Month: June 2013

By Nadira Hira / The Good Men Project

Nadira Hira’s manifesto on marriage.

I won’t change my name. I’ve spent the last three decades making the one I have mean something. And I’d like to keep it up, thanks. Which is, I hope, a major part of why he’ll love me always.

I won’t accept a ring. I will gush over my friends’ rings, of course. I will keep my views on the fraught history and general scourginess of diamonds and engagement rings to myself, mostly. But till he too is sporting a symbol of ownership on his strong and manly hand, I won’t be wearing a bloody thing on my finger.

I won’t stop celebrating men — him, and all the others. This will be a service to our children, and given my taste — Brad, Idris, Sandma — a testament to his quality.

By Ernie McCray

I don’t know where
the Regular Joe is with games
but I have lived to play all the games.
Hey, what can I say,
starting when I was but a babe,
I spent the greatest part of my childhood age
catching something
or knocking somebody down
or vice-versa,
copping a Heisman Trophy pose
and sidestepping some clown
who’s trying to run you down
so he can knock you down…
Somebody’s going down.

By Jackie Tortora/AFL-CIO Blog

Some say the press is the fourth branch of government. It serves as a “check and a balance” to our elected and non-elected leaders and informs the public of news for the greater good. But what if that was compromised by a corporate power grab?

That’s exactly what the panel “Should the Koch Brothers Own The Tribune Newspapers?” will examine next Wednesday at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. As we’ve covered on the blog before, David and Charles Koch have expressed interest in buying the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun and other leading newspapers owned by the Tribune Co.

Please join us:

The Ocean Beach Historical Society Presents:

WONDERLAND – 100 YEARS CELEBRATION!

Featuring Pat James & Jonnie Wilson

Thurs., June 20 at 7PM

at P.L. United Methodist Church, 1984 Sunset Cliffs Blvd., O.B.

By Judith Starker

Having lived in O.B. for almost 40 years I’ve watched the progression of dining options increase in quantity and finally quality.

I must confess to being a food snob, driven by my love of cooking and eating, and I have high standards for eating establishments. I want good quality food and a mellow environment, it is hard to get both. O.B. is getting much better on the diversity of food choices but mellow is hard to find near any beach community catering to a younger population.

With that said, I recently carried out from O.B. Kabob – a newly opened restaurant tucked in the corner on Bacon Street next to Winstons.

We the People have now learned that all three branches of government have furtively conspired for seven years to violate our privacy—so, no, we don’t trust any of them.

By Jim Hightower / NationofChange / June 19, 2013

It’s back. The Patriot Act — that grotesque, ever-mutating, hydra-headed monstrosity from the Bush-Cheney Little Shop of Horrors — has risen again, this time with an added twist of Orwellian intrusiveness from the Obamacans.

Since 2006, Team Bush, and then Team Obama, have allowed the little-known, hugely powerful National Security Agency to run a daily dragnet through your and my phone calls — all on the hush-hush, of course, not informing us spyees. Now exposed, leaders of both parties are piously pointing to the Patriot Act, saying that it legalized this wholesale, everyday invasion of our privacy, so we shouldn’t be surprised, much less upset by NSA’s surreptitious peek-a-boo program.

The newly-released Draft of the Ocean Beach Community Plan Update is now available on the San Diego Planning Commission website.

Here is the link to the website of the San Diego Planning Commission. Here is the PDF version.

U-T Editorial Blasts Pacific Beach Group as “Spiteful” and Urges Filner and Goldsmith to Save OTL

With all the crises in the world and at home here, the editorial board at the U-T San Diego found it necessary today to wade into the brouhaha between “Over-The-Line” organizers and a social networking group out of Pacific Beach, called FreePB.org . The editorial called the PB group’s effort to hold an even with the exact same conditions that OTL is allowed by the City and police and threatening to go to court “a spiteful maneuver” and begged:

“This is not the kind of dispute that should ever end up in court. We urge Mayor Bob Filner and City Attorney Jan Goldsmith tdo work together to assure that the OTL is not derailed.”

Of course, this is the same Mayor Bob Filner who is vilified daily by the newspaper, its editorial board and political cartoonist. … More inside …

Here’s Doug Porter’s excellent take on the issue from yesterday’s column at the San Diego Free Press.

Lawsuit Seeks to Shut Down Over The Line’s Boozin Beach Tournament; Preferential Treatment Claimed

By Doug Porter

A non-profit group has filed suit against the City of San Diego, seeking to block approval of a special-event permit for the 60th Annual World Championship Over-The-Line Tournament (OTL), scheduled for two weekends in July.

Editor: The following rant is an unsolicited article by Don Sevrens on the issue of “vigilante stop signs in Point Loma”. For earlier posts on the issue, go here, here, here, and here .

By Don Sevrens

Ever wonder why there seems to be a stop sign every two blocks whether needed or not?

The San Diego City Council has a curious policy that allows uninformed community planning groups to overrule the city’s traffic experts and, with the concurrence of one district council member, order stop signs installed.

There are no standards for collecting signatures or even telling the neighborhood what is going on. Just get a couple friends together, ask some community planner to schedule a vote and – presto! – you have new stop signs up.

Editor: The following is another part of the debate over the new Draft OB Community Plan Update. This is by Maxx Stalheim, senior planner for the City of San Diego who was deeply involved in the rewrite of the OB Precise Plan. Stalheim has been making presentations around OB on the new Draft. The debate was kicked off by Geogg Page, who was responding to this report; Page was answered by Giovanni Ingolia. Stalheim writes his contribution in the form of questions and answers. The schedule for approval of the new Update can be found here.

By Maxx Stalheim, Senior Planner City of San Diego / Special to the OB Rag

What is a community plan?

A community plan is a blueprint for how the community will grow and develop over the next 20 years, or so. ….

Why is the Ocean Beach community plan being updated?

The City of San Diego adopted …

COME INSIDE

By Ernie McCray

I got a call on my message machine asking for my help regarding a “secular” matter. It was my first such request in all my 75 years so I couldn’t help but wonder, “Why me?” since I don’t, although I’m not religious, necessarily consider myself a secular human being, and also since this particular worldly problem pertained to La Jolla.

I mean when I moved to San Diego in 1962, I was, in and of my 6 foot five black self, a problem in La Jolla, feeling, whenever I visited, about as welcomed as a seal in the Children’s Pool, like an unwashed heathen in a pristine hallowed place.

This lovely hilly seaside community and I, however, over time have come a long way from when we started our relationship so many decades ago, as I have swum and body surfed in its waters and run and walked its shores and rapped with kids in its schools and read scripts on its stages. But I have never weighed in on La Jolla’s affairs, secular or otherwise.

By Jim Miller

In this column that originally ran in December of last year, I discuss “the conservative media entertainment complex” as conceived of by former Bush propagandist David Frum and note that he only touches on the tip of the corporate media propaganda iceberg. What follows this is a beginners primer on how to decipher corporate media propaganda.

In the weeks following the election, David Frum made waves by explaining the shock in conservative circles over Romney’s loss with a bit of interesting media criticism: “Republicans have been fleeced and exploited and lied to by a conservative entertainment complex.”