From the monthly archives:

April 2009

House GOP Leaders Release Pro Torture Video

April 30, 2009

You can’t make this stuff up, folks. Here’s the newest scare video released today by House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and ranking intelligence committee member Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.).

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Swine Flu Media Coverage Ignites Racist Hysteria, Ignores Possible Causes

April 28, 2009
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by Doug Porter

It’s been impossible to ignore the media hysteria over the past few days in response to reported outbreaks of the newest variant of the influenza virus. The talking heads and frantic graphic displays on television news have raised the fine art of 24 hour video fear mongering to new levels.

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An Arch to Build a Dream On

April 27, 2009
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By Mary Mann

Walking down the long row of trailers, I wonder how I will recognize the one that belongs to Daniel Wallace and Judith May. They all look the same. As I near it, though, the ownership of the mobile home is made obvious by a preponderance of what their makers refer to as wobblies, wooden creatures, each with a name and a story. I should have known there would be something.

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Activists, Reformers Now Control State Democratic Party

April 27, 2009
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Before the California Democratic Convention ended yesterday, delegates bucked the Party leadership on the May 19th ballot measures – by securing a “no endorsement” on Propositions 1A, 1D and 1E. State legislators and Party operatives pushed “yes” on all six measures, but enough of the grassroots who stayed for the tail end of the session refused to go along.

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The Fumes of Empire

April 26, 2009
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by Rocky Neptune

Otay Mesa, Tijuana, Mexico……Juanita couldn’t hold her balance. The policemen pursuing her were waving guns and shouting. She tried to re-tie the shawl that held the baby to her breast while darting through the moving traffic, but her six month old fell forward, skidding across the filthy asphalt, his lower lip ripped by the jagged edge of a pothole.

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Help the Republican Party pick a new name.

April 24, 2009
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by Doug Porter

Unlike our fair city of San Diego, our nation’s capitol boasts two daily newspapers. Pretty much everybody has heard of the Washington Post since that “Watergate” thingie happened and Hollywood made a movie about how great it was and stuff. And while the Washington Post has become sad shadow of the “great” (meaning many pages) newspaper it once was, both conservatives and liberals still enjoy sitting around their victrolas and talking about the left wing conspiracies that surely must be going on behind the scenes at the paper.

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Shepard Fairey is not a crook.

April 23, 2009
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by Steven Heller

Even before Shepard Fairey’s Barack Obama “Hope” poster became the focus of legal and ethical scrutiny — for Fairey’s use of Mannie Garcia’s A.P. news photo as the basis of the now ubiquitous image — some design critics and practitioners had already questioned the street artist’s habit of “sampling” existing imagery. A scolding essay by Mark Vallen, entitled “Obey Plagiarist Fairey,” which was published online in 2007, accused Fairey, who created the “OBEY GIANT” project in 1989, of “expropriating and recontextualizing artworks of others.”

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My Tortured Decision – top FBI agent comes ‘clean’ on torture

April 23, 2009
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By Ali Soufan

FOR seven years I have remained silent about the false claims magnifying the effectiveness of the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding. I have spoken only in closed government hearings, as these matters were classified. But the release last week of four Justice Department memos on interrogations allows me to shed light on the story, and on some of the lessons to be learned.

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Waterboard Sean Hannity? Yes, please.

April 23, 2009
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by Jon Carr

Last night (4/22/09) on Faux News, Conservative Right Wing pundit Sean Hannity engaged in a debate with Charles Grodin over the hot topic of torture or as the right wing prefers to call it, “enhanced interrogation.”

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“Thanks to all who supported City workers and union efforts!”

April 22, 2009

by Anna Daniels

Just an FYI. I voted this morning to approve our MEA union two year contract. The results aren’t in but I suspect it will pass. It includes over one week of mandatory unpaid furlough, a 3% pay reduction or an equal reduction in our supplemental pension.

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A Tortured Story of Torture

April 22, 2009
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by Doug Porter

Although there is no scientific proof that torture as an interrogation technique actually works, (See this Defense Department Document) various acts of suffering have been used by governments and religious groups for as long as there have been governments and religious groups.

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Anniversary of the take-over of Chicano Park – April 22, 1970

April 22, 2009
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by Frank Gormlie

This was the day a new park was born, created out of the dirt of a Highway Patrol station. The people of Barrio Logan on this day seized land that was supposed to hold a CHP station. They made it into a park – Chicano Park – which today stands as an historic center for murals, art, Chicano and Mexican-American culture.

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Today Is the 20th Anniversary of OB’s Green Store

April 22, 2009
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Twenty years ago today, Colleen Dietzel and Kip Kruegar and other local environmentalists opened The Green Store on Voltaire Street for the first time. It was Earth Day 1989 – April 22nd.

Ever since, the iconic ecology store has steadfastly held its ground, offering books, magazines, bumper stickers, buttons, posters and other green products and mementos, while also serving as an anti-corporate space, a meeting site for area groups, and the headquarters for any thing green in OB.

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Average San Diegan’s carbon footprint larger than average Los Angeles resident’s

April 22, 2009

The carbon footprint of the average San Diegan — including residential energy use and transportation — is larger than that of the average resident of Los Angeles, a review of available data shows. San Diego lags behind LA in policies and programs to reduce energy use.

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US Supreme Court limits car searches and begins to salvage the 4th Amendment

April 21, 2009
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The Supreme Court put a new limit on police searches of cars Tuesday, saying that “countless individuals guilty of nothing more serious than a traffic violation” have had their vehicles searched in violation of their rights.

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Falling Sky Pottery: dances with clay

April 21, 2009
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by Gary Gilmore

Any artist with the moniker of EZ is going to have to live up to the nickname. Isauro Elizondo does that in the first 30 seconds of conversation. Owner of Falling Sky Pottery on the corner of Abbott & Santa Monica, EZ is one of those individuals who makes you feel like a friend as soon as you walk in the door.

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County Supervisors keep home searches and fingerprinting in new plan to enroll more on food stamps

April 21, 2009
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by Frank Gormlie

Jeff McDonald of the Union-Tribune staff reported this afternoon on a “plan” that the County Board of Supervisors just today unanimously approved to get more people on food stamps. Hot damn! And it’s a 3 year plan at that, too.

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2009 Padres a breath of fresh air in major league baseball

April 21, 2009
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by Lane Tobias

As a lifelong sports fan with allegiances to various East Coast sports teams that garner hatred amongst competitor fan bases (I won’t go into all of my favorite teams as to not draw the ire of the many native San Diegans who read the OB Rag) I have been encouraged on an emotional and philosophical level by the early season success of the San Diego Padres.

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Sacramento’s Tent City torn down – the real story and how the media got it wrong

April 21, 2009
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Dozens of city and county workers descended on Sacramento’s tent city on Thursday, and within hours cleared the area of all signs of the sprawling homeless encampment.

PLUS

Over the past few months, reporters from around the world have flocked to the now-famous tent city in Sacramento, Calif. When they find out that 55-year-old John Kraintz has been living in a tent for almost seven years, they turn around and walk away.

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City staff outnumber OB residents at Mayor’s Rec Center budget “briefing”

April 20, 2009
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by Frank Gormlie

It was a hot Monday night in the gym of the Ocean Beach Rec Center. It was time for Mayor Jerry Sanders presentation of his proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2010. Patty and I had wanted to attend. Not that we’re accountants or really understand the City Budget, but we wanted to witness the event and see OB in action. We walked in just a few minutes late, and it had already started. No “OB Time” here.

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