Month: January 2021

This will hit die-hard OB blues fans hard. One of OB’s favorite blues musicians from the 1970’s, Tom “Tomcat” Courtney, has just passed after a battle with COVID-19. He was 91.

Here’s the report from NBC7:

Friends, loved ones and local music fans are mourning the death of Tom “Tomcat” Courtney, a Texas transplant and San Diego Music Award winner who was the longtime anchor of San Diego’s blues scene.

Courtney, who died Monday afternoon, was 91. He is survived by his longtime partner, Jojo Riegel, and a large extended family. Riegel told NBC 7 that his death followed a battle with the coronavirus that began in December.

10 Republicans Vote to Impeach

Today, Wednesday, January 13, 2021, at 4:30 pm ET or there about, the US House of Representatives voted to impeach Donald Trump for the second time.

By a bi-partisan vote of 232 to 197, the House impeached Trump. 221 Democrats and 10 House Republicans voted to uphold the resolution.

Never before in American history, has a president ever been impeached twice.

Trump was impeached for insurrection – on charges that grew out of his assault on the Capitol and insurrection against our government.

Some observers questions whether police showed bias in the way they responded to Trump supporters versus counterprotesters, some of whom identified as anti-fascist

By David Hernandez / San Diego Union-Tribune / Jan. 11, 2021

When San Diego police declared an unlawful assembly during dueling protests in Pacific Beach on Saturday, Trump supporters stood on one side of a line of officers. Counterprotesters, some of whom identified as anti-fascist, stood on the other side of the police formation.

The Union-Tribune reported that both sides had skirmished quite a bit that day.

But it turns out the order to disperse applied only to one side — the group of counterprotesters, some of whom threw bottles, rocks and eggs at officers, a police spokesman said Monday.

Three counterprotesters were arrested: two adults who police said failed to disperse and a juvenile accused of assaulting an officer.

The police response to the two demonstrations raised questions among some observers about whether police showed bias based on race and/or ideology.

Boom!

By K-B Gressitt

Boom! Boom!! Boom!!! Voices raucous and demanding roiled up the hill. Smoke invaded the air.

“They’re rioting on Main Street!” I yelled, leaping from my desk, out the door, and into a combat crouch, armed and ready to defend my town from Trump’s insurrectionists, returned from D.C.

The young man raking live oak leaves from my patio looked at me and said, “It’s just the church.”

I stood, my unloaded Daisy Red Ryder BB gun dangling across my forearm, like Barbara Stanwick’s rifle in The Big Valley, and I realized just how disturbed I was by last Wednesday’s assault on the U.S. Capitol Building.

Seriously disturbed.

Sure, like anyone with even one tiptoe in the social media tulips, I pretty much knew Trump was fomenting a violent disruption of the electoral vote count. Yet I too watched in shock and rage as Trump’s deadly troops breached the building’s impotent perimeters, assaulted its protectors and smeared its walls with the well-digested lies the president and his henchfolk fed them.

By Judi Curry

Until now, I didn’t know what was really happening with the recall of Councilmember Jennifer Campbell. I got a phone call from Bridger Langfur who kindly filled me in. Here’s what I learned.

The core of the movement is a large group of District 2 community members who, having witnessed Jennifer Campbell’s “governing style” over the last two years, now agree that her removal from office is the only way forward.

Campbell’s tenure has been characterized by reversals of promises she made during her campaign. Two notable examples are short term vacation rentals and the preservation of the 30 foot Coastal Height Limit Law.

During her campaign, she vowed to advocate for enforcement of the existing municipal code ordinances which prohibit short term rentals in residential zones. She’s now pushing an ordinance that not only would legalize short term rentals, but also earmarks thousands of San Diego housing units to be used as tourist lodging, in perpetuity, by billion dollar multinational corporations such as Airbnb and Expedia.

by JM Williams

The worst of the year: The Murder of George Floyd

Last year, I watched phone video of the death of an American citizen as filmed by a bystander on a street in Minneapolis. No other event overshadows it. Not recently, not in memory.

How shocking beyond the ability to comprehend it is to watch a cop kill a citizen and smile for the camera. It remains unimaginable, yet I’ve seen it. As the trainer kneeled on the neck of the citizen, two trainees did crowd control while a third held the citizen’s ankles.

It’s not systemic? It’s not institutional? Really? How do you define those terms?

Even so, there’s no sense in defunding the police. Anarchy would not be fun unless you happen to sell the tools of the trade. Reform of how the police are overseen is necessary.

For the fourth time over the last 5 years, the OB Pier has been damaged by big waves.

High surf and a high tide combined on Monday, Jan. 11, to raise the 10- 12-foot waves up enough to skin at least 100 feet of railing boards off the south side of the pier, a witness told NBC 7.

The Pier was damaged in 2016 2018, and in 2019. Lifeguards stated in a tweet that they anticipate the pier will remained closed until Tuesday, the 11th.

If you thought the siege at the Capitol was a one-time event, you need to rethink that. The Trump seditious insurrection is not over yet.

Encouraged and spurred on by their “success” on January 6, White supremacists and armed militias are planning further violent attacks against the Capitol – and state capitols around the country. They have plans for January 17th, the 19th, and January 20th – the day of Joe Biden’s inauguration.

These plans have been seen on the platforms that the extremists use. Just Monday, an internal FBI bulletin reported they are warning of plans for armed protests at all 50 state capitals and in Washington in the days leading up to Biden’s inauguration. The FBI bulletin warned that, as of Sunday, the nationwide protests may start later this week and extend through Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration.

By Frank Gormlie

This is not news: the entire country is reeling from Trump’s insurrection attempt, and we’re in a very serious national security crisis as long as he’s in the White House.

The OB Rag believes this is such a serious crisis that we will refrain from publishing our usual array of articles – until the crisis has been resolved. We will continue, however, to post articles about this dark moment.

So, this is not a time for pot-holes and height limits. We cannot in good conscience pretend that everything is back to normal – and be focused on the local issues that usually take our attention. “Pot-holes” are synonymous with those ubiquitous, nagging problems that we wish government would fix. Height limits are damn important – but mean nothing if our federal government is attacked.

The Rag will continue to remind and inform our readers about this still evolving crisis. It’s not over yet. Armed white nationalists are still planning on more violence later this month – and not just at the Capitol on January 20 for Joe Biden’s inauguration.

There is some good news: there is a dramatic and deep revulsion going on across the nation against Trump, his acolytes, his fellow insurrectionists, his enablers in Congress and around the country.

By Ammar Campa-Najjar / Times of San Diego / January 7, 2021

Wednesday’s terrorist attack was painful to process on many levels. People I love were in the Capitol, hiding under their desks, recounting experiences that reminded me of my own in the war zone of Gaza.

For years, I’ve been called a “terrorist trying to infiltrate congress” by my former Congressman and the outgoing President’s supporters because of my Palestinian-Mexican American heritage. Now, the world has seen who the real national security threats, domestic terrorists, infiltrators are.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of 9/11, when patriotic Americans aboard Flight 93 spent their final living moments fighting hijackers to save the Capitol from attack and prevent terrorists from claiming the symbolic victory of smashing the center of American government.

Twenty years later, that same Temple of Democracy came under attack by terrorists who stormed the halls of Congress, forced our elected officials to evacuate, and resulted in four people killed. This time the terrorists weren’t outside fundamentalists recruited by Bin Laden, they were our fellow citizens — fueled by hateful nativism and emboldened by a vacating President’s falsehoods and false hopes.

We’ve done to ourselves what our enemies could only dream of doing, and that is what’s most heartbreaking of all.

By Geoff Page

If ever there was a reason to leave Facebook in droves, the scene on January 6 in Washington, D.C., would be it. The LOSER would never have been elected were it not for Facebook.

In mid-November 2018, I wrote a piece in The OB Rag explaining why I deleted my Facebook account. I quoted the following paragraph from an article by Evan Osnos in the New Yorker. And before anyone turns their nose up at the New Yorker look at the piece titled “Can Mark Zuckerberg Fix Facebook Before It Breaks Democracy?” It is an exhaustive, detailed article.

The quote is from the LOSER’s campaign staff.

“During the campaign, Trump used Facebook to raise two hundred and eighty million dollars. Just days before the election, his team paid for a voter-suppression effort on the platform. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, it targeted three Democratic constituencies—“idealistic white liberals, young women, and African Americans”—sending them videos precisely tailored to discourage them from turning out for Clinton. Theresa Hong, the Trump campaign’s digital-content director, later told an interviewer, “Without Facebook we wouldn’t have won.”

By Colleen O’Connor

In medicine, a malignancy that threatens the life of a patient, must be removed.

So, too, in politics. When an American president threatens the very existence of democracy, he must be removed. And a constitutional remedy does exist.

Rep. Sara Jacobs of San Diego and Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer are correct. The Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet must invoke Section 4 of the 25th Amendment asap.

Section 4 states that if the vice president and a majority of Cabinet concludes the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” they can put that in writing and send it to congressional leaders.

Once that happens, the vice president immediately becomes acting president.

If the president disputes it, (which he will) Congress decides the matter, with a two-thirds vote of both the House and Senate needed to keep the vice president in charge. Surely, that discussion can eat up the remaining 13 days of the Trump presidency and deprive him of more abuses of power.

Quickest solution and should have been triggered last night.