OB Rag

Underwater Homeowners Start To Lose Patience

By Tom Fudge / KPBS / March 14, 2012

Rolling Hills Ranch looks like a pretty plush neighborhood. Three thousand square-foot stucco homes line the winding streets, and they’re framed by a panorama of nearby mountains. …

Use Of Pigs In Medic Classes Sparks Protest

By Steve Schmidt / 10 News / March 14, 2012

It’s about training the finest medics in the world. It’s about cruelty to animals. When it comes to the goings-on at secluded Covert Canyon, an outdoor training facility near Alpine, there’s little that the two sides in the issue agree on. …

San Diego Rents Third Highest in Nation

By Don Bauder / The Reader / March 13, 2012

By Sheila Johnson

Last December, on a visit to Japan, I had a chance to spend a day being driven around Sendai and its environs to see at first hand some of the earthquake and tsunami damage of March, 2011. We did not go anywhere near the ‘dead-zone’ around Fukushima’s nuclear reactors, but what I saw was shocking enough — lamp-posts bent like pretzels by the force of the water, entire towns wiped from the map, and rice-fields that would normally have been covered with rice-stubble instead scrubbed clean of all topsoil.

Even worse, these rice-fields had been covered, I was told, by six feet of sea water. How long, I wondered, will it take for the salt to be leached from the soil so that rice can grow there again? And what about the nuclear fall-out and its damage to soil, plants, and animals?

A Day FOR the 99 Percent!

by Monty Reed Kroopkin

The Occupy movement is rolling out a new tactic. It is building on several months of successes and aims to take it ‘up a notch’. May 1st — May Day — is the World Labor Day honoring the workers killed in Chicago in 1886, striking for the eight hour day. It is also the day each year that working class solidarity is reaffirmed and our demands for a better world renewed. Occupy is organizing for it, everywhere, as the next major step.

Last Fall, as the Occupy Wall Street movement spread to more than 2000 cities worldwide, SEIU International Union President Mary Kay Henry issued a statement of support. She said, in part:

“As part of a peaceful, united movement we can do so much more to demonstrate the increasing urgency of the crisis our country faces and shine a light on those responsible.”

“The whole community (of Ocean Beach) will be changed,” Bishop Jim Mathes told a recent gathering of the Episcopal faithful from across the country.

At a recent “community gathering” in San Diego of roughly 300 Asian, Black, Latino and Native American clergy and laity from across the Episcopal Church was held. Organized through the Ethnic Ministries offices of the church, the agenda for the “New Community Gathering” included community engagement and mission focus.

During the meeting, they were welcomed by Bishop Jim Mathes of San Diego. It was reported via the Church’s press that Mathes stated:

“the diocese is also in the process of relocating its headquarters to the Ocean Beach area, where it currently provides 3,000 service contacts monthly in the form of 12-step groups, meals, legal and medical assistance, even haircuts.”

And it was reported that he continued to state:

Government budgets at every level now include allocations aimed at fighting an ephemeral “War on Terror” in the United States.

By Stephan Salisbury / TomDispatch.com – AlterNet / Originally published March 4, 2012

At the height of the Occupy Wall Street evictions, it seemed as though some diminutive version of “shock and awe” had stumbled from Baghdad, Iraq, to Oakland, California. American police forces had been “militarized,” many commentators worried, as though the firepower and callous tactics on display were anomalies, surprises bursting upon us from nowhere.

There should have been no surprise. Those flash grenades exploding in Oakland and the sound cannons on New York’s streets simply opened small windows onto a national policing landscape long in the process of militarization — a bleak domestic no man’s land marked by tanks and drones, robot bomb detectors, grenade launchers, tasers, and most of all, interlinked video surveillance cameras and information databases growing quietly on unobtrusive server farms everywhere.

Come help us keep pressure on local and federal government to help people out of this financial crisis.

ACCE has a new bill, the Property Value Protection bill they have presented to City Council as something we can do on a local level to help people out of their foreclosure crisis. They will talk about what we can do on a local level. a More speakers to be announced . Come support or tell your story!

1100 3rd Ave. @ B St. march to 401 B St. , San Diego, CA 92101

As the San Diego U-T has removed Gary Trudeau’s Doonesbury cartoon from the paper due to the comic’s emphasis this week on women’s reproductive rights, here it is:

Picket Darrel Issa outside Shadowridge Country Club in Vista (1980 Gateway Dr.), where he is featured at a $125/person “Meet the Leaders” cocktail party (630pm) and dinner (730pm) by the Vista Chamber of Commerce.

Picket Darrel Issa

Today – March 13, 2012

5:00pm until 8:00pm

Shadowridge Country Club

Gateway Drive and Shadowridge Drive, Vista CA

We will line the public sidewalks along Gateway Drive, leading up to the Country Club entrance, and at its intersection with the busy Shadowridge Drive.

Bring your sass and creativity — we want to let the Chairman of our House Oversight Committee who held a hearing on contraception and refused to allow any women to testify in the first panel, know that we WILL be heard and seen, despite his best efforts!

Governor Jerry Brown has just appointed Nancy Casady – the general manager of People’s Food Co-op – to the state Board of Food and Agriculture. A Democratic Party member like the governor, Nancy will take up her unpaid position on the Board at the earliest moment as it does not require Senate confirmation.

Casady has been the at her post at the Ocean Beach store since 1996. Before that, she owned Casady Whole Foods Market – which ran from 1988 to 1994. Nancy was also the vice president of the National Cooperative Grocers Association from 2006 to 2009 and was a member of the National Cooperative Development Board from 2009 to 2011.

Since the right-wing and their attendant press refuse to run Doonesbury all week because Gary Trudeau is focusing the strip on women’s reproductive rights, we have decided to run them – all week. Here is Day No. 2.

He’s sitting at the bar, nursing a drink when an attractive lady sits down next to him.
“Do you come here often?” she asks.
“No, this is my first time here.”
“Where have you been?”
“In prison.”
“Why? What did you do?”
“I killed my wife.”
“Oh! That means you’re single?”

After almost two months of on-line dating, my research is over. Although it was an interesting experience, it bore little, if any fruit, and was an expensive project. A little background:

I am a widow of almost three years. I am reasonably attractive – for an old broad -; have not yet begun to show that Alzheimer’s runs in my family; like to cook; like to read; like to write. Still physically active – walk my 11 year old Golden Retriever 1-2 miles a day; like the human touch and miss the hugs and comfort that a man can give me. I am a retired educator – public as well as governmental; have 3 grown daughters and a passel of grandchildren. With all that in mind, I signed up with 3 “on-line dating services” : “Senior People Meet”; “BB People Meet” – Big and Beautiful – and Match.com. I originally signed up for EHarmony.com, but it was too costly and I did not complete the application.

San Diego City staff have recommended that the McMansion-type Burk residence on West Point Loma Boulevard be allowed to be constructed.

This recommendation flies in the face of the Ocean Beach Planning Board’s rejection of the project at their December 2011 Board meeting.

The city Hearing Officer will hear the case on Wednesday, March 14th.

Here is the link to the official staff report and recommendation.