Category: Columns

Over the past year or so that I have been writing for the OB Rag I have mentioned one or two of my grandchildren in the course of discussion. I have three beautiful daughters, and they have gifted me with 9 grandchildren and some of those have given me 4 great-grandchildren. Out of those children that are eligible for college, all of them are currently enrolled in the California Higher Education programs.

Last week I posted an article written by my oldest grandson, Josh, as to why he was proud to be an American, and why he feels somewhat “tarnished” today. I have always known that he was very bright, yet if you look at his past his actions sometimes belied that intelligence. I think it is fair to say that he is growing up, and the beautiful creative mind that has been stifled is being unleashed.

Josh has had a relationship with his girlfriend Cherie for close to seven years. When she came into their relationship she had a very young daughter and Josh treated her as if she was his. (I have to admit that for a time I wondered if she was his child. She wasn’t.) Two years after they got together they had a child together and people, including this grandmother, asked if they were going to get married. The answer was “no” and has continued to be “no”. But something happened last week that has Josh thinking – and writing – again.

TIJUANA, MEXICO — The signs at the union rally were lettered in red and green on a white background, reminiscent of the Mexican flag.

“!Con DeMaio al Norte!”
(“With Demaio to the North!”)

“!Si, se puede, jefe!”
(“Yes, we can, boss!”)

“!Te amos Carl!”
(“We love you, Carl!”)

The setting was a south-of-the-border parade on Tijuana’s famous Avenida Revolucion, where a union representing undocumented workers hoping to migrate to the United States endorsed Republican candidate Carl DeMaio for San Diego mayor.

Editor: Just to ensure that our readers and the world know where the OB Rag stands on Carl DeMaio, we’re running two posts today, one by Doug Porter, and this one by Jim Miller.

“We have a conservative movement that has learned, over the decades, to mimic
many of the characteristics of its enemies.” – Thomas Frank

As Frank Gormlie noted in an OB Rag piece last Saturday, Carl DeMaio used a pull quote from one of my OB Rag columns describing Nathan Fletcher as a “Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing.” More specifically, DeMaio’s mailer cites this passage:

Nathan Fletcher is not a man of great political courage. He isn’t even a particularly independent thinker. But he is politically clever, and he knows that San Diego’s Democratic base has a long history of being bamboozled by wolves in sheep’s clothing from the days of Pete Wilson to the present.

It was so nice seeing my old friend, Whoopi, the other night. It had been a while. The last time I saw her was a few years ago when my wife, Nancy, and I, found ourselves standing in a line that can only be described as very long at a book store in La Jolla.

When we finally crossed the threshold of the building and got a glimpse of Whoopi, her head was bowed as she was intently writing her name with swift sweeps of her wrist. We just looked at her with deep admiration as she made so many people’s day, smiling at them as she scribbled.

In a moment she happened to look up and spot us, opening her eyes ala Mr. Magoo and she dropped her pen and came towards us like a Drum Major in a Black College Marching Band, calling out to us, “Ernie! Nancy!” and then she wrapped us in a hug that must have warmed the room.

In the spirit of bipartisanship, compromise, and reaching out to our friends and fellow citizens on the other side of the aisle, here The OB Rag offers its Voter Guide for the 2012 Republican Presidential Primary.

See you at the polls!

These words are in memory
of a dear friend whom I met in 1975
through my soul mate Nancy
who also is no longer alive
although they both will
exist forever, in my inner being, spirit wise.
And as it is with life,
I could have never known
back then
that this new friend,
Charlie McKain, Lucky,
would represent the kind of
human progress
in which he has been
involved in
(my mother, by the way,
is turning in her grave
with that ordering of words
as she was the queen of the preposition) –

A couple years ago, I took a psychology 101 course at a San Diego community college. Our first lesson focused on the history of mental illness and its treatment.

The professor opened by describing a now-extinct illness called “hysteria,” which struck ladies only and featured symptoms from faintness, nervousness, and insomnia to irritability, loss of appetite for food or sex, and even “a tendency to cause trouble.”

During the Victorian Era, the professor explained, hysteria was enough of a problem to inspire heaps of medical research. And because the illness largely seemed to be stemming from the patient’s mind, hysteria became one of the first “mental” maladies to be studied rigorously by the modern medical community.

So what does any of this have to do with sex?

I am always amazed that someone as young as me can have so many grandchildren to be proud of. At last count I have 9 grandchildren and 4 great grandchildren. I am proud of each of them for a variety of reasons.

Today, in talking to my oldest grandchild – Josh – I told him how much I missed his grandfather, particularly during this voting season. Bob was an activist and very involved in all political functions. Josh blew me away when he told me that, “Grandpa is living through me. I am doing what I know he would do, and am actively working on Obama’s reelection.”

He sent me an article that I would like to share with you, because Josh, at the age of 28, is becoming aware of the strength and failure of politicians today. In his own words:

When America made me proud.

Near the end of George W. Bush’s 2nd term I became a “Proud American”. I felt the passion that our ancestors must have felt when they learned of a country where their vote counted. People were talking politics everywhere, Republican and Democrat.

Scott Lewis had an interesting article in the Voice of San Diego last week on the tense relationship between Nathan Fletcher and the U-T San Diego editorial board. What was not particularly shocking was the clear evidence of the fact that the U-T sees itself as an extension of the local GOP and was disturbed that Fletcher may have harmed the Republican brand. More illustrative, however, was Fletcher’s defense of his move (note the part in bold):

Well I think you’ve got to go and look at what I actually said. And what I said is that I’m rejecting the partisan environment of today. People say “well did you ever consider becoming a Democrat.” I didn’t. Because I think there’s unwillingness on that side as well to step out and solve problems, whether we’re talking about pensions or managed competition or some of these other types of issues.

Since the untimely demise of the Millionaires Tax and the birth of the subsequent “compromise measure” Governor Jerry Brown has come out of the gates lauding the new ballot initiative as the result of his superior political experience and judgment. He has also made it clear that his vision is not one of progressive taxes in the service of social justice. Indeed, Brown recently challenged Democrats in the legislature to “man up” and make steep cuts to social services to help pave the way for the tax measure’s passage. In sum, his notion seems to be that only by demonstrating more austerity budgeting can we convince voters to pass the new measure.

Note: Of course Brown was put in this box by the Republicans in the legislature (like our own would-be mayor Nathan Fletcher) who all signed the Grover Norquist pledge to never raise any revenue in any instance. That said, the Governor didn’t have to adopt his role with such relish. But that’s the austerity Democrats for you.

Nonetheless, the early polling results on the compromise measure seemed encouraging for Brown with the first USC/LA Times poll showing the measure at 64% approval in late March. Sadly, this has not held. As the San Francisco Chronicle noted last week:

A new poll confirms a fear we’ve raised before – Gov. Jerry Brown’s insistence on coupling the popular tax on millionaires with an unpopular increase in the sales tax could doom the revenue package this November – putting pressure on the governor and his allies to step up their political games and save the schools from disastrous cuts.

I like to think that my partner and I have a healthy amount of sex. In fact, that’s exactly what I think. But I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s nowhere near the amount that my partner would like to be having.

But we certainly don’t have sex every day.

There are the usual excuses for that: I’m busy. I’m tired. When I’m not sleeping, I’m being a stepmother, working and going to school. By the time I get home at night, I’m exhausted and feel generally grungy. I want to eat dinner and decompress with some TV before passing out.

So what’s the magical number of times in a week to make love? Is there one? What if I don’t hit it? Does it all start to add up to a time when he feels we’re no longer compatible?

My column last week, “The Fletcher Flim Flam,” got a lot of attention and many comments, the most interesting one coming from Democratic Assemblyman Isadore Hall sent not by the politician himself but by a worried Fletcher campaign staffer who forwarded it to the OB Rag asking that it be posted in response to my blog. Here it is:

On the same day that Jim Miller published his piece against Nathan Fletcher, the right wing group Americans for Prosperity was doing a press conference to attack him as well.

You may have heard about this group, the front group for the Koch brothers. This is the same group that supported the chaos and dysfunction in Wisconsin–a model and vision that Carl Demaio has laid out as his vision for San Diego.

It’s unfortunate that Jim Miller doesn’t know Nathan Fletcher, but I do.