Month: August 2011

Since I try not to drive at night and since I am on a very “fixed income”, I like to try new restaurants – at least new to me – that are relatively close to my home in Ocean Beach and not terribly expensive. Last week I read an article in the newspaper that is thrown in my driveway on Thursdays, re: a restaurant in Old Town called “BERGIE’S”. It sounded interesting, and since I don’t always have the time to stand in line AND eat at Hodad’s, a friend and I decided to try it out.

Over three hundred community and labor activists met yesterday, Saturday, August 27th, for an all-day economic summit and began the process of building a movement to change San Diego.

Under the title of “A Better San Diego”, yesterday’s event at Horace Mann Middle School was the culmination of months of meetings and discussions initiated by San Diego’s Labor Council. Back in the late Spring the Labor Council, headed up by Lorena Gonzalez, had called for allies from the community to join with them to build a community-labor coalition.

By time the Summit rolled around yesterday, you could see the hard work achieved by these activists. The diversity of the crowd rivaled any political grouping of San Diegans in recent history.

The County of San Diego has just released a video to warn all of us of the “Eight Signs of Terrorism”, in preparation for the tenth anniversary of the Sept 11 attacks, as part of their “See something, say something” campaign. We would like to add to this watch our additional Eight Signs of Republican Extremism.

To report suspicious activity, email the OB Rag at obragblog@gmail.com.

People who do the following might be plotting Republican extremist acts:

* Under the guise and rhetoric of “small government”, order all welfare and other poor people who receive public assistance to submit to monthly drug tests, as clearly the poor use illegal drugs much more than the rest of us….

By Mike Lee/SignOnSanDiego.com

A garbage truck on Tuesday morning picked up food scraps from seven grocery stores around San Diego and chugged to Miramar Landfill in what normally would have been an unremarkable moment.

But instead of turning into the zone for dumping trash, it delivered the mash of fruit, pastries and similar items to the composting yard and launched what many around the region hope is a new era of waste-reduction.

Editor: Here’s a timely article from the LA Times about how the State Lands Commission has grossly mismanaged millions of acres of public land, costing Californians tens of millions of dollars and benefiting large corporations, all the while the State is cutting teachers and aid to the poor. Oh, by the way, you fledgling investigative reporters, what public lands in San Diego County are being mismanaged by the State?

By Patrick McGreevy / Los Angeles Times / August 24, 2011

Businesses and dozens of other large corporations have benefited from officials’ mismanagement of more than 4 million acres of public land, according to a state audit released Tuesday. The cost to taxpayers could easily be in the tens of millions of dollars, the auditors say, at a time when the state has been forcing teacher layoffs and cutting aid to the poor.

Our City Councilman, Kevin Faulconer, is hosting a community “Coffee with Kevin” meet-up Thursday morning, August 25th, at Shades Oceanfront Bistro.

Mr. Faulconer will be at Shades between 9 and 11 am. Shades is located at 5083 Santa Monica Ave, Ocean Beach, at the corner of Abbott and Santa Monica, right across from the main Lifeguard station.

This is an excellent opportunity for OBceans to dialogue with Kevin on the issues that affect our community – such as:

• gentrification,
• no charges being filed for the stolen memorial benches,
• the lack of public restrooms,

….

Downtown San Diego – By 12:30 this afternoon more than two hundred people gathered to leaflet and rally in support of Southern California Grocery Workers who are prepared to strike after voting overwhelmingly against the latest offer from Ralphs, Vons and Albertsons, that would have a devastating effect on their health care.

More photos and video inside…

Editor: The mainstream, corporate media has been blatantly ignoring what’s been going on in Washington, DC. There have been five days of sit-in’s and arrests at the White House in protest of the proposed oil pipeline.

By Frances Beinecke / HuffPost / August 24, 2011

It is the fifth day of the sit-ins at the White House urging President Obama to deny a permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline.

“What concerns us as people of faith is the destruction of the human spirit. When human beings are subjected to conditions that destroy who they are, it is incumbent upon the whole faith community to call our culture, and yes, even our government, to accountability. If we allow solitary confinement to continue in our society – especially when we have been informed of the harmful results – what does that say about the kind of people we have become?”

In 1995 in Ocean Beach, California, childhood friends Miles Doughty and Kyle McDonald formed a band that created a fusion of music between acoustic rock and blues and reggae, hip-hip, and punk. Soon after, the late Sublime frontman Bradley Nowell discovered the duo and asked them to perform a set at the Foot Hill Tavern in Long Beach, California. Nowell immediately signed them to his label, Skunk Records, while the band was still in high school. Sixteen years later, Doughty and McDonald, known as Slightly Stoopid, have released eight albums and have been compared to bands such as Sublime, Operation Ivy, Rancid, and Streetwise.

By Jennifer Dreyer / Guest Columnist Voice of San Diego / August 22, 2011

Recently I’ve been asked why San Diego should elect a pro-choice mayor. After all, mayors run city departments, manage the municipal budget, and (hopefully) set a clear vision for our city’s future. They do not run any health services or enact heath care policy. So why should it matter whether San Diego’s next mayor is pro-choice?

The answer is that it matters greatly. During the past decade, anti-abortion rights groups have expanded their agenda to oppose contraception programs and women’s health services.

By Phat Jim / San Diego Politico / August 22, 2011

What in the Sam Hell. . .

To those of you out there who are more closely intertwined with politics than I am these days, I have one question – what in the sam hell is Bonnie Dumanis doing? It looks like Dumanis and DeMaio are both skipping the mayoral debates between now and Oct. 17.