Author: Source

By Christopher Cadelago / UNION-TRIBUNE / August 24, 2010 at 2:43 p.m.

OCEAN BEACH — Frank Gormlie, a lawyer, activist and co-founder of the OB Rag, is calling on OBceans to join him at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Masonic Center to demand he be allowed to run as a candidate for the Ocean Beach Town Council’s board of directors.

On 26 July, Wikileaks released thousands of secret US military files on the war in Afghanistan. Cover-ups, a secret assassination unit and the killing of civilians are documented. In file after file, the brutalities echo the colonial past. From Malaya and Vietnam to Bloody Sunday and Basra, little has changed. The difference is that today there is an extraordinary way of knowing how faraway societies are routinely ravaged in our name. Wikileaks has acquired records of six years of civilian killing for both Afghanistan and Iraq, of which those published in the Guardian, Der Spiegel and the New York Times are a fraction.

by Pat Flannery / Blog of San Diego

This is the dirty Agreement that is spawning multiple lies about the Embarcadero Oval Park. The fact is that a Panamanian company, the Carnival Corporation, advanced the Port District $12 million at 4.5% interest to construct two home ports, one on B. Street Pier and one on Broadway Pier. The sole source of funds for repayment of this loan, which must be repaid in full by April 30, 2015, shall be a Special Facility Fee charged to each passenger while Carnival branded vessels will receive preferential berthing rights.

by Ariana Huffington / Huffington Post / August 21, 2010

As we head into the stretch run of the 2010 midterms, and get closer to the halfway point of President Obama’s first term, we’re hearing a lot of media chatter about the “enthusiasm gap” plaguing Democrats. There is also a lot of talk about whether progressives — aka “the professional left” — should or shouldn’t be disappointed in Obama. In a post about last month’s Netroots Nation gathering in Las Vegas, Matt Yglesias wrote that at this year’s event, “the dominant mood” was “depressed” and that he could feel a “considerable degree of ill will toward Barack Obama and his administration.”

Terriers is a show about two private investigators who are tenacious, just like the terrier dogs.

In the series Terriers, Michael Raymond-James plays Britt Pollack and Donal Logue plays Hank Dolworth, two men with questionable pasts who join together to form their own private investigation team. On August 3, 2010 the two gentlemen along with the producers discussed their new series with members of the Television Critics Association.

Editor: There’s a new ‘bad boy’ in town, and he’s not a bum or a homeless person. He … or she … is the person who grabs free electricity from the Newport Avenue light poles. The “new” U-T (Union-Tribune) felt this story still had legs and quotes our own Denny Knox, CEO of the OB Mainstreet Assoc., and Jim Musgrove, head of the OB Town Council. Go to it.
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City street crews are looking to curb the number of people in Ocean Beach who siphon electricity from outlets on street lamps to power everything from cell phones to recreational vehicles.

The San Diego Streets Division is awaiting another shipment of tamper-proof utility covers that restrict access to electrical sockets on a three-block stretch of Newport Avenue ….

Don’t believe what you’ve never been told. The water has never, ever been this cold. (Future rant coming here soon…….

By Chalmers Johnson / Tom Dispatch / August 17, 2010

In 1962, the historian Barbara Tuchman published a book about the start of World War I and called it The Guns of August. It went on to win a Pulitzer Prize. She was, of course, looking back at events that had occurred almost 50 years earlier and had at her disposal documents and information not available to participants. They were acting, as Vietnam-era Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara put it, in the fog of war.

So where are we this August of 2010, with guns blazing in one war in Afghanistan even as we try to extricate ourselves from another in Iraq?

Before April 2010, if you had asked local music fans about the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, you would have heard a pretty consensual answer that reflected its well-earned reputation as one of the nation’s most satisfying rock fests. Since the festival’s 1999 founding by Goldenvoice Productions, the Coachella sensibility had been rooted in the original L.A. punk-rock scene, delivering good vibes and genuine excitement along with a wide range of alternative sounds chosen with a connoisseur’s touch, from this year’s headlining muscle of Jay-Z and Thom Yorke to the dreamier waves of emotion unfurled by the xx as the afternoon sun slowly slid behind the palm trees.

“The No. 1 thing was just too many bodies,” admits Goldenvoice President Paul Tollett.

SAN DIEGO San Diego Unified’s results on 2010 state tests show across the board gains for the fourth straight year, with more students than ever ranking “advanced” in their subject knowledge.

The results of the annual California Standards Test released today show the district has five straight years of overall gains in English language arts and science scores, while math continues a four-year climb. This good news is tempered by recognition that scores still show an “achievement gap” among ethnic groups. Data relating to the achievement gap – test scores among ethnic groups – is still being analyzed, but early results show the gap is narrowing in some areas, albeit slowly.

Editor: David Helvarg, a former OBcean and original OB Rag staffer, now lives in San Francisco and runs the Blue Frontier Campaign to save our seas, which he founded in 2003. David is also the author “Blue Frontier – Dispatches from America’s Ocean Wilderness,” as well as a couple of books. Go check out his site.

by David Helvarg/ Blue Frontier Notes / Originally posted August 11, 2010

They’ve finally cemented up BP’s runaway well (from above with a second relief well plug still to seal it from below). Unfortunately this comes after 220 million gallons of oil slimed the Gulf of Mexico. So what’s the effect of a spill 20 times the size of the Exxon Valdez? Apparently not much if you believe the government’s estimates.

by George J. Janczyn / Groksurf ‘s San Diego / August 11, 2010

As noted in yesterday’s water rates story, (08/10/10) the main supplier for most of San Diego County’s water is the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD) and it holds great power when it comes to the cost and reliability of our water supply. So when MWD announced a stakeholder forum to examine the 2010 Integrated Resources Plan (IRP) Update there were naturally going to be many local water professionals in attendance. The IRP makes major changes to MWD’s strategy for water reliability through the year 2035, including a bold plan to create a large storage “buffer” to serve as a backup supply against virtually any scenario.