Month: March 2013

UPDATE: Here’s an update from the online U-T today:

25-year-old man was arrested Sunday night after police said he beat and sexually assaulted a woman in Ocean Beach. ( more inside …)

Channel 8 News reported that there was an attempted rape on the 4800 block of Long Branch Avenue in Ocean Beach. The violent assault occurred on Sunday night – March 24th – when a male attacked a woman in her front yard.

Neighbors and witnesses came running to help her when the woman began screaming. The man ran off.

Tomorrow is Election Day in District 4, and it matters.  While this City Council race has garnered very little attention in San Diego as a whole and will certainly be a low turnout affair, the stakes are actually quite high.  Indeed, the direction of the city is on the line.

As Doug Porter noted last week, outside money has been pouring into District 4 attacking Myrtle Cole. Why?  Because Cole is the only candidate who will stand firmly behind Bob Filner’s agenda and buck the powerful moneyed interests that are bent on subverting the mayor.

Who’s behind the attacks?  San Diego County Voters for Progress and Reform, a shadowy group that has been funded by the usual suspects: developers, downtown business groups, and the Lincoln Club.  Those same folks are backing Cole’s opponent, Barry Pollard, and even fellow progressive Dwayne Crenshaw has taken money from Robert Gleason of Atlas Hotels (and a key figure in the TMD struggle against Filner) as well as Rural/Metro Corporation whose contract with San Diego for paramedic services will soon come up for renewal.  In addition to this, sources close to the campaign tell me that Cole is the only candidate that has not met with the Lincoln Club, which should tell you all you need to know.

Overturning Citizens United: Money Out of Politics

From PL Democratic Club

Join the Point Loma Democratic Club on Sunday, March 24, when the Wonder Women from WOSD Money Out of Politics, Point Loma’s own Pam Page and Dianne Lane, return to and describe how they convinced the San Diego City Council to pass – with an unanimous vote – the resolution to reverse ‘Citizens United’ and Amend the Constitution.

Editordude: We have just learned that village giant Dave Martin has passed. The OB Rag interviewed Dave back in March of 2013 – he was still the president of the OB Town Council and Dave’s restaurant, Shades, was still up and running. Here, we repost that interview.

Originally posted March 22, 2013

Dave Martin, the President of the OB Town Council, agreed to meet me at Shades at 1 pm the other day. That was easy – as he has his own table there – the one closest to the kitchen, the bar, and the serving area – for, as many know, Dave owns Shades. Or rather Dave – along with his wife Jennifer, his daughter and her husband; they’re the four owners.

Even though it was mid-week, the inside of the restaurant was about half-filled, with a few outside in the front. The lunch hour had just passed. But everyone in OB knows Shades – it’s a fairly popular place (even the Widder Curry gave it a thumbs-up).

FREQUENCY FILM FESTIVAL

MARCH 21-23, 28-30, APRIL 1 -6, 2013
SAN DIEGO, CA 92107

Frequency Film Festival March 21 -23, 28-30, April 1 -6, 2013 will be screening films from around the world. The opening night film from Portugal, The Baron, will have its North America Premiere on March 21, 2013 at The Ocean Beach Playhouse, 4944 Newport Ave. , San Diego, CA 92107.

Opening Night Film, March 21, 2013: THE BARON

A black and white gothic horror /fantasy narrative feature film from Portugal – the North America Premier

Official Selection: International Film Festival Rotterdam 2013, San Diego, CA (March2013)-

This unique and mesmerizing black & white narrative feature film will also screen on April 2, 2013.

The Baron

Directed by: Edgar Pêra / Portugal / Portuguese, English Subtitles / 2011 / Gothic Horror, Fantasy /105 minutes / North America Premiere

To: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney
From: Tomas Young

Originally posted at Truthdig.com

I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.

Goldman Sachs, Blackstone Group rake in hundreds of millions selling useless ‘mini-med’ policies

Part Two of a series on the Business of Health

By John Lawrence / San Diego Free Press

In Part 1 we told about how hospitals have a huge computer file called a Chargemaster that details prices for every possible item a hospital can charge for. These prices don’t have anything to do with reality because in fact there is no market for health care services.

Newly-released tapes record LBJ saying Nixon committed treason.

By Eric Brown / International Business Times / March 17 2013

Newly released tapes recorded during Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency have confirmed long-held rumors that in 1968, then-presidential candidate Richard M. Nixon worked to sabotage Vietnam War peace talks.

The LBJ tapes were recently declassified and released by the Johnson library in Austin, Texas. According to the BBC’s summary of the tapes, not only did Nixon possibly commit treason, but LBJ knew about it and decided not to expose him in the closing days of an election that Nixon barely won.

The Ocean Beach Historical Society is Continuing the Annual

WISTERIA Garden PARTY
Saturday, March 23, at 1 PM
4761 Niagara Ave., 92107, Ocean Beach

CELEBRATE SPRING AT OUR ANNUAL OCEAN BEACH HISTORICAL SOCIETY

WISTERIA GARDEN PARTY & FUNDRAISER

Spend the afternoon in the Titlow garden of a 1906 home under the largest wisteria canopy in Ocean Beach. Guests will enjoy tasty delectables while listening to live music.

By Robert Scheer / truthdig – Nation of Change / March 20, 2013

It is a staple of our widely trumpeted Judeo-Christian heritage that the acknowledgment of sin is a prelude to redemption. So how is it that there is no palpable sense of soul searching associated with the 10th anniversary of a war based on officially concocted lies and a policy of torture? It is because the presumption of a unique American claim to an original and enduring innocence perseveres, no matter the death and destruction.

Indeed, some of our most celebrated publicists defined moral deceit as virtue in justifying the Iraq War. “As far as I am concerned, we do not need to find any weapons of mass destruction to justify this war,” New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote in April 2003, when U.N. inspectors had clearly established that the proclaimed basis for invading Iraq was a lie. “Mr. Bush doesn’t owe the world any explanation for missing chemical weapons (even if it turns out that the White House hyped this issue).”

Mitch’s Seafood
1403 Scott St.
San Diego, CA 92106
619-222-8787

After posting my review of Point Loma Seafood’s last week, several of my readers wrote in and told me that I should try “Mitch’s Seafood”, because it was as good, if not better than the subject of my original review.

I could hardly wait to try it, and when Monica, my foreign language student came home early from school on Tuesday I decided it was a perfect time to “test the waters.” After all, Tuesday in San Diego means “taco Tuesday” and with tacos at $2 and $3 it was well worth it. We arrived early – 4:15 pm, because one of the readers said that it is almost impossible to be served after 5:00pm on Tuesday.

Ten years of lying about the Iraq war has to stop now – immediately. The government – our government – lied to us, the America people, about the reasons they said it was necessary to go to war with Iraq – a country that was not threatening us. One decade ago to this day, their lies produced action: the “shock and awe” “bunker-busters” unleashed on the capital of Iraq, March 19th, 2003.

They lied to cover up their invasion of Iraq a decade ago to this day.

And now ten years later, after more than 4400 Americans killed, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed, 30,000 Americans injured, after we have spent over $3 Trillion dollars, we have come to the realization that, if America is to be honest with itself, we must now demand that someone be held accountable for these lies and the wastes of lives and resources.