk before she realized where she was. According to The Huffington Post , Palin said Obama had no time to be at the U.S. Mexico boarder but was on ABC's The View instead . Now, was Sarah Palin at the U.S. Mexico boarder ? No. She was in Alaska. Alaska. Great. I guess Sarah Palin's going to tell us she can see the U.S. Mexico boarder from her window, right? If Palin were serious, she'd have made her statement from, yep, the U.S. Mexico boarder, but its too late for that. Anyway, going down there is the political kiss of death for any elected official or person running for office. If Sarah Palin is, well, frankly, stupid enough to go down there, she can kiss any idea...

Children's Fairyland and Don Macleay in the Oakland Mayor's Race, have urgent announcements in today's Oakland news. Don Macleay, the Green Party candidate running for for Mayor of Oakland, sent out this email for 100 signatures he needs from you this Saturday: Nomination signatures needed. Sat. July 31 10AM Friends, For the campaign to take the next step I need 100 Oakland voters to sign for me. We are collecting signatures all this week. You can contact me, Jan, Greg or Michael. To make it easy we are going to meet at Cafe Dejena on Saturday July 31st at 10 AM. It is at 3939 MLK corner of 40th right near the MacArthur BART EASY to get to on bike, foot and car and easy to park. http://www.cafedejena.com We will have nomination petitions to sign and voter registration cards if you need them. And, now is a good time to donate because the campaign is now finally officially under way. http://macleay4mayor.org/donate.html Don Macleay Children's F...

Wow. American Idol is in a state of chaos: J-Lo, Jennifer Lopez, is in as a judge; Kara DioGuardi was fired as a judge, and Ellen DeGeneres quit from being a judge after just one season, and less than a year. Now, according to TMZ, it's Randy Jackson, Jennifer Lopez, and Steven Tyler as the three-judge panel. Still, American Idol' s not the same without Simon Cowell; then again, it's ratings were tanking with Simon Cowell. I said "YEAH" when I first got the word Simon was leaving , and I stand by that. Sometimes the dude could be just plain mean. OK, people got a kick out of it and watched, but eventually they tired of his act. Now, American Idol' s real problem is that there are too many freaking American Idol -type shows. The formula has been over saturated. Think about it. We have Britain's Got Talent , America's Got Talent , So You Think You Can Dance , Dancing With The Stars , and a few shows I've left out of my memory. And t...

Montana Fishburne, the daughter of famed actor, Laurence Fishburne, is certainly making her dad an unhappy camper as she's now called "Chippy D" and is a porn star. According to MissJia.com via TMZ.com, Montana Fishburne thanks her hotness Kim Kardashian for the idea. She says it was Kim Kardashian's sex tape that gave her inspiration. Laurence Fishburne is the famous TV and movie actor best known for playing Mobius in the Matrix film series. But what was going on at home? 19-year-old Montana Fishburne told the site CarltonJordan.com that she had a lot of at-home experience in playing a porn actress. Uh...what? No word on what Laurence Fishburne thinks about all of this, yet. And according to her Twitter account, Kim Kardashian's too busy grinding with Dallas Cowboys Wide Receiver Miles Austin to even care: time to shine ;-) RT @MilesAustiniii -@kimkardashian rise and grind. ;) about 24 hours ago via web Stay tuned.

What's interesting to learn about Bay Area venture capital firms, and on the heels of Thursday's TechCrunch Summer Party hosted by August Capital , is that not every one focuses on the United States. In the case of Tano Capital, the San Mateo, California investment firm founded by Charles E. Johnson, the former President of Franklin Templeton investments, who's its managing director , has its investment interests primarily in India and China. The firm, established in 2007, started with a few small investments, but then ramped up its activity considerably in 2009. It started with an investment in AltoBeam Technology, a China-based designer of digital TV chipsets. Then Tano placed $2.2 million in TongXue.com , a Chinese-based social network, that's become one of the 50,000 largest websites in the World (and with a really cool animated activity map). In 2010, Tano Capital's activity increased, to the point that it has now as many deals in play as it did in al...

According to Bob Egelko and Henry K. Lee of the San Francisco Chronicle , the man who terrorized Oakland (causing Adams Point residents to take to online chat rooms about the helicopter and shooting noise) was a parolee named Byron Williams who hated left-wing politicians and had on a bullet-proof vest.  In other words, a Tea Party sympathizer. That he was on the Oakland stretch of 1-580 may have been no accident, considering Oakland's a hot bed of left-wing political activity. Byron Williams also reads like a Tea Party sympathizer, and not exactly the warm and fuzzy kind. More like the kind that wants to harm you if you disagree with him. Rush Limbaugh's a Tea Party hero Is this what we're coming too? A Northern California man who's mother says was upset by "the way Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items." Another Tea Party-type nut? Doesn't that sound something like Joe Stack , the man who flew his plane into the ...