OB Rag

If you had attempted to come online to our site last Friday or Saturday, you would have found a blank screen. For hours, the OB Rag was down – “suspended” – due to an internet attack against us. That’s right – we’ve been in somebody’s cross-hairs and they disrupted our service – at least 4 times over the last week. Technically called a DDOS – a dedicated denial of service – somebody swarmed our server with hundreds, maybe thousands of different IP addresses sending us stuff – and in the process overwhelming our server, who then suspends us until the problem is removed.

When we spoke to our tech support late last week and Saturday, he said that the attack is directly targeting the Rag. He can’t tell us where the attack is originating because the incoming connections change constantly and come from legit IP addresses. The attacker is using zombie or bot computers to accomplish this. Zombie or bot computers are computers like yours or mine that have been breached in some small way and contribute to the attack without the knowledge of the individual user.

Opening week is upon us and the Padres ownership debacle has already done a lot to dampen the spirits of local baseball fans even before the first pitch has been thrown. With Jeff Moorad unlikely to ever take over the majority share of the team from John Moores, many fans rightly feel they have been bamboozled once again–left to sit in a park that their tax dollars built and pay through the nose for bad baseball and overpriced beer while the swooning friars stumble uncertainly around the bases toward yet another losing season. If you watch the Vegas line, the Padres are picked to finish last in the National League West with only 70 wins. Oh, the horror!

But, of course, that is the destiny of the Padres fan: losing. As I only half-jokingly tell my friends, I have taught my son to love baseball and love the Padres so he knows from a young age the first noble truth: life is suffering.

OCEAN BEACH –Bankers representing News Corporation announced that its Fox News division had agreed to purchase The OB Rag, a local news website based in San Diego.

“With this acquisition,” News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch said in a prepared statement, “News Corp silences an increasingly important voice for social justice and expands its local coverage to boot.”

An ever-present demand of Ocean Beach residents since the mid-1970s has been to be granted “independence” by the City of San Diego. OB tenants, property owners, and businesspeople have been clamoring for the village to be its own city for all these years.

Well, it finally happened behind closed doors on Friday. City officials met and decided once and for all that the sea-side community of about one mile square with roughly 15,000 residents should be its own municipality. The announcement was met with cheers from the Planning Board to the Mainstreet Association, from southern OB where the breakers beat at the cliffs to the northern climes where musicians, ex-hippies, bikers mix it up with students, elderly, sailors and working class families.

Sunset Cliffs and Silvergate Elementary Schools to be Converted to Large Scale Service Communities

The Mayor and members of the San Diego City Council will hold a press conference today at 3:00 p.m. to announce plans for what has been termed, two “Mega Service Centers and Shelters for the Homeless,” to be established in Point Loma. Mayor Jerry Sanders’ office announced the press conference yesterday. When contacted for comment, mayoral spokesman, John Galt, said, “We have had to be a bit secretive, but the plans for the centers have been over two years in the making. We are very excited about how well these particular sites will suit the needs of so many.”

California could be third State in nation to adopt such a resolution

By Public Citizen / East Co. Magazine / Originally published on March 25, 2012

California is well in stride to be the third state to call for a constitutional amendment to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, which allows corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money in an attempt to influence elections. The California Assembly passed a resolution – by a 48-22 vote – calling for an amendment, sending the measure to the California Senate.

When my hand wasn’t being shook or my body hugged by old friends I stood with my mind tripping as I looked down at the multitude of people who had gathered to march in the name of Trayvon Martin who had been slain by George Zimmerman, a man who remains free from imprisonment under Florida’s “Standing Your Ground” law, aka the right to kill.

In between speakers, and as we walked, my mind kept on tripping and I let my imagination flow and from that there rose a scenario featuring a powerfully built African American man named Cleavon Manson and a six foot plus skinny white teenage boy who responds to Gabe. Last name, Zabielski.

By Donna Cassata / Huffington Post / March 30, 2012

WASHINGTON — Facing a conservative backlash, House Republicans are working to change a new law that allows the indefinite detention without trial of terrorist suspects, even U.S. citizens seized within the nation’s borders.

Republicans and Democratic lawmakers said this week that the GOP majority on the House Armed Services Committee was weighing several proposals to revise the provision on indefinite detention that was part of the far-reaching defense bill that Congress passed in December and President Barack Obama signed into law.

By Kevin Gosztola / The Dissenter – OpEdNews / March 30, 2012 

At the start of the first hearing on a lawsuit challenging the Homeland Battlefield Act, a federal judge appeared to be “extremely skeptical” that those pursuing the challenge had grounds to sue the US government. However, by the end of the hearing, the judge acknowledged plaintiffs had made some strong arguments on why there was reason to be concerned about the Act, which passed as part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on New Year’s Eve last year.

It’s been an interesting week here at the OB Rag admin desk with three major bouts of downtime. I’ve spent a good number of hours deciphering error logs, tweaking settings and chatting with tech support.

It seems one major concern for us is the amount of comment spam that hits our server at regular intervals. We have excellent spam filters (Akismet) that keep 99.9% of this crap from showing up on the site where you, dear reader, can see it. But that doesn’t keep it from reeking havoc behind the scenes.

Join us today – Saturday, March 31st – for one of the biggest event of the year, the annual Cesar Chavez Day March! More than 1000 union members will march to celebrate his legacy, 50 years of the United Farm Workers, and highlight the challenges that remain for us today in order to reclaim the American Dream. Help us make this our best march yet!

 Cesar Chavez Day March

 Saturday, March 31 at 10:00 A.M.

 Cesar Chavez Park

1449 Cesar E. Chavez Pkwy., San Diego

Michael Moore, Chris Hedges, and others to address press following hearing

At 9:00 AM this Thursday, March 29th at the Southern District of New York Federal Courthouse, multiple plaintiffs will testify in support of a worldwide lawsuit against the United States government over the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

The NDAA, also known as the “Homeland Battlefield” law, permanently suspends due process and Habeas Corpus for persons accused by the federal government of being involved in hostilities against the United States, or being an “associated force” of terrorists.