OB Rag

Members of the OB Woman’s Club have created a Facebook group called OB Crime Watch to help create awareness about what’s been going on in the community lately.

They are also hosting a meeting at their club Wednesday October 3 at 7pm.

By Suevon Lee / ProPublica / (Originally published Sept. 27, 2012)

As November 6 approaches, the efforts of True the Vote, a Texas anti-voter fraud group recently profiled by the New York Times, are gaining national attention.

Despite scant evidence of voter fraud, the group is laser-focused on weeding it out. It has pushed for voter-ID laws, voter roll purges and other controversial voting-related measures in a host of states. (Here is our guide to the voter ID controversy, where we note that evidence on both sides of the issue is lacking.)

This past Thursday was a mellow day for me, mainly due to a visit I made to a ribbon cutting ceremony for the grand opening of the Veterans Service Center at San Diego City College.

But I was already feeling pretty good before I got there, starting with being picked up by my girlfriend, if that’s what a 74 year old has. Anyway the ride, with that beautiful woman, on such a nice warm sparkling soothing easy San Diego day, had me ready for a good time.

Not to mention that it was nice to just cruise into a reserved parking place awaiting our arrival, the only space open, seemingly, for miles. That, in keeping with my upbeat mood, made me smile, because such a perk is not part of my lifestyle. Well, maybe every once in a while.

Despite the financial difficulties that came with trying to fund a big cultural event featuring books during hard economic times, the San Diego City College International Book Fair continues to deliver excellent literary talent for San Diego. Director Virginia Escalante has put together a lineup that features a little bit of everything with emerging writers, like Reyna Grande, alongside established talents such as Susan Straight and Gustavo Arellano.

This year’s Book Fair’s theme, “We Read Banned Books,” is a nod to the egregious censorship taking place in Arizona. Saturday will feature a showing of the documentary Precious Knowledge, which details the heartbreaking elimination of the Tucson School District’s ethnic studies programs, which served at-risk Mexican American students with great success. Following the film, there will be a reading from some of the books banned from use in Arizona’s schools.

A recent article in the San Diego Reader about another accident at the intersection of West Point Loma and Abbott Street points out its dangerous nature. Mercy Baron – who also writes for the OB Rag – reported on September 24th that the day before a bicyclist was run into by a car at the intersection.

As Baron pointed out – and as all local residents know – there are conflicting and confusing street signs at the intersection. If you are on West Point Loma going west, you can either turn left onto Abbott or go straight without restrictions. Cars going in the other direction have a Stop sign at that intersection. But on Abbott there is a Yield sign. People driving east on West Point Loma may not know there is that Yield sign and may assume it’s a Stop sign. At any rate, sometimes, cars will drive right in front of other vehicles going west on West Point Loma.

Proposition 37 requires labeling foods you buy in the supermarket as GMO foods if they contain genetically modified ingredients. It also prevents labeling GMO foods as “natural.” Some foods can be exempted from the GMO label such as otherwise organic foods that have been unintentionally cross-pollinated from GMO crops. And Prop 37 does not require labeling at restaurants and in particular fast food restaurants – just the places that you can probably expect to be served GMO foods.

Stanford Universityreleased a study recently which claimed that there is little if any nutritional difference between organic and non-organic foods. While there may be little nutritional difference, that’s not the point. There may be a huge toxicity difference. Non-organics and especially GMOs (genetically modified organisms) have been sprayed with pesticides and herbicides so that while organic soy and corn products may differ little nutritionally from non-organics such as Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soy, the toxicity spread might be truly appalling.

Consider that Monsanto’s GMO soy or Roundup Ready soy seeds have been specifically developed to withstand a spraying with Monsanto’s herbicide and pesticide, Roundup. Roundup will kill every other plant in the field except Roundup Ready soy plants. So while nutritionally Roundup Ready soy may be the same as organic soy, it sure isn’t the same with respect to the toxicity it has been exposed to. Organic soy plants have not been sprayed with Roundup or any other herbicide or pesticide.

The San Diego School District is placing the Barnard Elementary School property up for auction, today, September 27th. Bids take place at 10 am at Annex 2, Normal Street for the former Midway area public school.

The site represents 9.37 acres, and is located at 930 Barnard Street, a block from West Point Loma Avenue in the Midway area. The parcel is in the “coastal zone” and is on the chopping block for a minimum bid of $9.14 million. Originally opened during World War II for Navy children, the elementary school was acquired by the District after the war.

Great white sharks back in north coast “Red Triangle”

By Peter Fimrite / SFGate / September 22, 2012

Scientists are all but running giddily into the surf with fancy new gadgetry as the annual migration of great white sharks hits full swing along the Pacific coast and reports flood in about finned beasts lurking in shallow waters.

Hope on my mind

Hope comes easy for me. It can rise from the words in a kindergarten girl’s poem where everybody lives happily forever and ever, or it could come out of the energy of thousands of San Diegans standing in the middle of Broadway singing “Give Peace a Chance.”

I didn’t realize, though, how hopeful a human being I am until I found myself one day holding out hope that the San Diego Union-Tribune, a rag that, on good days, over the years, has made me gag, could change and become a factor in helping San Diego become all it can be.

I didn’t see this hopeful moment coming. I was leaving the Union-Tribune Building one day when it dawned on me that I had a smile on my face. And that had never been the case when I look back on all the times I’ve walked away from the place.

By John Lawrence / San Diego Free Press / Sept. 15, 2012

Even those global warming deniers can’t escape the fact that the weather events causing a billion dollars or more of damage and destruction are piling up at an increasing rate. The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) is the Nation’s Scorekeeper in terms of addressing severe weather/climate events. The NCDC tracks and evaluates climate events in the U.S. and globally that have great economic and societal impacts.

The U.S. has sustained 133 weather/climate disasters since 1980 where overall damages/costs reached or exceeded $1 billion – assuming Consumer Price Index (CPI) adjustment to 2012. 46 of these events occurred between 1980 and 1995 and 87 occurred between 1996 and 2011.

See this great video of the early days of Point Loma High School – celebrating its 85th anniversary back in 2010. The school opened in 1925, and this video was made to commemorate it. Noah Trafolla narrates the vid. … Come inside to view video.

By Nadin Abbott / East County Magazine / September 24, 2012

The mood was tense as people from multiple walks of life and political views filed into San Diego City Chambers. Among them was Republican Santee Councilman Jack Dale and Democrat David Secor, candidate for U.S. Congress for the 50th district. Both Dale and Secor came to oppose the Quail Brush gas-fired power plant.

So did Massada Disenhouse, activist for the Sierra Club and Martha Sullivan, a former California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) employee, and many others.

There were supporters of the plant as well, including Gary Salas, a member of the electrical trades. Also supporting the project was John Gibson, of Hamman Construction in El Cajon.

This planned peaked plant attracted people from multiple areas of the county, not just San Diego proper.