OB Rag

Guns in churches, schools and bars. Immigrants expelled to solve financial problems. Morality praised as the key national issue.

American politics are getting more bizarre and in some cases, border on the nutty. Current politics include Republican legislatures in Texas, Arizona, Georgia and Minnesota fighting for their “rights” to reject energy efficiency light bulbs, while South Carolina will manufacture their own state’s rights incandescent bulbs.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt / Excuse me, I’m writing / April 11, 2011

Southern colloquialisms are so darn charming — with those well-honed nasty edges!

Growing up, my family had particular fun with them, as we were wont to play with most words, great fodder that they were for what we considered erudite scoffery (a perfectly good word, if only the Oxford English Dictionary would admit it!).

A recent statewide poll, commissioned by the California Federation of Teachers, finds a solid majority of likely voters in California have a favorable opinion of public employees and support their right to engage in collective bargaining.

From the CFT’s press release:

In the aftermath of major demonstrations by labor unions on Monday to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s death and to bring attention to working families, the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) today released new polling results showing that 56% of California voters have a favorable view of public employees and 61% support their right to bargain together.

Editor: Below you will find a piece by David Sirota about recent investigative efforts by Lowell Bergman, local boy, former 60 Minutes producer, and one of our heroes for helping to inspire the original OB Rag from the pages of the San Diego Street Journal.

By David Sirota / TruthDig / April 8, 2011

Lowell Bergman is the rare skunk who regularly finds his way into the power elite’s garden parties. As tobacco executives celebrated huge revenues in the 1990s, he was the journalist whose reporting about cancer and nicotine addiction stopped the festivities.

Editor: As you read this, remember that your community’s underground newspaper, the original OB Rag, was part of this era. Art Kunkin, mentioned below – he was the editor of one of the West Coast’s grandparent alternatives, the LA Free Press – once called the OB Rag one of the best, community-based underground newspapers in the country.
The Sixties’ scrappy alternative newspapers were the oxygen that kept the era’s movements going.
By Richard Greenwald / In These Times

History books rarely speak as trenchantly to contemporary issues as John McMillian’s Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America (Oxford University, February). As the cascading revolts in the Muslim world demonstrate, communication systems matter.

by Jim Miller

These are grim times. The worst are full of passionate intensity and the best lack all conviction. The Democrats at the state and national levels seem ready to embrace economic scarcity and budget cutting as the “new normal” while the right smells blood in the water and is going in for the kill on collective bargaining rights, women’s rights, environmental regulations, funding for education, and long untouchable social programs. While the Democrats play prevent defense, the corporate-funded right is going for it all, working to change the rules of the game permanently, short-term costs be damned.

By Anon OB Observer

Comments here represent my personal political analysis (not those of the OB Rag) and are certainly not meant to offend….only to instigate some discussion and hopefully improve the political process and representation in our little hamlet. As always…. I welcome any of the Board to comment or offer a counter if they disagree.

There were 5 representatives from Districts 1,2,4,5,6 elected in the general election. There were no candidates in Districts 3 or 7. District 1 was the only contested election and the incumbent lost in a very low turnout affair. Overall it was a dismally low turnout for voting.

At their regular monthly meeting last April 6th, the OB Planning Board selected their officers for this next year.

By direct votes, Giovanni Ingolia was re-elected Chair. He received 8 votes versus 3 votes for Landry Watson and 2 votes for Seth Seth Connelly. Vice Chair Landry Watson was returned to his position, …

My family and I moved to Ocean Beach in 1966. What a wonderful place it was then.

There was always a lot of activity on Newport, and there were so many stores that the locals could shop at and find almost everything they needed: Lownes Department Store; Elms Men Clothing; Para’s Book and Magazine shop; Denny’s Restaurant and later Mayfair Market.

As I write this, the US Congress has still not agreed on a budget to keep our government from shutting down. The sticking point between paying our soldiers and keeping federal offices functioning is a rider which the Republicans introduced to eliminate funding to Planned Parenthood—or as they pitch it, to eliminate funding for abortions.

Koch spends tens of millions trying to shape federal policies that affect their global business empire By John Aloysius Farrell…

I ain’t gonna piss in no jar
You know Foghorn Leghorn wouldn’t pee in no jar. You
know Patrick Henry didn’t “Give
me liberty or give me a urine sample.”
~Mojo Nixon, I Ain’t Gonna Piss in No Jar

Florida’s Republican Governor Rick Scott has decreed through executive order that drug tests will be mandatory for all state workers.