Bookworm Room

Tweet I am distrustful of television, since it often creates a false reality.  When the Loma Prieta earthquake hit San Francisco in 1989, I was out of town.  The images shown on CNN made it look as if the whole city was in ruins.  I was terrified about what had happened to my family and [...]

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Tweet Years ago, when I first became aware of the blogosphere, I noticed a single huge dividing line between Progressive and conservative political writers:  the former have dirty mouths.  Their blogs are filled with references to human waste and human sexual acts, all spelled out in the crudest terms.  Interestingly enough, I see that at [...]

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Tweet A quick, and personal, history of San Francisco’s decline from the 1960s to the present I was born and grew up in San Francisco.  My very earliest memories of the City just predate the advent of the hippies.  At that time, the City was a solid amalgam of working class people, middle class people, [...]

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Tweet I don’t know if it’s a local, state or federal tax, but when I go into a restaurant that provides both eat-in and take-out services, I always order take-out, regardless of whether I plan to sit at one of their tables or hit the road.  Why?  Because the government imposes a tax on food [...]

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Tweet You know how, every holiday season, there’s that one weekend that is the busiest weekend of the whole year?  That’s my weekend.  We attended a show last night in the City, my son has a concert today in the City, we have a business dinner tonight on the Peninsula, tomorrow my son has another [...]

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Tweet Liberals are very gung-ho for a health care bill that will see the government take over 1/6 of the American economy, that will dramatically raise taxes, that will (if all goes according to plan) destroy private sector insurance, that will force Americans to “buy” insurance or pay a penalty, that will force all Americans [...]

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Tweet Side by side headlines on the SF Comical’s online front page today: Rage at UC fee hike in L.A., Berkeley protests – Nanette Asimov,Jill Tucker State budget drowning in red ink for next year – Wyatt Buchanan

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Tweet It wasn’t a huge turn-out, but it was an imaginative, committed, informed turn-out — and that, in the long run, will matter a great deal.  Check out The City Square for photographs of yesterday’s “Sick-In” in San Francisco protesting PelosiCare.

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Tweet To protest against the Healthcare Bill, instead of a 60s sit-in, Bay Area Patriots will be having a “SICK-IN” We are sick to death of being ignored; We are sick to death over what the Health Care bill will do to us and our children; We are sick to death having this govt intrude [...]

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Tweet The news coverage about protests against Barack Obama during his visit to October 15 San Francisco visit was a bit lethargic.  It’s just not as much fun, I guess, when the protesters aren’t bad-mouthing Bush or pretending to be waterboarded.  However, I can offer you two offsets to that colorless coverage:  A great article [...]

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Tweet I happen to know, because I gave notice here at this blog and because I’m in touch with the organizers, that large numbers of conservatives and independents were planning on protesting Barack Obama’s appearance in San Francisco.  I also know, again because I noted it here, that Obama was afraid to show his face [...]

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Tweet If you’re ticked off about the Senate Committee vote on health care on Tuesday, and worried about what’s coming up next, TELL THAT TO PRESIDENT OBAMA!! Thursday, October 15, 2009 Powell across from Westin St. Francis, San Francisco Around 5:00 pm Bring signs but, please, keep them focused on the issue, which is that [...]

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Tweet Earlier this year, San Joaquin County was horribly shaken when 8-year old Sandra Cantu was kidnapped and murdered.  It was even more shaken when it turned out that the murdering rapist was a woman.  The San Joaquin County prosecutor’s office today announced that it would seek the death penalty against Melissa Huckaby, the woman [...]

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Tweet Conservatives have spent years railing at the liberal propensity to by-pass the legislative process and head straight for the courts.  It turns out, though, that there are situations in which liberals prefer to avoid the court all together — and will take legislative action to try to avoid it.  Those situations arise when a [...]

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Tweet I was down at San Francisco Fisherman’s Wharf the other day, waiting for a ferry.  While there, I admired the sea lions sunning themselves on the wooden rafts off of Pier 39.  They’re a great local and tourist attraction.  Very smelly, but very amusing. I had my iPhone so I took an indistinct picture.  [...]

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Tweet When the San Francisco School Board voted to do away with the district’s JROTC program, program supporters (unsurprisingly, perhaps because of the military elements of JROTC) fought back.  And they won!

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Tweet Despite the fact that it is a voluntary organization, that the costs to the school system are minimal, and that the kids who join it do well in school and are exemplary citizens, San Francisco’s hostility to the JROTC knows no bounds, and the school system has done its best to destroy the organization.  [...]

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Tweet Last year, I blogged repeatedly about the gross debauchery that characterized San Francisco’s Bay to Breaker’s race, a race run through public streets and ending up in ostensibly family-friendly Golden Gate Park.  Apparently I wasn’t the only one who was shocked and disgusted.  This year, both the City and the race’s sponsors are banning [...]

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Tweet Civil disobedience, San Francisco style:  The police are in on it too.  No surprise, of course.  Many of these are the same police who voluntarily, or under orders, turn a blind eye to the public nudity, sexual activity, and urination that accompanies, not only fetish festivals such as Up Your Alley or the Folsom [...]

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Tweet It’s a done deal:  the JROTC is out in San Francisco and kids instead get to learn first aid.  All of the discipline, pride, unit cohesion, drilling, and athletic credit that went with JROTC have just been replaced with a first aid class. Now I’m all in favor of first aid.  I deeply admire [...]

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Tweet I found fascinating the fact that, even in San Francisco, the most liberal, diverse, open to everything (except conservatism and religion) city in the whole US (except for Berkeley), women are not making headway in politics: In a year when gender has played a significant role in the presidential campaign – 18 million people [...]

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Tweet San Francisco recently abandoned its policy of giving refuge to illegal immigrants if they were juvenile offenders.  Now, unsurprisingly, we learn that criminals were taking advantage of the City’s useful idiot policy and playing it for all it was worth.  You see, almost a third of the so-called “juvenile” offenders the City was protecting [...]

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Tweet Many years ago, I did a post noting how extraordinarily scatalogical the true believers on the Left are.  To me, that obsession with fecal matter bespeaks a certain, how shall I say it?, immaturity.  It’s all of a piece with what Diana West writes about in her book, The Death of the Grown-Up: How [...]

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Tweet I won’t comment; I’ll just point out: A long overdue civil grand jury report released Wednesday says that the city should be proud of getting over 4,000 homeless people into housing since 2004 but distressed at the scene on the streets. Panhandling, public drunkenness and street loitering are still an unpleasant reality downtown. The [...]

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Tweet In another of those hastily called School Board meetings — a tactic used to ensure that JROTC supporters will be less likely to attend the meeting — the SF School Board cut the legs off the JROTC program by denying it PE credits: San Francisco public high schools will no longer award physical education [...]

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