Month: December 2019

The good news from 2019 is that deaths and serious injuries at Sunset Cliffs dropped below the average numbers.

According to our record and report keeping, there were only two deaths – tragic in themselves of course – and only one seriously injured person during 2019 at or below Sunset Cliffs in Ocean Beach and Point Loma.

The data used in the study the OB Rag has been conducting goes back to 2005 and has found there’s been an average of 5 deaths or serious injuries every year.

By Jim Miller

Annually, Project Censored releases a list of the most under-reported stories of the year. In the past, their endeavor sometimes got pushback from defenders of the corporate media who claimed that their version of “censorship” was too loose or that it implied a corporate conspiracy that doesn’t exist. As I wrote in this space before, both of those criticisms fall flat.

Why?

Project Censored’s definition of censorship is a nuanced one:

We define Modern Censorship as the subtle yet constant and sophisticated manipulation of reality in our mass media outlets. On a daily basis, censorship refers to the intentional non-inclusion of a news story – or piece of a news story – based on anything other than a desire to tell the truth.

By Colleen O’Connor / Times of San Diego / Dec. 26, 2019

‘Tis the season for good tidings and cheer — even in politics.

Time for those bedtime stories, but first, forget the usual classics: Miracle on 34th Street, A Christmas Carol , or even Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas, which feels like politics present.

Enter a new Christmas classic—The Maestro and the Tuba Man. Imagine. The symphony orchestra has tuned up.

The Ocean Beach Community Development Corporation sent out a letter to its supporters informing them that due to a lack of construction funding and the expiration of their permit, they have to halt their Veterans Plaza project, planned near the foot of Newport Ave.

This ends a seven-year effort for a new Veterans Plaza that was supposed to replace the existing memorial at the foot of Newport. In their letter, the OBCDC recaps how they received community input on the design, met City requirements and obtained a permit from the city, and spent $100,000

By Chris Mooney and Brady Dennis / Washington Post / Dec. 20, 2019

Deforestation and other fast-moving changes in the Amazon threaten to turn parts of the rainforest into savanna, devastate wildlife and release billions of tons carbon into the atmosphere, two renowned experts warned Friday.

“The precious Amazon is teetering on the edge of functional destruction and, with it, so are we,” Thomas Lovejoy of George Mason University and Carlos Nobre of the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil,

A world in which war is normal and peace is out of reach is no more survivable or sustainable than a world where the atmosphere gets hotter every year.

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies / Nation of Change / December 20, 2019

The trove of U.S. “Lessons Learned” documents on Afghanistan published by the Washington Post portrays, in excruciating detail, the anatomy of a failed policy, scandalously hidden from the public for 18 years. The “Lessons Learned” papers, however, are based on the premise that the U.S. and its allies will keep intervening militarily in other countries, and that they must, therefore, learn the lessons of Afghanistan to avoid making the same mistakes in future military occupations.

A new poll released on Christmas Day shows record-level support among U.S. voters for the ouster of President Donald Trump. Public support for Donald Trump’s removal from office is the highest it has ever been.

The daily tracking poll from Microsoft News published Wednesday, Dec. 25, asked respondents if they “support or oppose the Senate voting to remove President from office?” It found that while 55% of people support and only 40% oppose — a dramatic surge for those backing Trump’s ouster and a record for the poll that has been asking that same question since late September of this year.

All Photographs by Kathy Blavatt

by Kathy Blavatt

In nature, color red is as vital as it’s complementary color green. Red makes the greens pop. What would the Christmas holidays be without the brilliant red poinsettias and berries?

Valentines’ gift of crimson roses is the traditional flower representing love and passion.

By Ernie McCray

Greta Thunberg, a 16 year old Swedish girl, travels across the Atlantic Ocean to Lower Manhattan, in a sailboat, to save our world from the deadly forces of climate change.

For such a risk-taking endeavor she was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize and named Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year.”

And our president, instead of offering her a High-Five, gets up at five and tweets that this wonderful girl is ridiculous and angry and needs to go to a good old-fashioned movie with a friend and “Chill.”

Say what?

By Jim Miller

If you just can’t bring yourself to give up on the sordid consumer frenzy and go all in for a Buy Nothing Christmas , then perhaps getting your loved ones a few good books (from local bookstores) to help them navigate our dark times is the next best thing.

Here are three notable political books of 2019 that flew further under the radar than they should have:

Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America
by Christopher Leonard.

Building on the excellent work done by Jane Mayer in Dark Money and Nancy MacLean in Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, Christopher Leonard outlines seven years of research into how the Kochtopus was born and grew into a nightmare for American democracy.

By Joni Halpern

Picture it. Decorations everywhere. A beautiful tree twinkling in the background. A bright and cheerful tablecloth. Sparkling silverware. Shiny plates. Candlelight winking off crystal. And best of all, a table groaning with your favorite holiday foods and all the trimmings.

Oh, wait. That’s someone else’s Christmas. The one America is preparing for low-income people is different.

For people of inadequate means, we have a gift that keeps on giving. It is a gift that will take them far and help them realize the American Dream they have desired for so long. The American People writ large generously give them this gift so they can finally rise from the ranks of inadequacy and join those of us gathered around a Christmas table like the one described above.

The four members of San Diego County’s Democratic Congressional delegation all voted for impeachment on that historical date when the vote was taken: Wednesday, Dec. 18. Reps. Susan Davis, Mike Levin, Scott Peters and Juan Vargas, all Democrats, voted to impeach Trump on both articles — abuse of power and obstruction of justice. The lone Republican, Duncan Hunter, was barred from voting due to his recent guilty plea to federal corruption charges.

When Rep. Susan Davis got up before the microphone, she was fairly brief and abrupt (actually sounding like she had laryngitis), and said: