Month: August 2013

By Pete

Something smells awful fishy here in San Diego and I think its the politics. For the past thirty years the Republicans have worked along with the elite developers to spend every dime in & around the downtown area, as the rest of the city went unnoticed. High rise condo’s sit vacant, an over sized & over priced unnecessary library built downtown as libraries around the city closed or went unfunded, A new & over priced Baseball park built downtown for a below average team & lots of talk about a new Charger stadium, again, downtown, for the elite developer friends of the Republican mayors.

When Bob Filner beat the Republican front runner, Carl DeMaio, who was alleged to having been backed by big oil money from the Koch brothers in Texas, it was a shock that traveled through out the city. Filner, not only started his political career here in San Diego being on the City Council representing District Eight, one of the poorest districts in the city, but he also was a United States Congressman for over twenty years, and was returning to where it had all started to finally pull San Diego from the grips of the powerful strong hold the Republicans have been enjoying for thirty plus years.

Government plans to euthanize hundreds of desert tortoises after budget cuts to refuge

By George Chidi / The Raw Story / August 25, 2013

A combination of federal budget austerity and the dramatic decline of the Nevada housing market may claim some unlikely victims: desert tortoises.

The Desert Tortoise Conservation Center — a 23-year-old federal refuge in Las Vegas for the threatened species — has collected only $290,000 from its primary funding source of local developer fees over the last 11 months, the AP reports. The center can’t count on the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or Nevada Department of Wildlife to make up the shortfall on the center’s $1 million annual operating budget because of federal and state budget constraints.

The OB Rag has heard of efforts to save the Torrey Pines tree that we reported was about to be cut down. Some local neighbors of the elderly gentleman who owns the property where the tree is located together with some local tree activists are involved in talks and negotiations with a number of players around this Torry Pines.

Torrey Pines are a protected species and it is illegal to cut them down on public property within the City of San Diego. This tree, however – which has been called ‘one of the most beautiful Torrey Pines on Point Loma’ – is located on private property, in the rear of a yard, right off the alley.

By Matthew Wood

Acai bowls are the hottest thing in Ocean Beach since bikram yoga. Any coffee shop worth its beans from Niagara to Voltaire has some form of the smoothie-on-steroids. But unlike Padres losing seasons and Mumford & Sons songs, not all bowls are the same.

At the concoction’s core is the storied acai berry, a so-called superfood rich in antioxidants and amino acids which, long story short, is good for you. It’s layered between everything under the health-food spectrum from granola to coconut to bee pollen – which is different from honey how? – and topped with fresh fruit.

To save you the time and trouble of hitting every one of the myriad acai-erias in the hood, we’re here to break down the best of the bowls. Let’s start on Newport and work our way north.

The Widder Curry Reports on Pt. Loma Democratic Club Meeting

By Judi Curry

Sunday August 25 – was the annual pot-luck for the Pt. Loma Democratic Club.

When my husband and I were members years ago we never missed this meeting because people brought food, desserts and good will to the meeting. Today’s meeting was different in some respects – the same in others. The food was still there (in fact I tried a new recipe for lemon bars and when it was time for dessert they were all gone before I ever tasted one.) The salads were good; the camaraderie was nice, and there was an excitement in the air that permeated the atmosphere.

Our progressive mayor, Bob Filner, had resigned from office just 72 hours before this meeting. They was a lot of talk about who would take his place and maybe carry on his ideas for San Diego. The consensus was that there is probably no one that is willing to stand up to Big Business and, for the most part, we will be returning to the “Good Old Boys” method of governing. What a shame, because Filner, in spite of his foibles, had many good ideas and was set to put them in use.

by Mary Cairns / Special to the OB Rag

Friday morning, August23, I saw a tree removal/trimming company show up in the alley behind my house. My first thought was great! The Torrey Pine in the backyard of the house behind me is finally going to be trimmed. I had spoken with my next-door neighbor a month ago, and he said we should trim to get the branches off the wires.

Short information on the tree and neighborhood:

My parents bought the house I live in within a year after it was built in 1948. All of the houses in Point Loma Heights were built after the war, this area from ~1948-1950’s. The tree is estimated to be 80-100 years old, 40 feet tall. The tree location is the 4300 block of Orchard Avenue, a house down from Santa Barbara. More on the species later.

Walking out back to provide access to my yard for tree droppings, I was appalled to find out the tree was being removed! I have taken a picture of it from my back yard for you to see how beautiful it is.

90 Million Tons of Carbon Dioxide are Dumped into the Atmosphere Every 24 Hours

By John Lawrence

As Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, states in his book, Eaarth, global warming is not some far-off event that we will have to prepare for sometime in the future; it is here today and the effects of global warming are being manifested here today. Yet the oil and gas industry is pulling out all the stops to convince people that global warming is just a myth perpetrated by fuzzy headed liberals.

By Jim Miller

In the aftermath of the Filner resignation, a group of Democratic Party insiders and money people are continuing to run around with their hair on fire trying to anoint Nathan Fletcher as our savior and discourage other truly progressive candidates from entering the field.

Of course this includes folks like Christine Forrester, who runs a marketing consulting firm that connects businesses with hedge fund money, and former Labor Council leader Lorena Gonzalez, who has long been championing her personal friend, the former Assemblyman with an 18% labor voting record over the vociferous objections of many in labor.

The news about California was not good last week. The LA Times ran a jaw-dropping article on August 17th about how our great state of California has the lowest rate in the country of food stamp participation. Lower than even Texas which prides itself in limiting government.

By discouraging Californian needy to sign up for the giant federally-funded food stamp program, the LA Times reported that “only about half of those qualified get the aid ….” This is in contrast to other states – some of which are run by Republicans are able to “enroll 80% to 90% of those with incomes low enough to qualify.”

And this is despite California’s image as a “liberal” and blue state.

A massive industry profits off the government-induced fear of terrorism.

By Alex Kane/Alternet

Michael Hayden, the former director of the National Security Agency, has invaded America’s television sets in recent weeks to warn about Edward Snowden’s leaks and the continuing terrorist threat to America.

But what often goes unmentioned, as the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald pointed out, is that Hayden has a financial stake in keeping Americans scared and on a permanent war footing against Islamist militants.

And the private firm he works for, called the Chertoff Group, is not the only one making money by scaring Americans.

Post-9/11 America has witnessed a boom in private firms dedicated to the hyped-up threat of terrorism. The drive to privatize America’s national security apparatus accelerated in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, and it’s gotten to the point where 70 percent of the national intelligence budget is now spent on private contractors, as author Tim Shorrock reported.

It’s difficult to imagine anything other than a crusty, inflatable, creepy-looking … thing when picturing a sex doll in the mind’s eye. A likeness to the figure in Edvard Munch’s The Scream, though slightly more unsettling if that’s even possible.

But sex dolls actually have quite an interesting history, reaching back as far as 8 A.D. with the myth that Pygmalion obsessed over a woman he sculpted from ivory so much so that Aphrodite eventually made her real. In the 1940s, Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler devised the “Borghild Project,” which involved the production and shipment of sex dolls to German soldiers in an effort to lure them away from diseased French prostitutes.

San Diego City Attorney Jan Goldsmith has announced after the third day of mediation that a deal has been reached…