Author: Source

Dustin Trotter of Defend East County, was just elected to the Santee City Council (by just 5 votes)

By Matt Jenkins / Times of San Diego / Jan. 15, 2021

In the wake of insurrection at the nation’s Capitol, the reality of who engaged in these acts of domestic terrorism, and how they affect us at home, is something that must be addressed.

We know that local vigilante group Defend East County were posted up on the Capitol steps, less than 100 feet away from the doors that were breached in this insurrection. The group’s Justin Haskins was live-feeding as the MAGA Mob beat law enforcement with flag poles, hockey sticks, crutches and whatever else they had on them.

By Michael Moore / Michael Moore’s Facebook Page – Reader-Supported-News / January 15, 2021

C’mon, MAGA Nation!

Losing sucks. Give up!

Just meet us half-way!

The reason our side ultimately wins is because we’re on the side of love, peace, science, hip-hop, healthy food, libraries, quilts, gardens, every kid gets a trophy — and we’re the ones working to see that you’ll never pay a doctor bill again, and we’re gonna instantly see that your wage gets DOUBLED at your crappy minimum wage job, and we’re gonna get you that vaccine NOW and fucking kick Covid’s ass for you.

By Joel Day / San Diego Union-Tribune / January 14, 2021

San Diego is home to extremists who participated in a violent insurrection on Jan. 6. Our city and county must grapple with our region’s violent extremism problem and take local measures to address the problem.

Our region has long been a bastion of reactionary fascism, from the Ku Klux Klan’s roots in East County to anti-immigrant militias, and now to a whole new radicalized cadre whose membership falls in three overlapping categories: political seditionists such as QAnon and Combat 18, right-wing paramilitary militias such as the Three Percenters, and hate and supremacy groups such as RAM and Proud Boys. Each of these categories use violence against civilians to support a political agenda, the definition of terrorism, and are attempting to radicalize our neighbors before our very eyes.

We know that “reopen,” counter-Black Lives Matters and pro-Donald Trump protests in recent years have proven staging grounds for recruiting angry, disaffected Americans.

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.

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 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 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.

By Colleen O’Connor

Exactly one year ago on January 2nd, 2020, I wrote a column with 10 predictions to cover the next 18 months. Checking now, almost all have come to fruition 6 months early.

In order of rank: Wins and Losses.

Best Prediction: “There will be a woman on the Democratic 2020 presidential ticket. Why? Because Nancy Pelosi will insist and California will deliver. That candidate will be Kamala Harris (whether as President or Vice-President).”

Next Up: Mitt Romney will rise to be the “conscience” of the Republican Senate. Indeed, the only GOP member to vote for impeachment; the earliest to confront the “election fraud” allegations; same with the separation of families on the border. And now his quote of the day,” “The egregious ploy to reject electors may enhance the political ambition of some, but dangerously threatens our Democratic Republic.”

January Events All events are online and free unless stated otherwise.

Every Saturday at 10:30 a.m. Climate Mobilization Coalition Zoom Meeting. January 2nd, 9th, 16th, 23rd and 30th.

January 19th Tuesday 11 am – noon Zero Waste Bathroom Webinar

January 19th Tuesday 7 pm – 8:30 pm How Plant-Based Dieting Combats Climate Change
January 20th Wednesday 12 pm – 2:30 pm San Diego Black Women Entrepreneurs Summit

January 21st Thursday 6 pm – 8 pm Basic Bike Skills

January 23rd. Saturday 7 pm – 10 pm Spacechip Earth (Film Screening)

January 27th Wednesday 5:30 pm – 7 pm State of Green Building

And much, much more – come inside.

City streamlining enforcement, may consider looser regulations and ideas like consumption lounges

By David Garrick / San Diego Union-Tribune / Dec. 31, 2020

The new San Diego Cannabis Permitting Bureau launching this winter will streamline regulation of the city’s cannabis businesses, step up enforcement and explore new ideas like “consumption lounges” and delivery-only services.

The bureau also may focus on loosening city policies under New Mayor Todd Gloria and a Democrat-dominated City Council, who are expected to take a more permissive approach to legalized cannabis.