OB Rag

Popaditch Incites Mob, Curses at Filner and reportedly pushed Opponent at Election Central By Miriam Raferty / East County Magazine…

Since Primary election eve, when the results were coming in, San Diego conservatives have been celebrating their perceived “victories”. Me thinks they are celebrating way too early, as the results are not as favorable to the GOP and their extremist friends as they think it was. Check this out.

First, the California Primary was one of the lowest voter turn-outs in history – 36% – if not the lowest. Low turn-outs tend to favor conservatives, whereas large turn-0uts favor Democrats and liberals. And Democrats did stay away from the polls, as there was no big-ticket item on the ballot. Sure, Barack Obama was on it but he was a shoe-in. And Senator Dianne Feinstein was on it as well, but she didn’t have any serious challengers. Yes, there were two state-wide measures – and one of them – Prop 28 – which does aid democracy just a tad -passed handily – but how can anyone get excited about a tax on tobacco.

Restaurant Review of “BGR”
3960 West Point Loma Blvd. Ste J
619-222-7300

I noticed BGR for the first time on Memorial Day when I went to have a manicure and pedicure in the shopping center that used to house “Longs Drugs.” (In actuality they opened just before Christmas in 2011.) The line going into the restaurant was huge and when I asked the manicurist why the line was so long she told me that they were giving free hamburgers and cheeseburgers away to celebrate the holiday. (I found out this evening that they offered the promotion from 11:00am to 1:00pm and again from 5:00pm to 7:00pm. They gave away 493 burgers and made 47 malts!)

Today my grown daughter told me that the same restaurant was offering a promotion and suggested that I might want to check it out. Unfortunately – or fortunately as it turned out – I could not go at lunch time but could go for dinner – so she, her daughter, and her daughter’s two children and I piled into two cars and headed to the restaurant.

Editor: Here is a two-part series about what is going on in Venezuela by Peter Bohmer – a former OBcean, who now teaches at Evergreen College in Washington state. Bohmer just recently returned from a ten week visit to Venezuela, and filed this report.

by Peter Bohmer / Special to the OB Rag / June 7, 2012

I spent 10 weeks in Venezuela in early 2012, two months with a group of 30 students from the Evergreen State College and then two weeks continuing my travels with a good friend. I had a similar 10 week experience in early 2009 and also spent three weeks in Venezuela in 2011. Based on my 2009 study and travel in Venezuela, I wrote an article that can be found here. This article here is a continuation of that one. It focuses primarily on the changes in Venezuela since 2009. Most of my time on this trip was spent in Caracas, Mérida, and Barquisimeto.

Judge Katherine Forrest Denies Government’s Attempt to Limit Ruling

By Charlie Savage/ New York Times / June 6, 2012

The government may not rely on a disputed law enacted last year to hold people in indefinite military detention on suspicion that they “substantially supported” Al Qaeda or its allies — at least if they had no connection to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a federal judge said on Wednesday.

In an eight-page memorandum opinion and order, Judge Katherine B. Forrest of the Southern District of New York clarified a preliminary injunction she issued on May 16 in a lawsuit brought by journalists and activists who challenged the statute — a provision of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011 — and expressed fear that they could be detained.

The Shingle Chronicles – Part Two

This is the second in a series about my recent run-in with a most unpleasant malady, Shingles. I hope it will encourage those who have not had the vaccination to set aside all your acrimony and distrust toward “Big Pharm,” and get vaccinated. It is also a lesson learned and an acquisition of empathy for all those who suffer from disabilities and illness we cannot “see.” Here’s Part One.

Descent into Shingles Hell

After a night of vivid dreams which rivaled Alice’s trip through the Looking Glass, I awoke to sunny May morning. Normally this would have been the start of good day. I was on leave from University and as I recall, there was nice little bump in the surf and Our Mother Ocean was starting warm up. Light, off shore winds marked the end of Winter’s chill and an approach of balmy Summer days. There would, however, be no surfin’ for a while and the previous night’s medications were beginning to wear off. I found myself a bit out of sorts and “scratchy.” Surprisingly, the pain was not yet particularly bad. So I just took the anti-inflammatory, with a sort of wait-and-see attitude toward the pain medications. It was now a full week from the initial symptoms showing up. Only eight more to go….

OB Rag readers – please go check out our brand new offspring online publication for all of San Diego: the San Diego Free Press.

The City of San Diego is finally moving forward on its plans to wrap Mission Bay in surveillance cameras, including the camera the City has been threatening for two years to install at the end of the Ocean Beach Pier.

The OB Pier camera is part of a 14-camera security system funded by the Department of Homeland Security that are being placed around Mission Bay on city light poles, atop lifeguard structures and on boat ramps.

The OB Rag has been covering the City’s plans for a while now:

• ‘We’re Watching You’ – Surveillance Cameras to Be Installed On OB Pier and Around Mission Bay, by Dave Rice, March 22, 2010

• Creeping Big Brother in OB and Beyond, by Frank Gormlie, April 7, 2010

By Mel Freilicher / Special to the OB Rag

Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life
By Vivian Gornick
Yale University Press, 2011; 151 pages; $25

Rather than write a political history of Emma Goldman’s very full life (which is already documented in great detail, including in her own hefty, 2 volume autobiography, Living My Life), Vivian Gornick has chosen to “concentrate on the force of her extraordinary rebelliousness and try to understand it in light of the existential drive behind radical politics.”

To illuminate what she believes to be at the heart of many dedicated radicals’ commitment, Gornick delivers a provocative portrait of Goldman’s soul, really: embodied in what’s famously paraphrased as, “If I can’t come to your dance, I’m not coming to your revolution.”

This is the first in a series about my recent run-in with a most unpleasant malady, Shingles. I hope it will encourage those who have not had the vaccination to set aside all your acrimony and distrust toward “Big Pharm,” and get vaccinated. It is also a lesson learned and an acquisition of empathy for all those who suffer from disabilities and illness we cannot “see.”

Part One: Tripping into the Shingles Abyss

Reading any contemporary literature, there appears to be what I would call “module writing.” This seems to hold true for most cinema, as well. For example, the First Module gives us the setting (Tropic Island, South Central LA, Oxford), the characters who are acceptable for the particular setting (Island girl, middle-aged black man, ruddy faced ginger cook) in a particular genre (lost and abandoned, coming of age, off-beat romance).

Join us tonight – Primary Night – here at 8:00 pm when the OB Rag joins other local online media and doing a live blog of the Primary’s mysterious being unfolded over the course of the evening. San Diego CityBeat and San Diego Rostra will be represented as well. Andy Cohen will be downtown blogging at Election Central, and Doug Porter, Frank Gormlie and Annie Lane – and perhaps more – will be live blogging from home.

Here is the agenda for the OB Planning Board’s regular, monthly meeting, for June 6th. The Board meets sharply at 6 pm at the OB Rec Center,4726 Santa Monica Avenue. (The agenda does have a second page, but it just includes “adjournment”.

The main item on the agenda is a request to construct a 288 square foot addendum to an existing structure at 5072 Niagara Avenue.