OB Rag

Bob Woodward’s “Obama’s Wars” Gives Us Ringside Seats in How Pentagon “Rolled” the President

It’s amazing, isn’t it, how quickly Afghanistan can fall off the front page or off the news cycle. And then something horrible will bring it back. But only briefly.

Like in this news, an Afghan guy dressed in a soldier’s uniform drove into a crowd that had gathered to see what US and NATO troops were up to in their neighborhood park. The guy donated a bomb – and people were killed – including 3 American soldiers.

By Sari Horwitz / Washington Post / April 11, 2012

Florida special prosecutor Angela Corey plans to announce as early as Wednesday afternoon that she is charging neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in the shooting of Trayvon Martin, according to a law enforcement official close to the investigation.

It was not immediately clear what charge Zimmerman will face.

By Dirty DeMaio / April 9, 2012

There’s been considerable attention paid recently to the secrecy around the hotelier vote to impose a new tax on the public. Those looking for the origin of the secret hotelier vote that apparently can’t be shared with the public can look back to October 10th last year, when the city council voted to make it secret. Thanks to a motion by Carl DeMaio, the city’s municipal code was altered specifically for this purpose: …

Which American Corporations Didn’t Pay Taxes

By Paul Buchheit / NationofChange / April 9, 2012

This is tax time, or in the case of many big businesses, just another time without taxes. These companies deserve to be recognized. With the help of SEC data and the results of several excellent research studies, PayUpNow.org has selected the ‘winners’ of the 2011 Tax Avoidance Awards.

Vietnam Has Left Town, Say Hello to the New Syndrome on the Block

By Tom Engelhardt / TomDispatch.com / April 10, 2012

Take off your hat. Taps is playing. Almost four decades late, the Vietnam War and its post-war spawn, the Vietnam Syndrome, are finally heading for their American grave. It may qualify as the longest attempted burial in history. Last words — both eulogies and curses — have been offered too many times to mention, and yet no American administration found the silver bullet that would put that war away for keeps.

(OB Rag Editor: please go to the original post for all the many links – TomDispatch.com )

Last week at the end of a vicious cyber attack, the OB Rag made an appeal to our readers, fans, and supporters – our community.

We described how it appears that someone is directly and deliberating attacking our news and commentary website, causing us to be suspended and offline by our host.

We discussed how it appears that we would have to upgrade our host server or take other pricey measures to avoid these kinds of ddos attacks in the future. One option we’re looking at would cost in the neighborhood of $1600 a year – quite a jump from our single digit server costs per month.

McClatchy/Tribune / Originally published April 4, 2012

ORLANDO, Fla. _ SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment had a banner year in 2011. Attendance and guest spending rose across its U.S. theme parks. Earnings set a company record.

But SeaWorld won’t have to pay a dime in federal income tax. It will not have to pay any Florida corporate income tax, either. Thanks to big tax deductions for capital investment and interest payments, SeaWorld’s record 2011 will actually go down as a loss for tax purposes.

Having emerged from the season opening series against the hated Dodgers with no beer or blood stains on my jersey, I thought a few observations on the nature of watching baseball were in order as we amble toward the sweet days of summer, win or lose.

In William Carlos Williams’s fine poem “The Crowd at the Ball Game” he notes the beauty, love, and menace of the crowd:

The crowd at the ball game
is moved uniformly
by a spirit of uselessness
which delights them —
all the exciting detail
of the chase
and the escape, the error
the flash of genius —
all to no end save beauty
the eternal –

The morning grey still hung over OB as I parked my car up the street from the Episcopal Center Church on Sunset Cliffs Blvd. It was my first day of several much needed weeks off and I had made the mistake of responding to the Editordude’s request an hour earlier to cover the Maundy Thursday for the Needy at the Center. Groggily, as I walked down the street, I saw several familiar faces reclined on the grass outside the sanctuary, and the end of a line of folk stretching out to the street.

Ooops, I forgot my audience… what is Maundy Thursday you ask?

Come inside for the photo gallery…

Apparently, the Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Gregory Jaczko, is coming to check out the troubled San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station tomorrow, Friday, April 6th.

In response, leaders of local community groups are holding a press conference near the facility on Friday, April 6th at 10am. The location of the press conference will be near the San Onofre State Beach guard shack on Beach Club Road.

These activists are asking supporters to join them

Patients, Caregivers and Community Leaders Rally to Restore Medi-cal Care to California’s Disabled and Elderly.

In the tradition of Disability Rights Movement patients, caregivers, human rights activists, and community leaders, Congressman Bob Filner, Lorena Gonzalez of the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council and others will gather on Friday, April 6, 2012 at 11 a.m. to protest the state-wide budget cuts affecting millions of disabled patients and the jobs of their caregivers. ]

The rally will take place at the Medi-Cal office located at 690 Oxford Street in Chula Vista, Calif.

I’m a man in my 30s who enjoys porn. In contrast, most women I know seem to have no interest in porn.

Accordingly, I’m intrigued by how porn tends to be compelling to men but unappealing to women. Maybe it’s because, for men, so much of sex is about the physical details. Whereas for women, so much of sex is not about the physical details.

But porn does excite women — and it doesn’t matter what kind of porn. Studies show that straight men are turned on by straight porn, gay people by gay porn, and straight women by both straight porn and gay porn…