Free Republic

Here are my selections for the most pretentious science fiction - fantasy TV shows (RELAX - THE CYNICISM IS ALL IN FUN!): 5. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997 - 2003) - Pretty much a chick series. 4. V (original - including miniseries' - 1983 - 1985) - Nazi lizard people invade the earth. 3. Alien Nation (1989 - 1990) - A message series with one message - racism is evil. We get it. Next. (amazingly enough, this series spawned five made for TV movies, which were viewed by all 500 of its fans) 2. Beauty and the Beast (1987 -...

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom made a surprise announcement Friday afternoon that he was dropping out of the gubernatorial race, leaving the Democrats with no declared candidate for the top statewide office. Attorney General Jerry Brown has opened an exploratory committee for governor but has yet to formally announce his candidacy. Nonetheless, Brown has opened a wide lead over Newsom in both fund-raising and in polls. "It is with great regret I announce today that I am withdrawing from the race for governor of California," Newsom said in a statement. "With a young family and responsibilities at city hall, I...

Marin California has Conservatives. It may not be much but it’s a start. Marin County Ca. just north of San Francisco has its own Conservative group. They are the one responsible for the San Francisco Tea Parties and protest committees for both Obama and Sen. Boxer when they made appearances in the area. Information is spread through several websites including the Marin Conservative Forum http://www.meetup.com/Marin-Conservative-Forum/. You may want to join and leave your two cents worth on lively discussions. If you live in or around the Bay Area you may want to join this group to help turn the tide...

...I didn't expect to be a crime victim on the streets of San Francisco. ... But it happened, on a beautiful evening this past weekend near Union Square. As crimes go, it could have been much worse. I was helping an elderly man when somebody sneaked up behind me and stole my garment bag. I lost a nice suit, a nice pair of shoes and overnight toiletries. Not the end of the world, but frustrating. The real crime was the vulnerability of it all....

More Photo Galleries 1 of 13 John Ruys, left, of San Ramon embraces friend Stephen Yardbrough of San Francisco at the annual Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco on Sunday. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/g/a/2009/09/25/folsom_st_fair.DTL&o= [Sorry, this was filed under animals]

On the night of Feb. 16, 1970, Brian McDonnell was sorting through bulletins on the Teletype machine at Park Police Station in the Upper Haight neighborhood of San Francisco. The respected 44-year-old sergeant was checking results from the recent union elections, in which he was running for station representative. Steady winter rain fell outside. At 10:45 p.m., a bomb planted on the ledge outside a nearby window went off. McDonnell took the brunt of the blast to his body and face. The explosive was packed with inch-long industrial fence staples, which severed his jugular vein and lodged in his brain....

Newsom wants to charge stores that sell sodas (09-17) 20:36 PDT -- Calling soda the new tobacco, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom will introduce legislation this fall that would charge a fee to retailers that sell sugary beverages. Newsom would need voter approval to tax individual cans of soda and sugary juice, but only needs approval from the Board of Supervisors to levy a fee on retailers. His legislation would charge grocery stores like Safeway and big-box stores, but would not affect restaurants that serve sodas. Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/17/MNF619OSF4.DTL#ixzz0RfEhGzU6

A San Francisco sex group's four-year strategic plan, aimed to "change the way Americans think about sex" by desensitizing mainstream American culture to aberrant sexual practices, has been leaked. The document reveals a well thought out strategy to acclimatize the American public to everything from the practice of sadomasochism to orgies and every other "consensual" sexual behavior besides. "CSC will be taking the lead in framing the sex positive discourse in our culture," writes the Center for Sex and Culture in its 2007-2011 strategic plan. "In this ambitious vision of the future, certainly more than five years distant, CSC will...

San Francisco -- A San Francisco group billing itself as "the best in LGBT media" is claiming hundreds of public schools in California have signed up to show its films and use accompanying discussion materials. One film features a boy "coming out" by wearing his mother's bikini. Another film incorporates Native American spiritualism to cast LGBT (lesbian, gay bisexual and transgender) persons as "two-spirit" people. The films and school materials are being distributed by Youth in Motion, a partnership between Frameline and Gay-Straight Alliance Network. YIM can be accessed here (warning: may contain offensive content). The films are accompanied by...

Watching the local powerhouse 10 o'clock news here in the Bay Area and they opened up with the following stories. 1) Biden's visit in SF to support Boxer 2) Local lightning fires that started 1/2 small locag grass fires 3) A Richmond gang related shooting 4) An Oakland drive by shooting 5) Another Richmond shooting 6) A teen relationship story 7) A local healthcare townhall meeting 8) Obama in MN. 9) FINALLY, at 10:15 they reported the 9-12 protest in DC and spent a grand total of about :27 seconds reporting on it.

September 7, 2009 Mass murder at 30,000 feet: Islamic extremists guilty of airline bomb plot Philippe Naughton Three British Muslims were found guilty today of conspiracy to murder thousands of passengers and crew in an unprecedented airline bomb plot that could have proved as deadly as the 9/11 attacks. After a retrial at Woolwich Crown Court, jurors found the ringleader, Abdulla Ahmed, and two other men, Assad Sarwar and Tanvir Hussain, guilty of plotting to use liquid bombs to blow up airliners en route from Heathrow to the United States. Another defendant, Umar Islam, was found guilty of a more...

Just heard a report on-air from THE MOB protesting Barbara Boxer in Marin County, CA. She's signing her book? (can't even imagine the drivel) at a bookstore in Corte Madera. According to on-scene report, anti-Boxer outnumber pro-Boxer 5 to 1. Best handwritten sign: She has time to write a book, but not read the bill.

Brian Sussman (www.KSFO.com) announced this rally/protest. (The following is edited. More detailed info at www.bayareapatriots.com). Bay Area Patriots - Upcoming Event: Healthcare Protest! WHEN: Friday, August 14th. TIME: 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. WHERE: Justin Herman Plaza in San Francisco. See www.bayareapatriots.com for directions, parking, maps. PLANS: A "Mock Town Hall Meeting." Since the Speaker won't come to us and answer our questions, we'll bring the Speaker to you! A Moment of Being Silenced…bring tape if you so desire as we'll have 15 minutes of silence! A Candle Vigil…for our missing representatives. Healthcare professionals, please wear your uniforms and lab coats,...

Hoping to protect one of the Bay Area's main water supplies after the next major earthquake, construction crews will soon embark on a job that sounds like something out of a Jules Verne novel: building a massive, 5-mile-long tunnel underneath San Francisco Bay.The project is believed to be the first major tunnel ever built across the bay.Using a giant boring machine, workers will carve a 14-foot high corridor through clay, sand and bedrock from Menlo Park to Newark as deep as 103 feet below the bay floor. They'll then run a 9-foot-high steel water pipe through the middle."All the experts...

Video at link Nancy Pelosi claims protesters are "carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on healthcare."

The National Endowment for the Arts may be spending some of the money it received from the Recovery and Reinvestment Act to fund nude simulated-sex dances, Saturday night "pervert" revues and the airing of pornographic horror films at art houses in San Francisco. ... [S]ome of the NEA's grants are spicing up more than the economy. A few of their more risque choices have some taxpayer advocates hot under the collar, including a $50,000 infusion for the Frameline film house, which recently screened Thundercrack, "the world's only underground kinky art porno horror film, complete with four men, three women and...

Swine flu claims NorCal nurse, 2 new moms Associated Press - July 31, 2009 1:14 PM ET SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - Health officials say a Sacramento-area cancer nurse's death is the first among California health care workers related to swine flu. Mercy San Juan Medical Center spokesman Bryan Gardner says officials at the Carmichael hospital do not know if 51-year-old Karen Ann Hays contracted the virus on the job. She died July 17. In the San Francisco Bay area, two new mothers died from the virus, also known as H1N1, shortly after giving birth. A 33-year-old Marin County woman was...

The July 8 issue of Catholic San Francisco covered the 2009 book The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist, by Matt Baglio. The Rite, describes the training and practice of San Francisco-born Father Gary Thomas, a contemporary Bay Area exorcist. In 2005, Father Thomas was sent by San Jose Bishop Patrick McGrath to study in Rome under master exorcist Capuchin Father Carmine De Filippis. Father Thomas observed 80 exorcisms as Fr. De Filippis apprentice. From the Catholic San Francisco, article: “What sets exorcists apart from priests who are skeptical of the ministry may be their biblical belief in the...

Six years ago, homosexual activists made a huge fuss after Harry and Pepper, two male Magellanic penguins, shacked up at the San Francisco Zoo. Among other things, they claimed the birds, by behaving like stereotypical human homosexuals as glorified by network TV and the news media, were breaking homosexual stereotypes. One 2007 Web article was especially fawning (and rather graphic in describing penguin anatomy and reproductive rituals). Theirs was not love at first sight, readers learned, but these "lovebirds, attached at the wing," overcame their differences and fell madly in love. (The attraction purportedly had something to do with Pepper's...

As the economy struggles, and most of us with it, a few more join the seven-figure clubThe number of millionaire families in the Bay Area jumped 10.2 percent, from 123,621 to 136,120, according to a report from Merrill Lynch and Claritas. Similar gains were won by the wealthy in Los Angeles and San Diego, according to The World Wealth Report. What, no word on Fresno? Scott Anderson, a senior economist with Wells Fargo, takes issue with the report. "As a reading of the health of California's wealthy, I'm not sure that's the best indication to go by," Anderson told the...

Hotel foreclosures spread throughout California Andrew S. Ross Sunday, July 12, 2009 The "challenges" for San Francisco's biggest business are coming thick and fast. That oft-used word at last Tuesday's San Francisco Visitors & Convention Bureau luncheon rang loud and clear two days later when the Four Seasons Hotel on Market Street defaulted on a $90 million loan. Those who might have forgotten were reminded that Nob Hill's famed Stanford Court Hotel had gone into receivership two weeks earlier, owing $89 million after its new owners bought the place for $93 million two years ago and spent $32 million in...

Link only - San Francisco to Consider Cat De-Clawing Ban

SAN FRANCISCO—Doughnuts could be a distant memory for San Francisco city workers. They must now follow "healthy meeting" guidelines under a sweeping initiative unveiled by Mayor Gavin Newsom Thursday to encourage better eating. That means less junk food and smaller portions at staff meetings. The mayor is also ordering all city departments to help locate vacant or unused city-owned land that could be used to grow food. Vendors that offer healthy food will get preference for city contracts and permits. All vending machines on city property additionally will have to meet new nutrition standards.

S.F. mayor orders healthy food in cityPosted on: Thursday, 9 July 2009, 19:48 CDT All San Francisco city departments must audit unused land in the city to see if it can be turned into community gardens or farms, the mayor said. In addition, food vendors contracting with the city must offer healthful and sustainable food, all vending machines on city property must offer healthful food options and farmers' markets must begin accepting food stamps, Mayor Gavin Newsom said, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. There also will be no more doughnut shop runs before meetings and conferences held by city workers,...

San Francisco celebrates diversity with the 39th annual Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Parade & Festival this weekend. Dozens of pride-related events take place throughout the Bay Area during the week to entertain the thousands of celebrants making the pilgrimage to San Francisco, but the big weekend party at Civic Center Plaza has been known to draw vast crowds in the hundreds of thousands. This year's event theme keeps the recent struggle for the legalization of same-sex marriage at the forefront of the celebration, drawing the theme concept “In Order to Form a More Perfect Union” from the Preamble to...

Readers of Catholic Online are familiar with the group which calls itself the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.” They claim international membership. One of their most active chapters is located in San Francisco, California. They summarize their mission as “Defining San Francisco Values Since 1979” on their outlandish San Francisco web site. In an editorial in 2007 entitled “Scandal in San Francisco”, I wrote an account of their sacrilegious activities during Holy Mass on October 7, 2007 at the Most Holy Redeemer Parish in San Francisco, California. They hate the Catholic Church because she stands for the truth concerning the dignity...

Reporting from San Francisco -- The assault on Amanda Kiefer at dusk in San Francisco's posh Pacific Heights was extraordinary enough for its cruelty. A stranger, later identified as Alexander Izaguirre, snatched her purse and hopped into an SUV, police say. The driver sped forward to run Kiefer down. Terrified, she leaped onto the hood and saw Izaguirre and the driver laughing. The driver slammed on the brakes, propelling Kiefer to the pavement. Her skull fractured. Blood oozed from her ear. Only after the July 2008 attack did Kiefer learn of the crime's political ramifications. Izaguirre, police told her, was...

She will be in San Francisco to help kick off a new White House push toward volunteerism. Mrs. Obama will deliver the keynote address to the "National Conference on Volunteering and Service" at 5 p.m. More than 4,000 national and international volunteer and service leaders are expected for the three-day conference at the Moscone Center, but the First Lady is clearly the headline act. The visit kicks off United We Serve, a national call to community service from President Obama. Before she hits Moscone, Michelle Obama will join California's First Lady Maria Shriver to help participate in the building of...

Looking to bring new blood into the San Francisco Police Department, Mayor Gavin Newsom has reached outside the city and selected George Gascon, police chief of Mesa, Ariz., to replace outgoing Chief Heather Fong.

Pride Parade, celebration has a political bent Julian Guthrie, Chronicle Staff Writer Sunday, June 14, 2009 The 39th annual San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Parade is June 28 and is scheduled to begin at 10:30 a.m., traveling west along Market Street from Beale Street to Eighth Street. The party will continue at Civic Center, with live music, speakers, food and drinks. All ages are welcome. The event is free. The Pride Parade caps a month of gay-themed festivities and is expected to draw its regular cast of colorful characters and city leaders, gawkers and cheering spectators. There will...

A prisoner who says he was tortured while being held for nearly four years as a suspected terrorist can sue former Bush administration lawyer John Yoo for coming up with the legal theories that justified his alleged treatment, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled Friday. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White's decision marks the first time a government lawyer has been held potentially responsible for the abuse of detainees. "Like any other government official, government lawyers are responsible for the foreseeable consequences of their conduct," White said in refusing to dismiss Jose Padilla's lawsuit against Yoo. If Padilla, now serving...

When the San Francisco school board voted last month to restore the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps program, it seemed that sanity had prevailed -- three years after the board voted to kill the popular program. Finally, the board had put students' welfare ahead of its ruthless political correctness. Wrong. Unless the school board votes to recognize that JROTC fulfills students' high school physical education requirements at Tuesday's board meeting, the board's vote to keep JROTC could be viewed as a conniving stunt and a cruel hoax. If students cannot get PE credit -- as they could before the board...

This Friday would have been slain San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk’s 79th birthday, and California state senator Mark Leno has introduced legislation to mark the date with a state holiday. The bill doesn’t call for a furlough from work, but instead instructs the governor to proclaim a “Harvey Milk Day” and designates “that date as having special significance in the public schools and educational institutions” and encourages them to “conduct suitable commemorative exercises.” The legislation passed muster with the state senate in overwhelming fashion last week. Though only about one in five Californians polled supports the measure, and Governor Arnold...

Around 175 people were arrested in San Francisco while taking part in peaceful protests against a California Supreme Court decision to uphold a ban on same-sex marriage, police said. A spokeswoman for the San Francisco Police Department said the arrests came as demonstrators blocked an intersection near the court building. Those arrested were released at the scene, Sergeant Lyn Tomioka told AFP. California's Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a referendum that outlawed gay marriage, but said 18,000 same-sex weddings carried out before the ban would remain valid. Gay and lesbian activists had sought to overturn the result of a November...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ― Gay marriage supporters are holding a prayer service on the eve of the California Supreme Court's expected ruling on the legality of a voter-approved ban on same-sex nuptials. The group Marriage Equality USA plans to hold the interfaith event Monday night at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. On Tuesday morning, the state's high court plans to rule on a series of lawsuits seeking to overturn Proposition 8. Opponents of the gay marriage ban argue that the issue was improperly put before voters; they say it revised the state constitution's equal protection clause to such a dramatic...

A controversial plan for a suicide barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge is expected to move forward today. The Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District Board of Directors will likely approve a proposal on a plan that calls for a net extending 20 feet below and 20 feet from the side of the bridge. But the design cannot detract too much from the span's graceful, historic look. The barrier would cost $40 to $50 million and take up to three years to complete. But, before funding can be figured out, the bridge district has to get state and federal...

Lionized by Hollywood and California state legislators, the real Milk was a demagogue and pal of Jim Jones. This Friday would have been slain San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk’s 79th birthday, and California state senator Mark Leno has introduced legislation to mark the date with a state holiday. The bill doesn’t call for a furlough from work, but instead instructs the governor to proclaim a “Harvey Milk Day” and designates “that date as having special significance in the public schools and educational institutions” and encourages them to “conduct suitable commemorative exercises.” The legislation passed muster with the state senate in...

The San Francisco Police Department says it will no longer tolerate lewd behavior – including public sex acts and nudity – at a July street fair sponsored by Folsom Street Events, the same group that puts on the annual Folsom Street Fair, a public celebration of sado-masochism. The event in question, the Up Your Alley Fair, is scheduled for Sunday, July 26, in San Francisco's South of Market District on Dore Alley between Folsom and Howard streets. Last year’s event resulted in multiple complaints to the Office of Citizen Complaints against patrol officers assigned to cover the event. Citizens complained...

Rolling Stone closes last S.F. office James Temple, Chronicle Staff Writer Friday, April 17, 2009 SAN FRANCISCO -- Rolling Stone Magazine has severed its last tenuous link to San Francisco, the city where Jan Wenner co-founded the irreverent biweekly 42 years ago to cover the psychedelic rock scene and counterculture movement flourishing in the region. New York publisher Wenner Media will shutter its three-person office at 1700 Montgomery St., spokesman Mark Neschis said. It housed one Rolling Stone sales representative, who will relocate to Los Angeles. The other two employees, a Men's Journal representative and an assistant, are being laid...

Size Of San Francisco Tea Party Protest Shows Obama's In Hot Water April 15, 2009 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - Despite a concerted effort by the MSM to ignore and or belittle the burgeoning conservative Tea Party movement, on this bright April tax day at least 1,200 citizens showed up in the belly of the beast, San Francisco, to protest the Obama administration. Led by a citizen coalition including KSFO firebrand talker Melanie Morgan, the group assembled in front of Civic Center and then marched on Speaker Pelosi's office at 450 Golden Gate Avenue. In dramatic contrast...

San Franciscans have recently been finding themselves in the uncomfortable position of riding around on public buses plastered with the words “ISLAM - Submission to God.” I say “uncomfortable” because San Francisco is famously amongst the most secular and non-religious cities in the nation. But there has been nary a peep of comment or protest about these ubiquitous in-your-face ads, which are shown here in photos taken on March 2 in San Francisco. Such was not the case a few weeks ago in Ft. Lauderdale, however, which is one of the cities where the ads first appeared on buses. As...

The family of a father and two sons slain last year in San Francisco filed a lawsuit Friday, blaming the city's sanctuary policy for illegally shielding the suspected gunman from earlier deportation despite his record of "extreme violence." The suit - lodged in San Francisco Superior Court - asserts that the city sanctuary policy was a "substantial factor" in the June 22, 2008, slayings of Tony Bologna, 48, and his sons Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16. The city attorney's office declined to comment. Lawyers for Bologna's wife and his two surviving children assert in the suit that the alleged gunman,...

The protest remained peaceful until the main group arrived at Civic Center Plaza. There, a couple hundred pro-Israel protesters waving Israeli flags were waiting for the larger contingent, which included many pro-Palestine protesters. The pro-Palestine group broke off from the larger demonstration to confront the Israel supporters, who were carrying signs including "Hamas, stop using children as human shields." Both sides yelled angrily at each other and some protesters got into a physical fight, shoving each other. Police arrested at least two people. About 100 police in riot gear were at the scene, and a dozen police vans were parked...

n the 2008 calendar year, the City and County of San Francisco had nearly 9,000 employees who were paid at least $100,000. Find out who they were, what departments they worked for and how much they made by searching the database below. To perform a search, you can leave the fields blank or on "select" if you want broad results. For more narrow results, you can enter a person's name or select from the drop-down menus.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, worried about the fate of The Chronicle and other financially struggling newspapers, urged the Justice Department Monday to consider giving Bay Area papers more leeway to merge or consolidate business operations to stay afloat. In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, released by Pelosi's office late Monday, the San Francisco Democrat asked the department to weigh the public benefit of saving The Chronicle and other papers from closure against the agency's antitrust mission to guard against anti-competitive behavior. "We must ensure that our policies enable our news organizations to survive and to engage in the...

San Francisco Even in a culture in which sex toys are a booming business and Oprah Winfrey discusses living your best life in the bedroom, a coed live-in commune dedicated to the female orgasm hovers at the extremes. The founder of the One Taste Urban Retreat Center, Nicole Daedone, sees herself as leading “the slow-sex movement,” one that places a near-exclusive emphasis on women’s pleasure — in which love, romance and even flirtation are not required. ... A core of 38 men and women — their average age the late 20s — live full time in the retreat center, a...

If you'd like a reading on how the economy is affecting the average San Franciscan, you could call an economist. You could study wages and layoffs. You might even graph the rise of foreclosures. Or you could stop into the Provident Loan Association on Mission Street behind the Old Mint. "It's heartbreaking," said manager Ben Shemano. "We have people bringing in their last treasures, filled with unrealistic hopes and expectations." Shemano and others at Provident don't like to think of it as a pawn shop. There are no handguns, toaster ovens or electric guitars in the window. The store -...

The San Francisco Police Department Park Station bombing occurred on February 16, 1970, when a pipe bomb filled with shrapnel detonated on the ledge of a window at the San Francisco Police Department's Golden Gate Park station. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, "Investigators in the early '70s said the bombing likely was the work of the Weather Underground, and not the Black Liberation Army,"but the crime was never solved. Brian V. McDonnell, a police sergeant, was fatally wounded in its blast; Robert Fogarty, another police officer, was severely wounded in his face and legs and was partially blinded. No...

San Franciscans concerned with a lack of government transperancy rest easy. Twitter is coming to the rescue. Everybody's favorite mayor running for governor, Gavin Newsom, was at Twitter's headquarters on Tuesday morning to twitterfy San Francisco. Newsom is no stranger to the Twitter phenomenon as he seeks all the attention he can get ahead of his run for governor. He often tweets what he is up to from his cell phone. In fact he tweeted his meeting with the head of Twitter and his recent apperances on network television and his radio show. "Heading over to Twitter HQ tomorrow --...