OB Rag

Hundreds of local surfers and ocean enthusiasts this weekend plan to paddle around the Ocean Beach Pier to raise awareness about pollution along San Diego County’s coastline.

The 19th annual Paddle for Clean Water Festival, expected to draw more than 1,000 people using everything from surfboards and bodyboards to kayaks and outrigger canoes, begins at 9 a.m. Sunday.

by Annie Lane

The American Chemistry Council (ACC) has succeeded in buying the votes of several California senators, effectively quashing the ban of single-use plastic bags this past Tuesday, September 1.

At least that’s how the 21-14 defeat in California State Senate appears.

The definitive decision came after months of hard work, activism and financial contributions from both sides. The ACC, whose members include Exxon Mobil Corporation and plastic bag and film manufacturer Hilex Poly Company, took on Assemblywoman Julia Brownley, the bill’s author, and various environmental groups who led the fight to end California’s damaging dependency on plastic bags.

Labor Day in America is really the civil rights day for working people in America.  With unemployment reaching new highs,…

Saturday the 4th of September, a bunch of OB Ragsters and friends jumped the rails. Eight of us met at the Old Town Trolley Station around 10am with a map to take the entire loop east to Santee and then back again.

Most of us had never traveled so far on San Diego’s MTS (Metropolitan Transit System), and many of us had to buy a $5 day pass, so that we could ride for hours. A good deal.

The plan was to board the trolley at the Old Town station, go east all the way to Santee on the Green Line, back up, and change lines and head south to Grossmont, La Mesa and all the way to downtown on the Orange Line.

PROLOGUE: What follows was written as an appeal to our softer, more reflective and discerning greater selves as we seek a better world.

One day,
throwing
a bunch of stuff away,

The hysterical headline on the Fox News website screams out “John Cusack Calls for ‘Satanic Death’ of Fox News, GOP Leaders.”

Huh? Really?

John Cusack, star of “Say Anything” and “Hot Tub Time Machine ,” responded to a question on Twitter about the proposed, highly controversial Islamic center to be built in New York near Ground Zero.

Why are nit-wit women like Fiorina and Palin undermining Women’s liberation?

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt / Progressive Post

I was preparing for my little ritual last week, the one I practice every August 26, Women’s Equality Day, to celebrate our right to vote. … Well, not really to celebrate, but to at least recognize the Constitution’s 19th Amendment, declaring women’s suffrage. Hmmm, nope, not even to recognize it, no, more like to contemplate the 1920 passage of the amendment, because— . Well, I suppose, actually, to rant about it would be more accurate. In fact, to complain bitterly is what I mean. Yep, bitterly — because it took so damn long, and in the end, we had won the vote but we still didn’t have equal rights, and we still don’t have equal rights today.

By Center for Policy Initiatives

Study shows 229,000 households in the red, including many with full-time jobs

Almost a third of working-age households in San Diego County have incomes below what they need to meet basic living expenses. Half of those struggling households include someone with a full-time job.

The attorney for Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, the accused WikiLeaks leaker, says he doesn’t have any information indicating that Manning leaked tens of thousands of pages of documents on the Afghanistan war to the WikiLeaks website.

“I have not talked to my client about that. I have not seen anything, nor have I heard anything that would definitively tie him to that,” said attorney David Coombs in an exclusive interview with CNN.

Manning has not been charged with leaking those Afghanistan field reports, but U.S. military officials have told CNN that he is the prime suspect in that leak.

Greenpeace claims to have shut down offshore drilling by a British oil company at a controversial site in the Arctic after four climbers began an occupation of the rig just after dawn.

The environment campaigners said the four protesters evaded a small flotilla of armed Danish navy and police boats which have been guarding the rigs in Baffin Bay off Greenland since the Greenpeace protest ship Esperanza arrived last week.

Psst! Hey Ocean Beach. Quick – check this out! I just found Frank Gormlie’s papers that he tried to burn recently, and they’re entitled: “Secret Plans To Take Over the OB Town Council.” It looks like he tried to burn them in the fireplace. But I rescued enough of the documents to put together where it was all headed. And it’s not pretty.

My name is George, and I’m Frank’s brother, but we’re estranged, and he doesn’t know I got the ADMIN password for the blog, and he doesn’t know that I’m doing this, or that I even found some of the burnt documents!

I’ve managed to decipher the substance of the plans, and I outline them here:

by Molly MacGuire
The peace movement of this past decade was George Bush’s tea parties.

Amidst the gnashing of teeth and stomping of feet by peace movement types – people like me – expressing our frustrations, distrust and exasperation over this whole change in Iraq, there is something that has to be brought up. Whether it’s just the appearance of the end of US combat after the 7 year war, or there has been a significant shift in American military power, there is something that I think has been overlooked.