I'm Gina Smith

Rest in peace, Linda Rose Delgado (1958-2008).

I was shocked and surprised to learn today that an old friend, Linda Rose Delgado, passed away this past week. So this site will be going dark in honor of her tomorrow (June 16).

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SF Mayor Newsom condemns CA clerks who won't marry gays. (Reuters)

It's the law here. Upheld by the Supreme Court. So why are some San Diego clerks refusing to marry same-sex couples? Newson wants to know and he isn't happy. Excerpt below.

By Adam Tanner and Mary Milliken

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - San Francisco's Mayor Gavin Newsom, whose fight to allow same-sex weddings won California court approval last week, expressed outrage on Thursday that San Diego County may allow some clerks to decline to wed homosexuals.

A split California Supreme Court ruled a week ago that the state's law barring gays from marrying was unconstitutional and opened the way to such weddings starting in mid-June. The decision came after Newsom forced the issue before the courts by briefly allowing gays to marry in 2004.

On Wednesday, San Diego County Clerk Gregory Smith said he would consider allowing clerks to bow out of processing such marriages if they had moral or religions objections.

"I was pretty shocked about all that, candidly, and pretty outraged," Newsom told Reuters in an interview.

"This is a civil marriage that civil servants have a responsibility to provide, so for civil servants on religious grounds to start passing judgments, they, I think, are breaking the core tenet of what civil service is all about."

"I've got very strong religious beliefs. So now, all of a sudden, I don't have to do certain things, even though that's my responsibility as mayor?"

The latest flap showed that gay marriage remains very contentious in the nation's most populous state even after the legal decision cleared the way to make California only the second U.S. state to allow gays to marry after Massachusetts.

The legal fight could also continue. Late on Thursday, a group opposing gay marriage filed a petition asking the state Supreme Court to rehear the case. 

Many cancer survivors choose to do the wrong thing. (Reuters)

We all know someone with cancer or recovering from cancer, don't we? This article stunned me.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Just 5 percent of U.S. cancer survivors are meeting experts' recommendations on diet, physical activity and cigarette smoking, a new survey shows.

But the more recommendations a cancer survivor did meet, the better his or her health-related quality of life (HRQoL), Dr. Christopher Blanchard, of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, and colleagues found.

"It appears that meeting multiple lifestyle recommendations may not only be beneficial from a cancer recurrence/mortality perspective, but also from a HRQoL perspective," they write in the May 1 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

In 2006, the American Cancer Society issued three recommendations on healthy lifestyle behaviors for America's more than 10 million cancer survivors: get at least 150 minutes of moderate-to-strenuous exercise, or an hour of strenuous physical activity every week; eat at least five servings of fruits and vegetables daily; and quit smoking. But research done in the U.S. and Australia has shown that many cancer survivors do not follow these recommendations.

To investigate the percentage of U.S. cancer survivors who followed the recommendations, and see if doing so had a relationship to health-related quality of life, the researchers surveyed 9,105 survivors of six different types of cancer.

Roughly 15 percent to 19 percent were eating at least five servings of fruit and vegetables daily, the researchers found, while 30 percent to 47 percent were getting the recommended amount of exercise. From 83 percent to 92 percent had quit smoking.

Overall, 5 percent were meeting all three requirements, while 12.5 percent were meeting none. Fewer than 10 percent of survivors of any of the six cancer types were meeting two or more recommendations.

Among breast, prostate, colorectal, bladder, uterine and melanoma survivors -- all of the cancer types the researchers looked at - health-related quality of life rose steadily with the number of lifestyle recommendations met.

In the general U.S. population, the researchers note, an estimated 49 percent meet physical activity recommendations, 24 percent meet the 5-A-Day requirement, and 79.5 percent do not smoke -- the one area where cancer survivors in this study were doing better.

Bush -- political treason in Israel? (Philly Daily News)

An unbelievable article from the Philadelphia Daily News on Bush's bizarre remarks in Israel. Article excerpted below. Thanks to truthout for the link.

By Will Bunch.

I've seen a lot of sad things in American politics in my lifetime -- the resignation of a president who became a national disgrace after he oversaw a campaign of break-ins and cover-ups, another who circumvented the Constitution to trade arms for hostages, and yet is now hailed as national hero. And those paled to what we have seen in the last seven years -- flagrant disregard for the Constitution, the launching of a "pre-emptive" war on false pretenses, and discussions about torture and other shocking abuses inside the White House inner sanctum.

But now it's come to this: A new low that I never imagined was even possible.

President Bush went on foreign soil today, and committed what I consider an act of political treason: Comparing the candidate of the U.S. opposition party to appeasers of Nazi Germany -- in the very nation that was carved out from the horrific calamity of the Holocaust. Bush's bizarre and beyond-appropriate detour into American presidential politics took place in the middle of what should have been an occasion for joy: A speech to Israeli's Knesset to honor that nation's 60th birthday.

But here's what he said:

JERUSALEM (CNN) – In a particularly sharp blast from halfway around the world, President Bush suggested Thursday that Sen. Barack Obama and other Democrats are in favor of "appeasement" of terrorists in the same way U.S. leaders appeased Nazis in the run-up to World War II.

"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," said Bush, in what White House aides privately acknowledged was a reference to calls by Obama and other Democrats for the U.S. president to sit down for talks with leaders like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"We have heard this foolish delusion before," Bush said in remarks to the Israeli Knesset. "As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American Senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

As a believer in free speech, I think Bush has a right to say what he wants, but as a President of the United States who swore to uphold the Constitution, his freedom also carries an awesome and solemn responsibility, and what this president said today is a serious breach of that high moral standard.

Of course, there are differences of opinion on how America should handle Iran, and that's why we're having an election here at home, to sort these issues out -- hopefully with respect and not with emotional and inaccurate appeals. Not only is the president's comment a gross misrepresentation of Barack Obama's stance on the issue, but ironically, it comes just a day after his own Secretary of State, Robert Gates, said of Iran: "We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage . . . and then sit down and talk with them." Is Gates a Nazi appeaser-type, too? And Bush has been hardly consistent on this point, either. Look at his own dealings with oil-rich Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, linked to deadly terror attacks like Pan Am Flight 103.

But what Bush did in Israel this morning goes well beyond the accepted confines of American political debate, When the president speaks to a foreign parliament on behalf of our country, his message needs to be clear and unambiguous. Our democracy may look messy to outsiders, and we may have our disagreements with some sharp elbows thrown around, but at the end of the day we are not Republicans or Democrats or liberals or conservatives.

We are Americans.

And you, Mr. Bush, are the leader of us all. To use a diplomatic setting on foreign soil to score a cheap political point at home is way beneath your office, way beneath your country, and way beneath the people you serve.  You have been handed an office once uplifted to great heights by fellow countrymen from Washington to Lincoln to Roosevelt to Eisenhower, and have plunged it so deeply into the Karl-Rove-and-Rush-Limbaugh-fueled world of political destruction and survival of all costs that have lost all perspective -- and all sense of decency. To travel to Israel and to associate a sitting American senator and your possible successor in the Oval Office with those who at one time gave comfort to an enemy of the United States is, in and of itself, an act of political treason.

In another irony, this comes from an administration that has already committed such grave abuses that its former officials are becoming fearful of traveling overseas, lest they be arrested for war crimes. Despite the alleged crimes and misdemeanors of the Bush administration, the Democrats who control the House have until now been restrained in their use of the impeachment process, hoping that the final eight months of our American nightmare can pass by quickly. Indeed, one has to wonder how much of Bush's outrageous statement this morning arose from fear -- fear that a President Obama will go after his wrongdoing in 2009.

Today, it's a whole new ballgame. I believe this treacherous statement by a U.S. president in Israel is a signal to the Democrats in the House in Washington, that it's time to play its Constitutional role in ending this trauma, before even greater acts against the interest of America are wrongly committed in our name.

The San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 -- remembering.

Excerpt of an article from Eyewitness to History. Today is 102 years since the 1902 quake here.

Three eye witnesses described their experiences: "Of a sudden we had found ourselves staggering and reeling. It was as if the earth was slipping gently from under our feet. Then came the sickening swaying of the earth that threw us flat upon our faces. We struggled in the street. We could not get on our feet. Then it seemed as though my head were split with the roar that crashed into my ears. Big buildings were crumbling as one might crush a biscuit in one's hand. Ahead of me a great cornice crushed a man as if he were a maggot - a laborer in overalls on his way to the Union Iron Works with a dinner pail on his arm." (P. Barrett).

"When the fire caught the Windsor Hotel at Fifth and Market Streets there were three men on the roof, and it was impossible to get them down. Rather than see the crazed men fall in with the roof and be roasted alive the military officer directed his men to shoot them, which they did in the presence of 5,000 people." (Max Fast).

"The most terrible thing I saw was the futile struggle of a policeman and others to rescue a man who was pinned down in burning wreckage. The helpless man watched it in silence till the fire began burning his feet. Then he screamed and begged to be killed. The policeman took his name and address and shot him through the head." (Adolphus Busch).

Destruction in the city

Businessman Jerome B. Clark lived in Berkeley across the bay from San Francisco. He experienced a minor shake-up at his home in the early morning but this did not stop him from making his regular trip to the city. He describes what he saw as he disembarked from the ferry:

" In every direction from the ferry building flames were seething, and as I stood there, a five-story building half a block away fell with a crash, and the flames swept clear across Market Street and caught a new fireproof building recently erected. The streets in places had sunk three or four feet, in others great humps had appeared four or five feet high. The street car tracks were bent and twisted out of shape. Electric wires lay in every direction. Streets on all sides were filled with brick and mortar, buildings either completely collapsed or brick fronts had just dropped completely off. Wagons with horses hitched to them, drivers and all, lying on the streets, all dead, struck and killed by the falling bricks, these mostly the wagons of the produce dealers, who do the greater part of their work at that hour of the morning. Warehouses and large wholesale houses of all descriptions either down, or walls bulging, or else twisted, buildings moved bodily two or three feet out of line and still standing with walls all cracked.

The Call building, a twelve-story skyscraper, stood and looked all right at first glance, but had moved at the base two feet at one end out into the sidewalk, and the elevators refused to work, all the interior being just twisted out of shape. It afterward burned as I watched it.

Fires were blazing in all directions, and all of the finest and best of the office and business buildings were either burning or surrounded. They pumped water from the bay, but the fire was soon too far away from the water front to make efforts in this direction of much avail. The water mains had been broken by the earthquake, and so there was no supply for the fire engines and they were helpless. The only way out was to dynamite, and I saw some of the finest and most beautiful buildings in the city, new modern palaces, blown to atoms. First they blew up one or two buildings at a time. Finding that of no avail, they took half a block; that was no use; then they took a block; but in spite of them all the fire kept on spreading."

Panic among the survivors

As the fires gained momentum and the city's water system destroyed, survivors gathered where ever they could find water. All through the night victims huddled together in the open air as flames lit the sky. One observer found refuge in a plaza:

"The fire was going on in the district south of them, and at intervals all night exhausted fire-fighters made their way to the plaza and dropped, with the breath out of them, among the huddled people and the bundles of household goods. The soldiers, who were administering affairs with all the justice of judges and all the devotion of heroes, kept three or four buckets of water, even from the women, for these men, who kept coming all night. There was a little food, also kept by the soldiers for these emergencies, and the sergeant had in his charge one precious bottle of whisky, from which is doled out drinks to those who were utterly exhausted.

Over in a corner of the plaza a band of men and women were praying, and one fanatic, driven crazy by horror, was crying out at the top of his voice:

'The Lord sent it, the Lord!'

His hysterical crying got on the nerves of the soldiers and bade fair to start a panic among the women and children, so the sergeant went over and stopped it by force. All night they huddled together in this hell, with the fire making it bright as day on all sides; and in the morning the soldiers, using their senses again, commandeered a supply of bread from a bakery, sent out another water squad, and fed the refugees with a semblance of breakfast."

A Narrow Escape

The quake awoke G.A. Raymond as he slept in his room at the Palace Hotel. He describes his escape:

"I had $600.00 in gold under my pillow. I awoke as I was thrown out of bed. Attempting to walk, the floor shook so that I fell. I grabbed my clothing and rushed down into the office, where dozens were already congregated. Suddenly the lights went out, and every one rushed for the door.

Outside I witnessed a sight I never want to see again. It was dawn and light. I looked up. The air was filled with falling stones. People around me were crushed to death on all sides. All around the huge buildings were shaking and waving. Every moment there were reports like 100 cannons going off at one time. Then streams of fire would shoot out, and other reports followed.

I asked a man standing next to me what happened. Before he could answer a thousand bricks fell on him and he was killed. A woman threw her arms around my neck. I pushed her away and fled. All around me buildings were rocking and flames shooting. As I ran people on all sides were crying, praying and calling for help. I thought the end of the world had come.

I met a Catholic priest, and he said: 'We must get to the ferry.' He knew the way, and we rushed down Market Street. Men, women and children were crawling from the debris. Hundreds were rushing down the street and every minute people were felled by debris.

At places the streets had cracked and opened. Chasms extended in all directions. I saw a drove of cattle, wild with fright, rushing up Market Street. I crouched beside a swaying building. As they came nearer they disappeared, seeming to drop out into the earth. When the last had gone I went nearer and found they had indeed been precipitated into the earth, a wide fissure having swallowed them. I was crazy with fear and the horrible sights.

How I reached the ferry I cannot say. It was bedlam, pandemonium and hell rolled into one. There must have been 10,000 people trying to get on that boat. Men and women fought like wildcats to push their way aboard. Clothes were torn from the backs of men and women and children indiscriminately. Women fainted, and there was no water at hand with which to revive them. Men lost their reason at those awful moments. One big, strong man, beat his head against one of the iron pillars on the dock, and cried out in a loud voice: 'This fire must be put out! The city must be saved!' It was awful."

Who's behind the Tibet banners?

Students for a Free Tibet. Click here to find their website.

It's amazing, looking at them, how stable the three protesters look on these swinging suspension cables.

The climbers are climbing higher and higher at this point, trying to get rid of authorities with buckets on the way up. And there are GGB workers on the top of the bridge, probably trying to catch the protesters from above. We'll see.

I love a creative, non-violent protest. However this turns out, my congratulations to Students for a Free Tibet.

An amazing effort -- accomplished with incredible ease. The students involved in this were also involved with sister groups in Paris and elsewhere. A spokeswoman on TV right now says: "If people were hurt in Paris on this mission, it certainly wasn't by our members."

Fascinating.

One world, one dream, Free Tibet (creative protest here in San Francisco)

As I'm sitting here, three people (two women, one man) are on the suspension cables of the Golden Gate Bridge. They just now unfurled huge banners reading One World, One Dream, Free Tibet.

This is just a few miles away and we can see it from here. The protesters are about 500 feet up in high winds.

Apparently, police are waiting below to arrest them. But the climbers, at this moment (11:25 a.m. PST), aren't coming down. I wonder if the police have climbers equal to these -- whether they'll risk officers to go up and get them -- and what it will take to get the banner down.

If you have photos of this, photos@kgo.com is collecting them.

Free Tibet. A noble cause. Not a likely occurence, but a noble cause to let these peaceful Buddhists regain their homeland.

It is times like these that make me proud to be a San Franciscan. Amazing.

Just click below to help end the annual baby seal slaughter.

The video at this link is awful and bloody and graphic. But if you can't stand baby seal carnage and want to add your name to a petition to end this annual kill-fest, you can skip the video. Adding your name to the petition takes all of four seconds.

Again, the link is here.

Save Shoreditch (narrated by Matt Johnson of The The)

An area of London is about to be bulldozed and replaced with huge towers. The bones of London will lie beneath.

Check this video out, narrated by none other than my favorite poet/lyricist ever, Matt Johnson.

New JFK info released -- mob involvement?

Wow. Watch the news on tomorrow, 'Presidents' Day' here in America, for some blockbuster news out of Dallas. Excerpt from reuters, below. I bolded text particularly surprising.

DALLAS (Reuters) - A batch of old documents linked to the slaying of President John F. Kennedy has reportedly been unearthed, including a highly suspect transcript of a conversation between Lee Harvey Oswald and Oswald's killer Jack Ruby, the Dallas Morning News said on Sunday.

The newspaper said the Dallas County district attorney's office, which uncovered the documents, would display its discovery at a news conference on Monday morning.

The Morning News said the items found in an old safe in a Dallas courthouse included personal letters from former District Attorney Henry Wade, the prosecutor in the Ruby trial. Ruby shot Oswald two days after the president's death.

Also found were official records from Ruby's trial, a gun holster and clothing that probably belonged to Ruby and Oswald, District Attorney Craig Watkins told the newspaper.

But one potentially controversial item is a transcript of an exchange between Oswald and Ruby in which they discuss killing Kennedy to halt the mafia-busting agenda of his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

The Morning News said one theory about the transcript was that it was part of a movie script Wade was working on with producers, for a film that was never made.

The transcript resembles one published by the Warren Commission, which investigated Kennedy's assassination and concluded Oswald acted alone. The FBI had determined the conversation between Oswald and Ruby -- this time about killing Texas Gov. John Connally -- was definitely fake, the newspaper said.

Connally was riding in the car with Kennedy and was wounded in the attack.

The documents may be a Presidents' Day gift to conspiracy theorists who have long questioned the official U.S. government version that Oswald acted alone when he shot Kennedy on November 22, 1963, as the president's motorcade swept past the Texas School Book Depository in downtown Dallas.

Nightclub owner Ruby subsequently shot Oswald dead at point-blank range as police were escorting their prime suspect. Ruby died a few years later from cancer.