We wrote in Saturday’s paper that the GOP appears to be building fund-raising momentum heading into the 2010 elections.

Here’s another data point: the Democratic National Committee said it raised about $8 million in September. That’s less than the Republican National Committee, which raised $8.8 million in the same time period, and the second month running the RNC has pulled ahead.

Overall, the Democrats are still ahead, with $139.4 million raised to date compared to $125 million for the GOP.

That edge is attributable in part to the Democratic fund-raising arms for House and Senate candidates, both of which out-raised their Republican counterparts by nearly two-to-one margins last month.

The GOP resurrection, meanwhile, is being aided by a rise in small donors. In some of the most competitive 2010 Senate races, Republican candidates raised more than the Democrats did in the most-recent quarter.

Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman — who disputed media reports that she had never voted in the 1980's — was a registered Republican voter in San Francisco during that decade, the Chronicle has learned.

Whitman registered to vote in San Francisco on Sept. 22, 1982, and was still on the city voter rolls as of 1985, according to elections data microfiche stored in the San Francisco Public Library and obtained through a public records act request.

The records from the San Francisco Dept. of Elections were recovered last week from storage and obtained by the Chronicle today.

Alarmed by the spread of the H1N1 flu, local hospitals restricted visitors this week, barring children and capping the number of visitors a patient can see at once.

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center this week raised the minimum age for visitors from 12 to 18 and restricted the number of visitors for patients at greatest risk of becoming infected with H1N1, including those in labor and delivery, or in pediatric and neonatal intensive care units, according to Dr. Rekha Murthy, medical director of hospital epidemiology at Cedars-Sinai.

Murthy said restrictions on younger visitors make sense because children are at greater risk of catching the H1N1 flu, and may infect others before they show symptoms.

CHICAGO, IL – In a world exclusive, Oprah Winfrey will interview former Alaska
governor Sarah Palin for an episode of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" to air
Monday, November 16, 2009. Winfrey and Palin will meet for the very first
time on the episode, which will mark Palin's first interview to discuss her
upcoming book, "Going Rogue: An American Life" and her first-ever
appearance on the "Oprah" show.

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin burst onto the national political scene as
running mate for Senator John McCain in the 2008 presidential election. Now,
following her decision to step down as governor of her home state of Alaska,
and on the eve of the release of her first book, Palin will speak first to Oprah
in a world exclusive interview.

"The Oprah Winfrey Show: Exclusive – Oprah Talks to Sarah Palin" airs on
Monday, November 16, 2009

The White House and Democratic leaders are offering doctors a deal: They’ll freeze cuts in Medicare payments to doctors in exchange for doctors’ support of healthcare reform.

At a meeting on Capitol Hill last week with nearly a dozen doctors groups, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said the Senate would take up separate legislation to halt scheduled Medicare cuts in doctor payments over the next 10 years. In return, Reid made it clear that he expected their support for the broader healthcare bill, according to four sources in the meeting.
+++++
Obamacare – quid pro quo

But I do wonder if it’s the Scozzafava campaign that’s in trouble–with a candidate who supports card check, who is unwilling to say she’d oppose a health care bill that raises taxes or includes abortion coverage, and who is so reluctant to answer questions that she has someone with her campaign call the cops when she’s questioned by a reporter who is (if I may say so) polite–if a bit persistent.

The United States cannot wait for problems surrounding the legitimacy of the Afghan government to be resolved before making a decision on troops, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said.

Gates, speaking to reporters on board a plane traveling to Tokyo, described the situation in Afghanistan as an evolutionary process that would not improve dramatically overnight, regardless of what course is taken following the country's flawed August election.

"I see this as a process, not something that's going to happen all of the sudden," Gates said.

"I believe that the president will have to make his decisions in the context of that evolutionary process."

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell added that Gates believed the issue of the Afghan government's legitimacy went well beyond the question of whoever would be declared winner of the election,

Vic Mizzy, the songwriter who wrote the catchy theme songs to "The Addams Family" and "Green Acres" television shows, has died. He was 93.

His manager Jonathan Wolfson says Mizzy died Saturday at his home in Bel Air. He didn't know the cause of death.

Mizzy got his start in vaudeville and wrote songs that were recorded by Dean Martin, Doris Day, Perry Como and Billie Holiday in the 1940s and '50s.

His hits included "The Whole World Is Singing My Song" and "With a Hey and a Hi and a Ho-Ho-Ho."

Mizzy has said that he didn't mind if people only remember him for the finger snaps at the start of the "Addams Family" theme song. After all, he said, "two snaps got me a mansion in Bel Air."
++++++++++
Loved both shows and both themes.
RIP

Iran opened two days of nuclear talks with the United States, Russia and France on Monday with veiled public threats that it could back away from an agreement to ship more than three-quarters of its stockpile of nuclear fuel out of the country, unless the West acceded to Iranian demands to provide it with new fuel.

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s forthcoming autobiography has been at the top of the Amazon book charts for weeks, and it hasn’t even been released yet. At least in the eyes of the political Left, she is now perhaps America’s most visible national Republican.

But new Rasmussen Reports national telephone surveying finds Palin losing handily in face-to-face march-ups with her two likeliest challengers for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

Among likely Republican primary voters, Palin now trails former Arkansas governor-turned-Fox-TV-host Mike Huckabee by 20 points – 55% to 35%.

When her opponent is ex-Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, Palin loses by 15 – 52% to 37%.

The Senate Finance Committee filed its sweeping health care reform bill Monday and its release served largely to highlight the divisions among Democrats over the direction of reform.

The massive, 1,500 page bill is expected to serve as the backbone for Democratic reform efforts going forward and five senators expressed concerns about one of its main provisions, a 40 percent tax on high-end insurance plans.

The tax is designed to pay for reform and lower costs by making the so-called Cadillac plans less attractive for insurers to offer. Under the bill, a plan that costs an individual more than $8,000 and a family more than $21,000 annually would be subject to the tax.

But Democratic Sens. John Kerry, Chuck Schumer, Robert Menendez, Debbie Stabenow and Jay Rockefeller are concerned that the threshold that defines a Cadillac plan is too low and will whack middle-class people.

A half-marathoner and two other runners died during the Detroit marathon on Sunday, organizers said.

Daniel Langdon, 36, of Laingsburg, collapsed at about 9:02 a.m. between the 11- and 12-mile markers, said Rich Harshbarger, vice president of consumer marketing for the Detroit Media Partnership.

Rick Brown, 65, of Marietta, Ohio, collapsed at 9:17 a.m., near where Langdon went down, and 26-year-old Jon Fenlon of Waterford collapsed at about 9:18 a.m., just after finishing the half-marathon in 1:53:37, Harshbarger said.

It was unclear whether Brown and Langdon were participating in the 13.1-mile half marathon or the full race.

Harshbarger told the Free Press that there were at least six medical stations on the race course and that emergency personnel were on the scene within seconds.

Every runner must sign a medical release form, and they are encouraged to talk to their doctors before they run the race, Harshbarger said.

Those words could prove prescient after Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley said last week he wants to shutter clinics that sell pot for profit. Cooley's plan is the latest salvo in a prolonged conflict in California over whether medical marijuana is truly having its intended effect or is being abused by the larger population.

Until recently, raids on clinics typically led to federal prosecutions, but Cooley's remarks and similar ones from Attorney General Jerry Brown signal a new approach to clear the haze left by Proposition 215, the 1996 state ballot measure that allowed sick people with referrals from doctors and an identification card to smoke pot.